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Category All Mountain | Suspension travel 140 to 160 millimetres | Price range up to 3000 euros
Even more than 40 years after its invention, it almost seems as if the mountain bike is still in its discovery phase. Areas of use are constantly shifting, requirements for the individual types of mountain bike vary from year to year. And in the last ten years, the industry has gone through five different tyre formats - including fat and plus tyres. If you don't keep a close eye on the developments in the industry, you can quickly lose track.
So here's a quick summary for downhill-oriented casual readers: Enduro bikes are no longer downhill heroes suitable for touring. The genre that was once so popular because of its wide range of applications is being trimmed more and more radically for downhill use. Some of the suspension travel has increased to 170 millimetres, which was once typical of freeride bikes, and unfortunately the weights have increased too. Our last Enduro test group in BIKE 12/19 weighed an average of 14.5 kilos - at a decadent average price of 7780 euros! The radicalisation of enduro bikes has opened up a gap that is now largely filled by all-mountain bikes. As a result, thick 36 mm or Lyrik suspension forks have suddenly appeared in this all-mountain test field, or chunky tyres in combination with 4-piston brake systems and 200 mm discs have become standard.
For the end consumer, this means that if you have a four to five year old enduro bike in your garage and want to replace it with a current bike with the same range of use, you should not be dazzled by the names of the product category. "Names are smoke and mirrors", as the great German poet Goethe recognised at the beginning of the 19th century, even if he didn't have a clue about mountain bikes.
If you define a bike not by the name of its product group, but by its riding characteristics, then this test field can do exactly what triggered the enduro boom a few years ago. It combines adequate climbing characteristics with extreme downhill fun.
In our test, we reveal which of these ten test bikes can shine with adequate climbing characteristics combined with extreme riding fun. The entire article with all the test results including points tables, technical data and grades is available as a PDF in the download area below:
- Bulls Wild Ronin RS
- Canyon Spectral CF 7.0
- Cube Stereo 140 HPC SL 27.5
- Giant Trance 1
- Radon Slide Trail 9.0
- Rock Machine Blizzard TRL 70 29
- Scott Genius 950
- Specialised Stumpjumper Comp Alloy
- Transalp Signature III X12 1.0
- Trek Remedy 8
You can find the complete group test including all the data, points tables and the score overview in BIKE 2/2020. The PDF version of the group test costs €1.99. Why not free of charge? Because quality journalism has a price. In return, we guarantee independence and objectivity. This applies in particular to the tests in BIKE. We don't pay for them, but the opposite is the case: we charge for them - hundreds of thousands of euros every year.
You can read the entire digital edition in the BIKE app (iTunes and Google Play) or reorder the print edition in the DK shop - while stocks last:
