Genetic Schizo

£44.99> Lightweight pedals for every occasion

THERE ARE TIMES WHEN YOU want to ride using cleated cycling shoes and clipless pedals. Equally, there are occasions when you might want to spin at a more leisurely pace to the shops, café or pub without the faff of kitting yourself out in dedicated footwear. This is where products such as Genetic’s Schizo pedals come into play, offering you the best of both worlds: they’re flat on one side for the more casual trip with your trainers, while the other side is clipless for use with supplied Shimano SPDcompatible cleats.

We used these for a few months, for a variety of long commutes, leisure and bike-testing duties, and they’re still looking good and working well after 1000 miles. They’re designed to hang so that the flat alloy side presents itself, but it’s a breeze flipping the pedals with your foot and clipping in. The supplied Genetic cleats, which offer four degrees of float, look as if they’ll last as long as the Shimano equivalents, and the pedals worked just as well with Shimano’s own cleats as cleats from other manufacturers.

At 356g per pair these are a lot lighter than Shimano’s venerable M324s, our tester’s go-to pedal for much of his noncompetitive riding and commuting. The M324s weigh 506g, and though the 150g difference will appeal to weight-weenies, you must have acuter senses than us if you can discern that difference when you’re riding. And while they don’t seem to spin quite as freely as the Shimano pedals when spun by hand, again we couldn’t detect any difference in friction or performance when you’re pedalling.

They achieve their lighter weight by having a more stripped-back aluminium skeleton than the M324s, with no pedal body wrapping around at the outer end of the chromoly axle. Again, this is something that you don’t notice in use as the connection with your foot on the non-clipped side feels akin to pretty much all the shoes we use. The outer raised metal grippers are placed pretty much identically to those on the M324s, and there was no slipping with training shoes even when out of the saddle. That said, we wouldn’t recommend them for thin-soled plimsolls or leather-soled shoes. Finally, the tension-adjustment spring also appears to be identical to Shimano’s and is quickly and easily adjustable using a 3mm hex key.

These are ideal if you’re looking to make the move to clipless while keeping your options open, or if you just want a single, versatile pair of pedals.

WE SAY Great choice if looking to make the move to clipless or to keep your options open