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Honestly, I haven’t paid much attention to Vital recently as I prefer the editorial content from previous presenters who are gone. But THIS. Wow. Three guys my height who are legit shredders AND can discuss what they experienced in a coherent and insightful fashion. Well done, sirs.

Boo hoo, how do you think us tall riders feel when pretty much every review is for a small, medium or large bike? Just let us enjoy content aimed at us for a change.

The slop in my Tracer 29 was due to the lower link not being torqued correctly. It needed another quarter turn with a bb80 adaptor, like Lifeline's. Unfortunately this isn't shown in the Tracer's manual, and perhaps isn't being addressed by their assembly QC.

Nice review! I can only comment on the Deviate but I’ve found all their bikes really come alive with a coil in the rear paired with open compression (HBO is a nice plus too)

Great review, really enjoyed the riding shots. In regards to durability concerns of the Deviate. It actually has the best sealed bearings on the market, probably due to the miserable Scottish weather. Every pivot has a a real industry seal and you can regrease the bearings with a grease gun. So the oil you saw on the frame come from that. Check out the user manual: https://www.deviatecycles.com/product-manuals

Nice work Jonny!

Yes! Always great to watch some Vital Test Sessions. Now with Moar Robot.

Yes, the MXg guide should have been installed with 7mm of spacers between the backplate and ISCG tabs. I haven't seen any assembled like that out of the box, only with 1 or 2mm of spacers missing. That's been the only anomaly discovered so far as we dig into why our development testing results and these field reports are so different. Seems like a small thing, but I've ridden this bike extensively and never once had the chain drop. Hopefully that's the culprit and the fix, but we're (MRP) doing more testing to verify something else isn't at play. FWIW...

Really like the format. Informative and entertaining at the same time. The jump over the gnarly rock is a favorite bit! Fair play to all reviewers... you guys shred!

I'm gonna continue to pile on the love. This is the best content in the industry. You somehow captured the old bike mag vibe of chill playfulness but then back that with the fact that all 3 of you are stone cold shredders. This is what want out of review session.

Awesome to see a big boy review, so tired of the 150lb guys riding the bike in it’s designed size and trying to figure out what that means for me at almost 6’4” and 200-210 pounds. Almost 2.5 years on my S5 Enduro and I’m still loving it. Custom tuned Avy suspension has been amazing. Wish I was skilled enough to hold it on the edge for more than a few seconds at a time…

Now this is the type of content we want to see, real people, who actually ride their stuff, giving real opinions. I would love to see how top pics from you guys (regardless of year) stack up agains the "modern industry standards". Clearly that enduro can still hang with the new tech, makes you wonder if new bikes are really improving as much as they claim...

According to Trek, derailments can be due to the lower guide wheel being out of alignment from the factory and adding a 2mm spacer to the ISCG tabs can fix it. We weren't aware of that possible remedy during the test so we can't say if that fix works, but it'd be great if it did. Kinda crazy to be dropping chains with so many chain retention doodads involved (narrow/wide ring, two chainguides, clutch derailleur, idlers to correct chain growth, etc).

Really nice review - but I can't help but think that a smattering of images with paint shop style graphics combined with a series of external, non-endemic references and graphs would really push this over to the top. If only one of these reviewers had experience in that arena.

This is the best Vital content in years. An all-star cast that shred and don’t take it too serious, along with a nicely selected group of bikes. Great insight on each bike along with the industry in general. A+ footage is just the bonus. Thanks for the hard/fun work.

The Enduro came out in 2019 and is still a cracking good bike.

Great content. Thanks vital!

I got to ride with SAM MF HILL

I think there are a lot of similarities to road bike fitting in terms of the very basic question "should you choose the bigger size or the smaller size in the same bike?" I think the two big numbers are height and inseam length, which together determine how much leg you have projecting up and back from the pedals and how much torso you have reaching forward and down to your handlebars, i.e. where do your hips end up above your bottom bracket and how far forward can you reach. But those two numbers don't tell the whole fitting story...