My list for 2023... 1. Best Aero - Giant Propel Advance SL 0 2. Best Endurance - Look 765 Optimum 3. Best all-rounder/ Climbing - Pardus Robin Evo 4. Best classic lugged - Colnago C68 5. Best high end value for money - Polygon Helios A7X 6. Best Gravel - BMC Kaius 01 7. Best budget - Alcott Rossa Swift 8. Best High End Chinese frame - Seka Exceed RDC 9. Best budget Chinese frame - Elves Vanyar 10. The new groupset of the people - L-TWOO RX 2×12 Hydraulic
I have the 2022 Addict Gravel 30 which has a matte sparkle green that fades to black and it's absolutely stunning. A lot of bike manufacturers have been doing really great colour options.
They will offer two Foil frames from around Spring 2023 (frames might come earlier). A slick matt black for £4999 and the stunning green frame for £3499 main difference between the two is the carbon layup.
@@tobi-mr4zb Agreed that it's subjective. For example, my Addict Gravel is much, much more comfy than my Trek FX3 especially over rough terrain and longer rides. Not as soft as a Diverge but honestly the fact I have go on a 100 km ride and not feel my butt feeling sore or my body about to give out is a significant improvement from my previous bike.
These bikes are massively priced with slow discs on. Geometry is the key to speed. You can build a bike that’s considerably faster than any of these for many times cheaper if you make the right choices.
I have a magnesium frame , great to ride , Carbon is rubbish and cracks and all built by a Chinese woman with a cup of coffee and a brush in the other hand on $2 a day wages , they sell these in China for $145 cash from the factory they then send the rest to the EU to sell for £2500 with stickers on it hahahaha have a look on YT for copied printed bikes in China , totally shocking ..
Where are you from? I’m from Spain and here you can get Propel with 15% discount. 5.5k for the ultegra di2 version. I think great value compared VS others.
Thanks, David, I really appreciate your passion for the latest bikes on the market. And cheers to all who will be adding one or two to their personal stables. And as for me, my new bike for next year will be an upgraded minty Ti bike and I may even keep its carbon fork. Or I may mount a pair of NOS Rockshox forks, the early style with a one-inch steerer which Greg LeMond rode in Europe. And perhaps a 650B in the rear for gravel events. And it is all fun, all the tech, all the bikes, all the duels out there in the wild. 😀
I have the 2023 Giant TCR Advanced Pro 0 on order. Love your videos and I look forward to each one! Merry Christmas and keep up the great work in 2023!
Thanks for your reviews - guided me to my first purchase of a gravel/road bike. I would love to see a review of an Lapierre bike someday such as the Xelius, Aircode or even Pulsium.
I went for a Giant Revolt Advanced 2, 2021 model, as my first non-mtb bike and have been happily riding it for 8000 km now with two wheel-setups. However, leaning strongly towards road cycling I will now try the Lapierre Xelius SL ibstead. Hoping the 32mm tire clearance will allow me to do the sort of light gravel rides I occasionally do :) Thanks again for sharing your knowledge and experience!
Hi David....I'm torn between that beautiful Willier 0SLR in red velvet (stunning!) and the new Canyon Ultimate CFR top end build. I want a bike that goes up fast....despite my not going up fast. I'm Italian so partial to the Wilier but I feel like I cannot justify the additional cost. Thoughts? Would you ride one over the other as a daily driver? Great videos btw.
I wish the Synapse didn’t have the lights bit, so I could use the lights of my choice. I wish bike brands kept the endurance bikes simple. No ISO speed, no future shock. Just relaxed geometry. Cervelo Caledonia is the only “normal” carbon endurance bike from the big brands
I like the Giant Propel but My vote is for the Cervelo Soloist because of price point but I think a Propel in the same price range as the Cervelo both bikes would need a wheelset upgrade.
Rim brakes aren't dead but more likely that manufacturers are opting to sell disc frames and disc brakes as there is more profit rather than responding to an increased demand from consumers for disc brakes? I've got both, clearly discs offering much superior braking compared to single pivot rim brakes but dual pivot rim brakes aren't that far behind discs in terms of braking performance from my experience - plus with rim you'll never have that awful disc rub that comes as standard with 'cheaper' discs as I've got on my winter bike (SRAM Apex)
In the dry single pivot are fine, in the wet and dirt disks are better. What is/was outrageous to me was why they suddenly dropped all the carbon rim technology, direct mount (dual pivot) brakes and pad compounds and suddenly decided to add heavy MTB brakes to nearly all new bikes as a huge money-grabber con.
Hey, great thing about having rim brake and disc brake bikes is more standards! We all love more standards, right? I love my rim brake bike. But the brakes suck in the wet. And eventually your rim wears out. At least with discs you can just replace the disc, and they work when you need them to.
I think my next bike will be the new Propel but I am very intrigued by the new Enve Melee. If it goes as fast as the Propel / Tarmac but has the opportunity to also put big tires in then it will be a winner for me (I have two wheelsets: 28mm GP 5000 STR on 404 FC and 36mm Challenge Strada Bianca on 303 FC). Will there be a test of the Melee in the future??
Jay,....I have a Melee and can tell you it is a fantastic bike. I believe it can handle 35mm tires and maybe even larger, (I am funning 30mm). I am surprised David did not have it here in this video, especially since he was wearing an Enve shirt.
You're paying many thousands of pounds for very marginal gains over something costing a fraction. The one costing a fraction will be way easier to maintain.
The latest trend is for wide tires, but if they are really quicker why wouldn't pro teams be demanding 35mm tires? To me it's just a side rationalization of disk brakes you don't need either.
The price point on these bikes can be astronomical. How do you as a rider justify the cost in having to potentially buy a one-piece (probably proprietary) bar and stem to dial a bike fit in?
As a matter of interest, which do you think would be faster for riding on fairly flat or rolling terrain: (1) a lightweight, aero road bike like the new Giant Propel; or (2) an aero, lightweight road bike like the Giant TCR or Canyon Ultimate (of an equivalent spec level)?
Depending on the speed, the Propel in theory should be the faster bike especially at higher speeds but there are also gains to be made from things as simple as your position on the bike and the choice of wheels
@@davidarthur On a personal level, it makes me wonder if I made a mistake getting a Giant TCR Advanced SL 0, instead of waiting for the new Propel to be released. But on a more general level, it makes me wonder about the future of a whole class of lightweight road bikes, including the Giant TCR, Canyon Ultimate, Cervelo R5, and Merida Scultura Team. Other than for especially mountainous terrain, why would you choose a less aerodynamic, and thus slower bike? When aero bikes were significantly heavier and less comfortable, then perhaps. But the new Propel looks like a game changer in this regard. Interestingly, the manufacturers seem to think bikes like the TCR and Canyon Ultimate have a place, as they are still developing them. But where do you think the future lies? Do the less aero, lightweight bikes still have a place? Or will manufacturers coalesce around designs like the Propel and SL7?
Bike progress turned to strange direction, they look disproportional, hard in maintenance and expensive as hell. From all the line only Canyon Ultimate still looks as a bike
They are all made in china for the consumer, yes colnago will show you there bike ' building ' department in Italy were to they make the c64 only The V3r and V4r are made in china or Taiwan and the fabricated in Italy ( fabricated = painted in Italy)
Looks like the plaque of “integrated cocpit” followed the plaque of disk brakes. But it is much worse. I forswe a wave of these bikes djmped on secondary market when the average recreational cyclist realises that he cannot ride in this position further than to a nearby starbucks, and cannot do anything about it🤣
That's what some also said about the bike craze during the pandemic. But I have yet to see those newer bikes on fire sale on the secondary market. In fact, I'm seeing the opposite. So keep dreaming.
I ride the heck out of a 2016 Skylon.....no issues, never a thought of a failure. Best bike IMHO... I had 2 CANYONS Ult and End and both ghost shifted on hard climbs. Sold em. A Dogma that snapped near the rear mech dropout whilst climbing. TIME for me forever.
Fantastic bikes but all overpriced, I guess I will be sticking to my 7 yr old TCR ... Or going down the direct from china route ...= Winspace, Elves, Yoeleo!!??!!
It did get a fair amount of coverage but not nearly as much as other bikes, think the lack of demo bikes for magazines to test didn't help, here's my quick video on it ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-ZkgtbKXwNuE.html
@@davidarthur well, intrigued by the mentioned 3k£ I just checked the pricing in Germany, realising it effectively starts at 5k€ for anything vaguely resembling an aero bike (not
You're not wrong modern top-end bikes are expensive, but most of these bikes do have wide ranges that start at much lower prices, like the Canyon Ultimate CF SL at £2600 for example, and then the Vaast is a really good example of an alloy bike that is lower priced than most carbon bikes
Nice review. That would not be a CUBE in my case, still waiting for the 2022 one I ordered more than a year ago at a CUBE official store (happy birthday me). 👎
Cannondale really fumbled with that battery. I could see the idea making sense if it was integrated as the battery for an electronic groupset. But, just lights and radar? How can such a dumb idea make it into a final product? At least they didn't put it on all the synapse frams, so customers can avoid it.
