Orbea Avant H60 Disc
£1,159 | 10.9kg Perhaps the only bike at this price with such an integrated cockpit, but is this where you should be spending your money, Stefan Abram asks
With a heritage dating back to 1840, you might have thought that this Spanish brand could be the oldest bike manufacturer still making bikes. But Orbea, being originally a gun manufacturer, ‘only’ got into the bike business in 1920. The title sits instead with Bianchi, building bikes since 1885. Still, with over 100 years of experience, Orbea at least has the prestige of being the second-oldest bike manufacturer in the world.
Fitting into the range as an endurance road bike, the Orbea Avant H60 Disc comes with 28mm tyres – and room for more – so there’s even potential for dabbling in a bit of light gravel.
The frame
With an aluminium construction, the Avant frame benefits from triple butting – meaning that the wall thickness of the tubing varies throughout their lengths, providing strength where it’s needed and saving weight where it’s not.
The bridgeless seatstays provide some nice clean lines, while also offering generous clearance for the rear wheel – there’s room to swap in more chunky tyres and mudguards.
There are discrete mounts for the latter by the dropouts and on the seat tube. A seatstay bridge would need to be affixed, but there are mounts for that too. The seat tube boss is rather higher than you would typically get, which sacrifices some of the protection that would ordinarily be offered to the drivetrain.
On the front, the mudguard attaches to the thru-axle in a very innovative design
– the inside of the axle is actually threaded to take a standard M5 bolt. It’s a clean and minimalist design but would make taking the front wheel out for cleaning quite labour-intensive.
Clearances at the fork, which has carbon legs and an aluminium steerer, are much less generous than at the rear, so the maximum tyre widths will differ between each end. Although Orbea does state that the fork should be able to handle up to 700x35c.
The reason for this mismatch in clearances is because Orbea has specced a fork that uses the same internal cable routing as on the brand’s higher-end race bikes, which obviously have no need for overly large tyre clearances.
With this fork, the cables can enter the frame from under the stem and not be seen again until they pop out at their respective stops – a high-level aero feature that is impressive at this price.
However, this has the consequence that you can’t easily shuffle the spacers under the stem to get the handlebars set up at the right height. Any modifications to the stack height would require the steerer tube of the fork to be cut – meaning you can’t go back if it turns out that the position you were trialling was a little too low.
“Fitting into the range as an endurance road bike, the Avant H60 Disc comes with 28mm tyres”
For any cyclist who is yet to find their perfect position, an integrated set-up is likely to be quite an impediment to getting set up in a comfortable and efficient position.
The Spec
Shimano’s 2x8 Claris groupset is specced, which is a little unusual at this price point. Generally, the lowest you’d see is Shimano’s nine-speed Sora groupset or the 10-speed Tiagra.
You might think that by going for Tektro, rather than sticking with Shimano for the brake calipers, you’re getting a bit of a downgrade. But these stoppers performed extremely well. Unlike most mechanical brake calipers, both the pads move towards the disc when the cable is pulled, with the result being a more responsive-feeling brake which is also easier to set up correctly. That said, it is worth taking the time to make sure they are set up correctly. The screws on either side of the caliper allow you to adjust how close the pads sit towards the disc – make sure this distance is even for the best performance.
Cosra rims are laced to 28-hole Shimano RS470 hubs – a pretty bombproof combination, if quite heavy. Rolling on cup-and cone bearings means they’re pretty simple to service at home, only requiring a couple of cone spanners. These are wrapped in Vittoria Zaffiro clincher tyres, which are a good choice, being hardwearing and puncture resistant without feeling unduly sluggish. However, it’s fair to say that upgrading to a lighter wheelset with faster tyres would have a very noticeable effect on the ride.
The ride
Hopping onto the Orbea Avant H60 Disc, in terms of fit, it honestly felt like driving a bus. With 40mm of spacers underneath the stem, the handlebars were significantly higher than I’m used to.
Hearteningly, the geometry chart does suggest that the stack height would be fine if this were my own bike and I was at liberty to chop the steerer down. But that’s pretty much the point – with a nonintegrated steerer, it would have been so simple for me to shuffle the spacers around and get the right stack height.
Although at 10.9kg, the Avant H60 disc certainly isn’t a lightweight bike, you feel this more in your arms when picking it up, than in your legs when out on the road. Obviously, it doesn’t have quite the same acceleration as a feather-weight carbon bike – but when you are putting in the power, it doesn’t feel like you’re getting a half-hearted response. As machines at this price level go, this is really rather good for the price.
As expected, the 2x8 drivetrain meant that when pushing hard on the flat, I did find it a little difficult to get myself in a gear which would allow me to turn my favoured cadence. But on rolling terrain – which requires a lot of shifting anyway – and when cycling at a more laid-back pace, the jumps between the gears were totally fine.
The stock pads of the Tektro calipers take a longer time to bed-in than those of other brands. I had to go up and down my road quite a few times to get them to bite sufficiently – but even then, it still took a few full rides for them to reach the power levels they’re capable of.
On the bright side, the wear rate is at least extremely low, I barely lost any material from the pads in the time I was riding. But on the other hand, if you want to really boost the braking power, some high-quality pads from either Shimano or Swissstop would make a great upgrade.
VERDICT
7
All in all, the Avant H60 Disc was fun and comfortable to ride. Not as spritely as fancier frames, but still with a lot more pep than the scales would suggest. The level of the groupset seems to have been the sacrifice for the high level of cable integration – which, to be fair, is on par with bikes that are much, much more expensive. But as it is, the Shimano Claris specced here is a couple of steps down from what we would expect to see at this price point.
“This is really rather good for the price”