Certainly a nifty concept, and Jack's saddle height ended up being in the perfect spot with the seatpost collar slammed into the frame and with the post extended to the full 230mm of travel. That's the most travel he's ever used, and is really impressive on a Medium-ish size frame for a 175cm tall rider. [Wil]
@@FlowMountainBikeRU-vid I'm also 175cm and based on Merida's sizing guide I should get the mid size as well and I'm glad they have this feature with the dropper. 150mm just isn't cutting it especially in the steeps. I'm a bit concerned about reach though its almost 4cm more than what I'm used to.
Hey Will, don't you think that bikes in this travel range (150-160front and 140-150rear)should come with fox float x or some shock with piggyback? I would say that every bike with a 36 must have one.
That is exactly my thought. That DPS will be very hot after 10min of descending. One of the first things that I upgraded on my Fuel Ex 2020 was switching from DPS to Float X. After that I put Fox 36 upfront.
I think it really depends on where and how you ride. I actually quite like the poppier feel of the Float DPS shock, and the extra clearance is useful for fitting a larger water bottle. We don't have a lot of sustained 10+ minute descents around my neck of the woods, so there's rarely an issue with overheating. It's also worth acknowledging that with the One-Forty and One-Sixty sharing the same frame, the change in shock and fork helps to differentiate the two bikes, both visually and from a performance and weight perspective. Because they use the same frame, that does give a fair bit of flexibility to One-Forty owners. If you found damper-fade was an issue, you could always upgrade to a piggyback shock down the line. You could even up-stroke the shock to increase rear travel, and same with the fork. The frame is rated for use with up to a 180mm travel fork and a coil shock, and of course you can mullet it too, so there are a lot of options for future changes. Then again, if you're the type of rider who values a piggyback shock, you should probably go for the One-Sixty in the first place. [Wil]
I've spoken to Merida about the creaking headset and they replied saying they're not aware of this problem and are not offering any upgrades or replacements. Would it be possible for some clarification on this please
I had a creaking headset on my Merida Ninety Six. After a while, I took it apart and put some more grease onto the headset cups and onto the bearings and I haven't had any issues since. This was around 6 months ago.
I kept on at Merida and sent them the link to this review amongst other reviews claiming the same thing and finally got sent the upgraded headset from acros. ..All is good now 👌🏻
Me too! I've really enjoyed the current One-Twenty platform, though it'd be cool to see some of the features of the new One-Twenty incorporated into a shorter travel bike. [Wil]
A flex pivot one twenty would certainly bring down the weight, I briefly owned a 2020 one twenty 600 which weighed about the same as the one forty being reviewed here. It was a nice bike but poorly built by an unnamed large bike shop chain and literally fell apart underneath me in first month of ownership but the product and design was good. As interesting as an updated one twenty would be, I'm really hoping Merida build a e-one forty SL to take on the rise and levo sl, that would be a rad bike
So steep! We had to push the saddle back on the rails as the pedalling position was a little weird to begin with. Something you might find interesting is that Merida puts a layback seatpost on the One-Forty models, while the One-Sixty models then get an in-line seatpost. So despite the two bikes using the same frame albeit with a 20mm difference in the fork travel, the effective seat angle is meant to be pretty much identical between the two. Pretty clever! [Wil]
