BIKE OF THE YEAR 2021
IT’S TIME OUR TO PUT THREE TOP HEAD-TO-HEAD THE TO FIND OF... WINNER
It’d be easy to fall into some clichés here, at the sharp end of our Trail Bike of the Year test. Yes, this year’s line-up was the hardest yet to judge. And yes, it was very hard to narrow down the top five to just three. Just as predictably, we only made our final decision about the winner – which we’ll reveal shortly – as we were writing these very paragraphs. But we’re sure you expected that anyway, so we’ll stop there.
While travel restrictions limited our potential to test further afield, we were blessed with some incredibly varied tracks and conditions local to our Bristol base, and then, in the final stages, a short drive away at BikePark Wales. Riding these eight bikes everywhere from steep, rutted mud tracks to bike park hardpack and frozen-solid woodland singletrack, we managed to test them just as hard as we might in any ‘normal’ year. That still didn’t make it an easy task, though – in part, because qualifying how good a trail bike is can be fairly tricky, when one person’s ideal bike needs to be able to traverse massive distances, while other riders effectively want an enduro bike with a tad less travel.
OUT IN A BLAZE OF GLORY
The top three should be fairly familiar to you, because it’s an almost identical repeat of last year’s. Bird, YT and Propain are here yet again, further proving the quality of their bikes. The order has rearranged a touch, but any three of them could be considered winners.
YT’s Jeffsy has been a stalwart of Trail Bike of the Year going back a few years now, and this year’s Blaze model shoots into third place. The fiery moniker was added to a number of YT builds that went on sale in limited numbers earlier in 2021. These all came with top-spec, beefed-up RockShox suspension, but used the same frames as the regular bikes. There’s just one problem – with the huge demand for bikes at the moment, the Jeffsy Blaze sold out while we were still testing it. Thankfully, for the same price you can get the Jeffsy Core 3, with an otherwise identical parts list, but a Performance Elite-level Fox 36 fork and DPX2 shock substituted for the Blaze’s Lyrik Ultimate and Super Deluxe Ultimate. We feel these are fairly comparable in terms of performance on the trail. If you haven’t got as much to spend, the Jeffsy Core 2 gets Performance-level suspension and an NX Eagle drivetrain for £1,100 less.
The Jeffsy gets its place in the top three because, as we’ve said every time it’s appeared, it’s an absolute hoot to ride. It almost defines ‘playful’, seeking out every lipped undulation in the trail, waiting for you lift up and tweak the bar, and encouraging you on to square-off every corner and manual through whoops. The early part of the suspension is really supple, so it makes short work of trail chatter and helps the bike pick up speed quickly on gentle descents without getting rattled about. However, it does steal a touch of zip when you’re putting in short dabs of effort through the pedals. As you enter the middle of the travel it ramps up to give support, before the bike has a chance to feel wallowy and vague. This gives the Jeffsy oodles of pop and an insatiable appetite for getting up into the air and accelerating through turns. The deeper into the travel you get, the harder you have to push the bike to get near to the limits. Bang it off a drop with little finesse and the suspension competently provides you with its full 150mm of rear wheel travel. Braking traction isn’t the best out there, but the Jeffsy is more than capable of bringing you to a halt and keeping you out of trouble when hauling on the anchors over matted roots and through harsh compressions.
Its geometry isn’t so far-out that you have to adjust your riding style in any way. The large size sports a 470mm reach, 66-degree head angle, short 435mm stays and a 350mm BB height. This makes it a very natural bike to jump on and ride, and ensures that when you do want to tackle tight and twisty tracks, you won’t be left behind. While the Jeffsy is capable on the steeps, a slacker head angle would improve things even further.
We’d like to see a longer dropper provided on the large size, too, because the 435mm seat tube is so short that a 175mm or even 200mm post would easily fit. That’s
THE JEFFSY HAS OODLES OF POP AND AN INSATIABLE APPETITE FOR GETTING UP INTO THE AIR AND ACCELERATING THROUGH TURNS
THE REAR WHEEL TRACKS EVERY LUMP AND BUMP WITH THE MINIMUM OF FUSS, WHETHER YOU’RE FREEWHEELING OR HANGING OFF THE BRAKES
our only real niggle with the kit. You won’t find a stouter fork on a trail bike than the Blaze’s Lyrik, and the Super Deluxe piggyback shock remains consistent on long tracks (with the same being true, in our experience, for the Fox equivalents on the Core 3). The 10-52t cassette gives a huge gear range for winching up steep hills, and the wide Maxxis Minion tyres on broad DT Swiss rims are one of our favourite all-rounder combos.
PROPAIN, PRO GAINS
While the Jeffsy delivers just about the most fun you can have on a trail bike, if you’re looking for a real all-rounder, then Propain’s Hugene ticks an awful lot of boxes. This is the new version of the bike that won last year, but don’t take its second-place result to mean that it’s any less incredible than its predecessor. The Hugene’s new silhouette gives it straighter lines and a better strengthto-weight ratio. It’s also a touch longer than before, with a 480mm reach on the large size, while also being slacker at the head tube and steeper at the seat tube (65.5 and 77 degrees, respectively). If all-round competence is important to you, then you’ll like the way the Propain simply gets on with the job with minimal fuss. The new shape really works, with the extra length giving plenty of stability when the trails get steep and loose. Nose the Hugene into a steep section and it’s just a case of easing off the brakes, gripping the bar and letting the bike do the rest. The rear wheel hugs the ground, tracking every lump and bump with the minimum of fuss, whether large or small, and whether you’re freewheeling or absolutely hanging off the brakes.
The Hugene is no slouch in the corners, either. It’s an agile, playful bike that encourages you to tip it from side to side as you slalom through the trees, or lay it flat through berms, where the Schwalbe Magic Mary and Big Betty tyres hook up into the dirt and deliver you to the exit, all while barely breaking a sweat. Pedalling is a composed affair, with seated climbing inducing no noticeable pedal bob, despite the rear wheel rarely spitting dirt out behind it. The seated position is comfortable too, with the roomy front end never feeling cramped, and allowing you to move over the top of the bike to maintain traction. Under bursts of power, there’s a touch more lag than on our winning bike, partly due to those grippy tyres, but also possibly down to a touch of bob when you really mash on the pedals. This was most noticeable on flatter flow trails.
As on the first-place bike overleaf, Propain give you the option to alter the spec. We’ve mainly talked about the frame’s performance here, because this build came in well above our usual TBotY price limit. However, a bike priced more in line with the others in this test would still have a stellar parts list packed with kit along the lines of
an Ultimate-level RockShox Pike fork, a SRAM GX Eagle drivetrain, Formula Cura 4 brakes and the same Schwalbe rubber. With a spec like this, the Hugene would still be on the podium, without a doubt.
BIRD IS THE WORD
This leaves us with our winner. Last year the Bird Aether 7 came third in our test. This alloy bike impressed us most on tight, twisty tracks, but we felt its 650b wheels let it down over the rough stuff. What we really wanted was the same super-capable chassis, but with bigger 29in hoops. And boy, have Bird delivered. The Aether 9 takes the steadfast pedalling, ultra-capable shape and sorted suspension of the Aether 7, and gives it that smooth-riding, mile-munching and corner-railing performance that big wheels offer.
Bird are known for their long geometry, and the large Aether 9 we tested fits that stereotype. With a reach north of 500mm and a head angle of 65 degrees, the front wheel is placed well ahead of the BB, with all the high-speed capability that entails. At the back, though, the 430mm chainstays are tight, keeping the rear wheel tucked into the frame and allowing you to easily get the front wheel up in the air. As we mentioned with the Saracen Ariel, there is a payback when you’re tired and need to get the front end moving, but the compact rear end gives the Aether 9 the edge when it comes to manoeuvrability. Should that 506mm reach be just too much, the ‘medium long’ size with its 484mm reach would also have suited our 6ft tester.
If we were looking purely for downhill capability, then the Aether’s 130mm of travel could be considered a drawback, being noticeably less than the 150mm offered elsewhere in this test. However, with ample progression through its stroke, the Bird rarely felt anything less than composed, only struggling to calm the biggest impacts. There’s a touch more feedback under braking and over roots at times compared to the smoothest bikes here, but we never felt out of control, thanks to that stretched-out front end.
So long as you’ve got the front wheel weighted, the Aether 9 is excellent on flatter, more mellow trails, because
the rear suspension is rock-solid under pedalling and allows you to pump and drive the bike through rises and rollers. Jabbing at the pedals is rewarded with bursts of speed almost reminiscent of an XC bike, despite the chunky Minion/Shorty tyre combo. Uphill, we had nothing to complain about, with the steep 77-degree seat tube angle combining with the solid-under-power suspension, run with less sag than the longer-travel set-ups here, to ensure that we were robbed of very few of our precious Watts.
However, it’s not just ride quality that a bike needs in order to win our coveted Trail Bike of the Year award. Even though the Aether 9 is a touch over our usual TBotY budget, it still represents exceptional value for money. Alloy rather than carbon fibre construction saves a chunk of cash, and that’s money we’d rather spend on parts than the chassis. We also appreciate Bird’s user-friendly frame features. External cable routing, threaded BBs and pivot bearings that are easy to access/adjust/replace all make owning a bike much easier.
Back to the components, and Ultimate-level RockShox suspension isn’t to be sniffed at, with the 140mm Pike fork propping up the front end of the bike nicely, despite having narrower-diameter stanchions than the Lyrik on the YT (as does the Fox 34 on the Propain), and the Super Deluxe piggyback shock offering smooth and adjustable control of the rear wheel. There are no complaints with the full Shimano XT drivetrain either – its shifting is faultless up and down the cassette, whether you’re pedalling lightly or putting it through its paces under power. Likewise, the four-pot XT M8020 brakes are a product we’re always pleased to see on test bikes. Ultimately, it’s the DT Swiss XMC 1501 carbon wheels that drag the Aether 9 over budget. A set of DT’s alloy hoops would bring the cost right down without having a huge impact on how it rides, and with Bird allowing you to swap various parts at the point of purchase, you can do just that.
What we wanted was the same super-capable chassis, but with bigger 29in hoops. And boy, have Bird delivered