VITUS VENON DISC
£1599.99 › Encouragingly enthusiastic, disc-equipped Irish rover
While the Vitus website says the company’s pitched its carbon fibre Venon disc brake bike at the endurance market, it only takes a few firm pedal strokes or the first decent hill to realise that it’s up for more than just meandering.
The 73-degree head and 73.5-degree seat angles make the bike feel lively and alert, with a head-tube that feels short in proportion to the rest of the frame to naturally push you forward rather than sit up. Pressure on the pedals courses straight through the hollow crank arms and 3D rings of the Shimano 105 chainset through the junction of flared seat-tube and big bottom bracket block down to the generous chainstays for a muscular power delivery.
The Fulcrum Racing Sport wheelset is a reasonable weight for a disc design relative to the other rolling stock here. While it doesn’t leap forward quite as dramatically as the lighter BTwin or Planet X, it’s more up for a fight than most disc frames - even considerably more expensive ones - and is very different in its dynamic feel to the Ribble, which is 400g heavier.
The trade-off for this powerful feel is shock absorption. Even with super-skinny seatstays, a narrow 27.2mm carbon seatpost and 25mm Michelin Pro 4 Endurance tyres, which actually blow up to a chubby 26.5mm, the ride character is closer to race than recreational. There’s not much space around the tyres to cope with anything bigger or chunkier in tread either so it’s definitely a road bike. The lack of mudguard or rack fixtures also puts the Venon in a more performance than utility bracket, but that suits the sporty ride character.
Being the own brand of massive Northern Ireland-based online bike shop Chain Reaction, you would expect Vitus to offer
Lack of mudguard or rack fixtures puts the Venon in a more performance than utility bracket
impressive value for money and the Venon doesn’t disappoint. The full carbon frame is packaged with an almost full Shimano 105 groupset (the chain is KMC) and BR505 disc brakes, which few, if any, bike shops will be able to compete with.
That said the 505 shift levers have a distinctive extra lump where the fluid reservoir is compared to other Shimano designs. These proved punishing on the palms of some of our testers but were actually preferred to the Ribble’s BR5800 levers by others. Either way, at the other end you get the IceTech steel/alloy sandwich, four-spoke alloy-centred disc rotors that a lot of brands short cut on. Like the Ribble they’re 140mm rather than 160mm in diameter, so not as powerful as they could be, but less likely to lock up when the Michelin’s reach their grip limit.
Traction isn’t something to be too concerned about, as while the Endurance versions of Michelin’s Pro 4 tyres are harder compound than the Service Course Pro 4s, they’re still more tactile and trustworthy than most of the other mid-range tyres here.
The taut frame feel, keen steering and stout fork with mountain bikestyle 15mm thru-axle give rich feedback for making the most of them on the front. Long 41.5cm chainstays with a broad 142x12mm thru-axle add a kite tail handling effect that keeps the whole bike stable and grounded at speed.