Hope Technology

Hope’s braking lineage is one of the longest-running and most recognizable in mountain biking. Their machined aluminum calipers and levers are unmistakably Hope, and for many riders, that’s the entire appeal: durability, serviceability, and a lever feel that’s hard to replicate elsewhere. But the XCR Pro E4 brake sits in an especially interesting corner of the lineup. It’s the brand’s lightest four-piston offering — a brake designed specifically to blend XC weight with real, trail power — and that makes it a natural match for the increasingly broad category often labeled “downcountry.” I...

When Hope dropped the Tech 4 brake some three and a half years ago now, we were impressed. So impressed, in fact, that we awarded it Product of the Year for 2022 . Since then, we’ve been running multiple pairs of these brakes on several different bikes, and we’ve remained impressed – this is clearly still one of the benchmark products in the MTB braking world. For 2025 however, Hope decided that an evolution was due, and in true Hope fashion, they racked their brains for a new name and came up with…EVO. For as underwhelming and generic as that name sounds, the changes made to the brakes are...

We’ve been running Hope cranks since they first started making them in 2015 . The very first iteration sported a unique spindle interface which functioned as intended but was a bit faffy to work with, and Hope moved to a more traditional self-extracting bolt system for the release of the EVO version of the crank in 2019. We still have our first EVO test sample running on a bike in our fleet to this day, testament to the great reliability of the updated design. Fast-forward to 2024, and Hope has added a carbon crank to their drivetrain catalog – in typical Hope fashion, it’s ingeniously named...