The apex of our recent Cyclingnews Awards was a pair of group tests, one for road bikes, and one for gravel bikes, the cohort for each comprising a slew of bikes under £4,000, or an equivalent dollar or euro value. We tested each bike on an identical course, including fast open gravel, road, steep techy climbs, and concurrent steeper descents. As well as helping us pick apart which bike we felt worthy of an award, we also collectively had some more general thoughts and learnings that apply to the gravel genre more generally.
Given we are, at heart, a consumer advice platform, it would be remiss of us not to share these findings with you, so that if you don’t fancy one of the bikes from our buyer’s guide to the best gravel bikes, you can at least make a more informed decision whatever you decide to purchase. Without further ado, then, what did we find after riding so many gravel bikes back to back?
1. There is no ‘best overall’
If you look at the road bike segment there is still diversity, but especially at the high-performance end things are coalescing around the concept of a single, do-everything race bike. Think the Specialized Tarmac SL7, the Canyon Ultimate, or the Cannondale SuperSix Evo. Yes, there are endurance road bikes and lightweight bikes designed to go uphill as fast as possible, but at their heart, each is designed to perform well on paved roads. The surface doesn’t change hugely, and the gradients all fit within a well-established series of parameters.
This is not the case with gravel bikes. At one end of the spectrum you have gravel race bikes, now with full aero packages like the Factor Ostro Gravel, designed to go as fast as possible on relatively tame gravel roads. At the other end of the proceedings, you have things like the YT Szepter, with radically slack geometry, suspension forks, and dropper post compatibility, designed to be more adjacent to a mountain bike in many ways than to a road bike.
The market is now absolutely awash with options catering for all needs. Race bikes, adventure bikes, all-road, road plus, free road, bikepacking, all-terrain bikes, and still just ‘gravel bikes’. With the backdrop of this consumer landscape, it didn’t feel appropriate to award a ‘best overall’, as we concluded that such a thing was impossible. If the YT Szepter is more fun than the Vitus Venon is racy does that make…
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