X-Lab AD9 review: Holds its own against WorldTour competitors, but it isn’t as cheap as you might expect

XDS, the parent company that makes X-Lab bikes, is probably the biggest bike brand you’ve never heard of. Although, in recent years with the sponsorship of XDS-Astana and a breakout into the WorldTour, this is less of a true statement than it used to be. Much like Giant and Merida, XDS makes bikes for Western brands, and while I am not at liberty to tell you for which brands, there’s every chance that it made your bike.

XDS’s main focus is affordable, mass market consumer machines, with X-Lab as the performance brand aimed at taking on the best road bikes on the market. It’s sort of like S-Works to Specialized, but only if you could only buy S-Works Tarmac and Aethos models, and the rest of Specialized’s sales were bikes to go to the shops on.