First ride Cannondale Synapse Carbon 2 RL
We were sent the Synapse Carbon 2 RL – radar and lights but no electronic gears. It’s third from bottom in the range and costs £4,000. In this ‘beetle green’ colourway it looks great. Under the light the green turns a kind of coppery bronze.
I have to admit I was expecting the Smartsense to be more integrated. We’re used to seeing concept bikes and e-bikes with built-in lights – and there was a Trek Lync commuter bike with integrated, internally wired lights as long ago as 2014.
However, the new Synapse is all about convenience as well as confidence, remember, and built-in lights could end up being as annoying as integrated ‘cockpits’.
Additionally, the lights need to be external because they also act as junction boxes: if you want to run the Varia head unit for your radar instead of a standard compatible computer, you plug it into a port in the front light. Likewise the rear light and radar are connected.
German efficiency
Our test bike came with the STVZO compliant lights – this is the set of rules governing road traffic in Germany and stands for Strassenverkehrszulassungs-ordnungs (since you asked). STVZO lights are designed not to dazzle other road users and as such don’t have flash modes, so I didn’t get the same range of configuration options that the international lights will have. Cannondale says STVZO lights will be fitted to early Synapse Carbon models in the UK and Europe with the international lights to follow, and it’s easy to swap types. The light units will be £69.99 front and £44.99 rear.
I had my doubts as to whether a 350-lumen front light would be bright enough for unlit lanes – but those doubts were unfounded. The beam is concentrated on the road light like a square spotlight and is perfectly adequate. It won’t light up the trees around you – it’s like a dipped beam, which is the whole point of STVZO.
I used a Wahoo Elemnt Roam rather than a smartphone and/ or the Garmin Varia head unit, which is just a strip of LEDS, and it was surprisingly easy to add the Garmin radar as a sensor. Garmin and Wahoo are rivals but it seems good sense – or rather Smartsense – has prevailed.
The radar senses a vehicle approaching from 140 metres back. A little car icon, accompanied by a warning bleep, appears at the bottom of the strip to the left of the Wahoo screen. The strip turns from green to orange (or red if the car is approaching fast). As the vehicle approaches the car icon moves up the strip towards the top and as it passes you get a flash of the Wahoo’s top LEDS and an ‘all clear’ bleep and the strip goes back to green.
If you’re on your own, riding normally at the side of the road, radar might not be useful. But riding two abreast at night – when you might not be able to distinguish a car’s headlight from your ride mate’s – it makes the experience much more pleasant if you don’t have to keep looking over your shoulder and can single out in good time if necessary.
As for the ride experience supplied by the Synapse itself,
I’ll admit I wasn’t as blown away as I was when I rode the original Synapse, but that’s because 15 years ago a ‘comfortable’ road bike was unheard of. These days every bike, even the most aggressive race bike, feels much plusher because they all run bigger tyres.
There’s no doubt the new Synapse is comfortable, but in 2022 that’s more down to rider position. The stack of the size 56 was getting on for 60cm, which definitely puts you in a commanding position. I didn’t find the tall front end an issue, but if I was buying this bike for myself I would probably go with the 54cm and fit a longer stem, which would also make the bike a bit lighter.
Added weight
On the subject of weight, 9.5kg puts this Synapse Carbon 2 RL on the heavy side. OK, just under half a kilo is down to the Smartsense system – Cannondale says this is actually 35g lighter than an equivalent set-up of separate components. Another hefty chunk of weight is in the wheels. Cannondale seems to have gone down the same route as most big bike brands in speccing basic wheels to bring this mid-range model in at a pricepoint. The Fulcrum Rapid Red 900 wheels are aluminium and appear to be aimed more at gravel, and the 30mm Vittoria Rubino Pro clincher tyres - again, fairly low down in the range - don’t do them any favours. I found myself looking enviously at the spec of the Synapse 1 RLE with its deep-section carbon Hollowgram 45 SL Knot wheels and tan-wall Vittoria Corsas… Having said that, it didn’t feel like a heavy bike. As well as that first night ride I’ve ridden it up and down Box Hill twice and several times up the Ranmore Common Hairpin for a video and it responded nicely.
compliance by 8% and claims the new Synapse supplies the smoothest ride yet.
The US brand also says the new bike is faster, thanks to improved aerodynamics (though no wind tunnel data was supplied). Despite the improvements, the frame weight is the same, according to Cannondale.
Interestingly, although the bike has been comprehensively updated Cannondale – like other major brands including Specialized – has reverted to a threaded BSA bottom bracket instead of the BB30 of the older Synapse. The seatpost is a standard 27.2mm with an ordinary unhidden clamp while the bar and stem are separates. There’s been a growing demand for the return of more userfriendly standards and it’s great the bike industry is listening.
Finally, it comes with mounts for a top tube bag and two water bottles, making it a viable bikepacking tool – or an excellent tourer for the more traditional rider.
“It’s also a viable bikepacking or touring bike”
Who is the new Synapse for?
Cannondale says the Synapse is “the right bike for most riders,” that it goes “right up to the edge of the gravel world” and that it is “easy to ride hard on all kinds of road.”
You can justifiably call it a jack of all trades and Cannondale clearly would not dispute that.
It’s initially tempting to pigeonhole it as a perfect commuter bike, but for one thing it’s pretty expensive for that (see boxout for details of the range and prices) and for another, using lights is no longer for commuters: go out on a weekend and you’ll see most road riders using lights whatever the weather, time of day or even season.