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The Irish would like to have a stern, profanity-filled word with you

Looks like Myriam is now on the steel chainstay

What article did you see the mention of poor rolling resistance? I mean, I did initially think that as I read "30% larger contact patch on ground". More sticky rubber contacting the ground is more friction. But a lot of rolling resistance is from casing deformation (less of a component of MTB vs. road tire though because of the tall treads). This radial casing should be more 'supple' which would lower rolling resistance, but if it's putting more of a contact patch on the ground vs. a normal tire, then it will be slower rolling. This ties into my other...

Schwalbe was quietly saying in most article that rolling resistance is significantly worse which will be a automatic no for XC/gravel/road. Thanks to the independant testing of BicycleRollingResistance people are often now basing their tire purchase on the road because they are 1-2 watts faster at 32kph per tire (decent road at 10w and good tires are below 8w). We won't know for sure until we get 3rd party rolling resistance data on those Schwalbe radial tire and it's not really the type of tires that BCR test usually.

Getting worked up over the sanctity of the pinned threads is a waste of time

I find the light touch on the shifter with electronic shifting to be a big advantage, but that's because it aggravates the nerve damage I have in my wrist less than cable activated shifting. I'm very unlikely to go back to cables

It’s not for me, but that/this is just my opinion. I am a bit gutted to see that the new trend might be wirelessly gears only and I can understand why but are theses companies doing it a few years too early? Personally I would like to see wireless gear only frames once the gear cable hole is pretty much redundant. It’s also not as bad as it is being made out though, it looks like Specialized will be doing a Alu Stumpjumper that takes a gear cable and the other company getting a lot of heat in the other...

I don’t care all that much about cost or a little extra weight. I have Transmission on 10 of my MTBs (sold 1, used to be 11) and have installed it on several more for friends or other bikes I have sold. Never once had a battery issue and have never even considered batteries as a thought. It is just something I do as automatically as checking my tire pressure before leaving the house. So much easier for the vast majority of people to setup and maintain, looks cleaner and no longer a concern about messing something up when banging...

Re: wireless only frames... as with everything in life the answer is likely it's a bit of everything. Innovation slowing in areas like geo, suspension and overall product improvement from generation to generation lead to looking for notable and small gains. Wireless shifting is likely one place where brands feel that they can offer something different and new to people that have bikes that don't have it... ie sell bikes. There is likely a bunch of other small influencers to this. MFG cost, assembly cost, design cost, overall bike prices being so high that an extra 200-300 usd for an...

New shock is almost entirely the same as a fox float. Both chambers can be tuned with volume reducers. How does it take customization out of riders hands? Charlie Murray is running the exact same shock from his StEvo with the exact same settings and just took 4th in his race on the sj15, so the bike vibes with non-genie shocks too. I hate proprietary components, but I’m curious what you’re talking about. Standard shock measurements, same fox internals as other shocks, and the bike works great with other shocks.

All analogy is suspect but 😉 A laptop computer communicating with a wireless access point is smart. Communicating with a wireless mouse is a mostly harmless gimmick with some legitimate convenience added in some cases. Communicating internally wirelessly, like motherboard to daughter to storage etc, is kind of ridiculous. It’s a job wires are especially well suited to. I’m willing to take the word of the people who swap their wireless dropper post from bike to bike. That’s the mouse in this analogy. I think the wireless derailleur fits the third example best.

While that is true, if the front center grows without the rear center also growing, the weight distribution shifts more and more towards the rear. This results in being forced to ride with more weight on your hands which is generally undesirable. IMO, your hands should mostly be used for controlling the bike and fore-aft stability, not for supporting your weight. I’m 6’3” and find that many bikes with short CS and long reach force me into a riding position that I don’t like in order to place enough weight on the front wheel.

I'm on team long CS, and I ride mostly tighter, flatter, natural trails. The traction and confidence boost give me, as a 'fast dad' level rider, much more opportunity to push a bike hard through corners and force it through than rely on a bit less wheel base to negotiate a turn. New Ibis geometry is strange - I think we're seeing some fall out from designing one front triangle for multiple bikes. I never wanted a GG for exactly that reason, as much as I loved other aspects of those bikes.

I dont think that longer chain stays for longer reaches necessarily makes the bikes handle similar proportionately. Your feet are still in the same spot in relation to the rear wheel no matter how tall you are. So you are helping the overall front to back balance of the bike but it will still feel differently than a smaller size if all else is equal. I also think people put a little too much thought into some of these numbers, that's the beautiful thing about the human body between hips,knees and ankles we can really manipulate our body weight balance...

100% ^^^ So many opinions on here presented as absolutes. Everything is a compromise and a skilled rider will compensate. I won't say it's impossible to make a "bad" bike these days, but it's pretty hard. Both of these bikes look pretty stellar to me.

Thanks Sspomer, Has anyone noticed a real change recently from open mindedly discussing/presenting rumours and innovations, to endless posts about "opinions as facts" on the topics? Maybe its just me, but I felt like this thread used to be more open to ideas, and just seeing cool things, and I'd like a return to that. These new things arent for everyone, and not every product is meant to be the perfect fit for everyone, which is friggin great, we should want diversity in the marketplace, shouldnt we? I feel like we have strayed from that recently.....

it looks like Dak's lines were going so much through giant puddles that he would struggle the whole way for clear vision. He pulled his tear off 69 times (well at least 6 times).. At the opposite, it looks like Armory had a way bigger mudguard and only pulled one tear off... I'm surprised nobody is using a wireless tear off. i remember Justin Leov using one this system many years ago..

Getting sloppy on the older generation, GX or X01? Because the durability of X01 eagle is off the charts in my experience, both derailleur and chain.