All

The soft engagement is equivalent to about 2 degrees. I found it frustrating when people described it as almost instant with no figures specced by Onyx and went and found an academic paper where a guy had done the calcs on sprag engagement.. 2 degrees is as damn close to instant as you'll ever want or need though!

I dont like mine. Blew the freehub bearing multiple times. The axle design is three parts and the threaded end cap on drive side came loose twice. Hub is very spongey when climbing with 52t.

I have 3 sets, 2 classics and 1 vesper, I've never had a single issue between the 3 wheelsets on 5 different bikes. One set with Classic hubs are on my Single Speed and I don't feel like the engagement is "spongey" in the slightest, and I absolutely hammer that bike. All 3 sets have ceramic bearings and they spin forever, I've found myself catching up to riding buddies on sections of trails where I'm coasting and they are actually pedaling.

I had the Onyx to on my Dreadnought. Unreal rolling speed. The engagement is instant, it has to be less than a degree, a fraction of a degree. No complaints, I’d buy again if I was looking for the instant engagement feel.

The sponge is a pretty weird feeling. Enough on my test ride to decide to go with a hope hub. Didn’t want a crazy engagement like a i9 but also was kind of weirded out by the sponge and quiet from the onyx. I think something like a hope/350/spank hub is a good balance between those 2 extremes.

It's worth affirming that the silence is something that needs to be experienced to appreciate it in its entirety. Only the sound of tires hugging the trail and the suspension doing its job is an experience of itself. The softness in the engagement can only be noticed on the very lightest gears. With higher gearing such as in single-speed or dirt jump use (or in BMX race bikes on which the Onyx hubs represented the majority in the last Olympic final), it's not a factor. Not that most people run single-speeds, but the comparison helps to put the effect in...

I have two sets. I ride technical trials-like trails too, I like them for that. The softness you mentioned I think of as a feature and is really very slight, IE a fraction of a degree. Coupled with the noiseless coasting the slight initial softness helps the bike feel quiet instead of having freehub pauls catch hard. They engage very solidly. Like anything, they require maintenance. The Kluber spindle grease is crazy expensive, and the parts aren’t cheap either. I had to replace a sprag clutch assembly on on set of my hubs as the cage holding the sprags had...

Onyx hubs are a tried & true option. The sprag clutch mechanism is nearly fully free of drag, simple in design, very robust, and easy to service. In addition, there are no parts that are subjected to wear. The instant engagement with its slightly soft feel is something that most riders do not want to be without once getting a taste of it. On a plus side, the Classic model is up for the task when it comes to E-mtb use, something that is becoming more and more common. https://onyxhubseurope.com/onyx-classic-hubs-for-an-e-mtb-onyxhubseurop…

I love mine, I have them on 5 wheelsets over several bikes, some with a few thousand miles on them, I don't do trials and my climb trails are pretty mellow, but I am a heavy rider who puts down a relatively large amount of power doing sprints. And get a fair amount of miles (2500 last year with 400K of climbing) The engangement is near instant, definitely noticeable compared to a dt swiss hub. The customer service from the team is also top notch, I did the TransBC in 2019, and somehow lost one of the axle spacer caps...