At first glance, dirt bikes aren't very good: they are too heavy for long uphills, too small for tours over ten kilometres, too nervous for fast downhills. Misconceptions?
Not at all! Because if you want to ride extreme, you also need extraordinary equipment. And anyone who masters a dirt bike quickly discovers its wide range of uses: tricks in the city, big air on dirt jump trails and speed frenzy on the bikercross and dual tracks of the fun parks. Bikes for everything - and as affordable as possible for everyone.
In contrast to conventional hardtails, where a standard geometry has become established, the geometries of dirt bikes are very different. Take the wheelbase, for example: for race hardtails, a value of around 1080 millimetres has become established. The lengths of the dirt bikes tested, on the other hand, are between 1017 and 1099 millimetres. The differences in other geometry data are similarly large. The stiffness is at a similar level for all test subjects. If something on the bike feels spongy, it's more likely to be a flimsy stem or windy bottom bracket.
The brakes on dirt bikes lead a shadowy existence. Because what applies to downhillers also applies to dirt bikers: "If you brake, you lose". That's why the brake systems of the bikes are not so important in the evaluation. The only important thing is that if you use disc brakes, you are virtually immune to wheel spin.
We are not conducting a tough comparative test in this test. After all, the prices in our test field are wildly mixed. Focus proves with the "Exist" that a fun bike doesn't have to be expensive, while Wheeler and Fusion explore the upper limits. As most of the test bikes are also available as frame kits, you can customise most of them - and save a lot of money in the process.
The bikes in this test:
DMR Rhythm, Focus Exist, Fusion Hellfire, Heavy Tools Pitbull, Nicolai 2MXTB, Roach I, Rocky Mountain Flow, Scott Voltage YZ 0, Specialised P 3, Steppenwolf Twixter, Univega DS 922, Wheeler Wasp 03
