CANYON SPECTRAL 125 CF 9

Is the Spectral 125 more than a watered-down version of its bigger-travel stablemate?

£5,649 / 29in / canyon.com

What makes a trail bike a trail bike? Is it the weight, geometry or amount of travel? Or is it simply the terrain you choose to ride it on? After all, trail riding can be anything from a fast, flat, singletrack loop around your local woods, to shredding high alpine trails that would be difficult to navigate on foot. A trail bike means different things to different people, especially in different countries. And with such a broad spectrum of riding to cover, it seems daft that we pigeonhole trail bikes as having to have 150mm travel, weigh under 15kg and sport X, Y and Z geometry.

Yet, designing a trail bike to cover the widest possible variety of terrain is a very good idea, even if it’s clear that trail bikes exist on a spectrum – some indistinguishable from enduro rigs, others inspired by cross-country racing. So where does the new Canyon Spectral 125 CF 9 fit on this sliding scale?

In terms of travel it is definitely at the shorter end of the spectrum. It uses the latest Fox Float X shock, just like the 150mm version, but Canyon hasn’t simply fitted a shorter-stroke shock to the standard bike to reduce the travel by 25mm. Instead, it opened a new carbon mould and designed the bike around the suspension, where the seatstay assembly is noticeably longer than on the 150mm bike. And when we compare the rear suspension characteristics directly, the Spectral

125 is more progressive and has more anti-squat for improved support and pedalling efficiency.

The frame shape is also subtly different. The head tube is 15mm taller, which makes it easy to match the bar height of both models, even with the shorter-travel 140mm fork on the Spectral 125. The seat tube on the Spectral 125 is also 20mm shorter, so you’ll have no issues running the 200mm Canyon G5 dropper post. The post height can also be reduced in 5mm increments by up to 25mm, which makes upsizing even easier than before.

In terms of geometry, the angles on the Spectral 125 are within fractions of a degree of the 150mm-travel bike. As such, I measured a 64.2° head angle and a 76.8° seat angle in the low geometry setting. Chainstay length and wheelbase are both very similar too. One area where I expected the geometry on the 125 to depart from the standard bike was in the BB height. After all, you don’t need as much pedal clearance on a bike with less travel.

So I was surprised to discover that the Spectral 125 actually has a 5mm higher BB than the 150mm-travel version: 339mm vs 334mm (both in the low setting). This could just be a tolerance issue though, as the listed geometry on Canyon’s website has the Spectral 125 ever so slightly lower.