Tech talk: The newest tech that you do(n't) need

Just to give you a warning - this will be a part about some recent bike tech with lots of "my opinion" and "what if" scenarios.

Ah, the ever-changing bicycle tech. Manufacturers who always try to sell us the best and the newest certainly keep us entertained. And since "best" is the worst enemy of "good" - this process will never stop, for sure.

There is a lot going on in bike industry but since I'm mainly interested in, let's call it - mixed terrain riding, I'm going to focus on news from the rapidly growing "gravel" bikes market.

So let's start with the elephant in the room - suspension. Technically, your road bike doesn't need suspension. If you ride on rougher roads and you think you need suspension - just put much wider tires on your bike and be done with it. But since there are some people who believe that riding on unpaved roads on a non-suspended bicycle is not adequate in 2018, we will see more inventions such as this most recent one from Niner Bikes.

Full suspension for gravel riding? Niner thinks it's the thing (Source: bikerumor.com)

This new "mountain road bike" is actually nothing new. It's nearly a cross-country mountain bike with a bit slimmer tires and drop bars. And less travel, as it seems that it doesn't offer more than 30-40mm of fork travel, which actually is appropriate for typical gravel roads. Just by looking at it you clearly get this uneasy feeling - "Is it still a road bike?" Sure it is. The same way your cross-country MTB is a road bike too.

But something tells me a suspended "gravel" bike could've been done a bit... better. Ideally, I would like to see the old Cannondale Headshok fork reused here. It seems perfectly suited for this application. The Headshok used one damper, located inside the steerer tube with regular-looking fork blades. The steerer was sliding inside head tube on 4 long linear bearings and thanks to this design, everything was tight and stiff. Travel was somewhat limited, perhaps which is why Cannondale abandoned this tech later on and moved to Lefty forks in their mountain bikes and then also in Slate allroad/gravel bikes.

Actually, Cannondale used to make a Headshok road fork back in 1997. (Source: http://vintagecannondale.com)

Now, in the era of allroad bikes, Headshok could have its comeback for those who think they need suspension. It could be built using lightweight carbon blades and limited to 30-40mm of travel with air damper inside. Also, major advantages of Headshok over Lefty are that it can use standard wheel hubs, allows for easy wheel removal for transport and since it comes with two symmetrical fork blades, you can picture putting some bottle cage mounts on it - something many would appreciate. Why Cannondale decided to promote Lefty for their Slate line and not revisit Headshok is something I can't understand.

Canyon Hover Bars (Source: bikerumor.com)

Anyway, the search for perfect vibration damping solution continues. If it's not the suspension, then maybe compliant handlebars, like these from Canyon? These weird "biplane bars" are supposed to be the answer to unwanted vibrations on unpaved roads - but only if you spend most of your time with hands on flats, which we usually don't. Most cyclists use hoods or drops and these remain much less damped in Canyon bars. Or maybe I'm wrong. Maybe Canyon's main motivation was simply to hide the fact that their bikes have too short head tube and too low stack?

Now let's move on to gearing - one of my biggest issues with modern allroad bikes. Many "gravel" bikes come with a compact double - a crankset with 50/34T chainring combo. These cranksets are simply borrowed from road bikes because, well... there isn't anything else available (or at least still very little). This may explain a sudden popularity of 1x drivetrains in allroad bikes but fortunately, doubles are not gone. Some manufacturers started to notice that a 50T chainring is ridiculously large and barely usable on unpaved roads and offered "subcompact" cranksets with 48/32T combinations (or similar).

Easton "gravel" crankset (Source: theradavist.com)

The most recent example comes from Easton and while it's very commendable of them to offer "gravel" combos down to 46/30T, I still feel that's not revolutionary enough. These cranks definitely bring gearing range down towards what the usual mortal need, as very few of us would be able to spin that "compact" 50T-11T gear on unpaved roads. But it still leaves some to be desired, mainly even lower-geared "road" cranksets such as 44/28T or even 42/26T. I would love to see it becoming the new road bike standard, as few cyclists are racers and need higher gears. But maybe I'm biased, since 42/26T is exactly what I use on my "road" bike.

Let's stay at the gearing for a moment but this time we will look at what's going on at the rear wheel. For many years cassettes have been growing wider, with more gears being added. From 5 to 6 to 7 to 8, then finally 11 speed clusters. Now, we can begin to enjoy 12 speed cassettes thanks to the newest offering form Campagnolo. 

Twelve speeds have arrived to road (Source: bikerumor.com)

Unlike SRAM, Campagnolo believes that despite having 12 speeds available, road cycling isn't ready to abandon front derailleurs and therefore, the new Super Record groupset is designed as 2x12. At this point you obviously wonder "where is the limit of it?" How many more sprockets are we going to cramp onto the rear wheel and how many do we actually need? There are those who believe that the best drivetrains were those 3x8 or even 3x6 ones. I'm not one of them, but I think that more is not necessary better. There is a clear improvement in shifting precision (at least in Shimano groupsets) when moving from 2x10 to 2x11. Narrower chains and gaps between cassette sprockets require more precise shifters and rear derailleurs, which results in crispier, faster shifting. That's nice. What's less nice is the increased asymmetry of spoke tension in the rear wheel. Will we see wider road rear hubs in the future? Possibly.

Now we are waiting for Shimano and SRAM's response. I'm actually particularly curious about the latter one. Their 1x12 speed Eagle MTB group gained popularity so a 1x12 speed road groupset would be a natural consequence. I just hope that the "Road Eagle" cassette isn't going to be a carbon-copy it the existing MTB Eagle one. On road (paved or not), we really don't need 10-50T range. I would much rather see something like 10-44T. With 12 speeds, some of the larger jumps between gears in SRAM's existing 10-42T cassettes would be reduced and we could have a winner.

So now when we already decided that we don't need suspension, bi-plane bars, compact cranksets or 12 speeds (just kidding), we can look at one silly gadget that marketers think we should buy - tire pressure monitors. Seriously, if you ride your bike and constantly worry that you run on wrong tire pressure (like you really don't have anything else to worry about) then you need this gizmo from Quarq. Tirewiz lets you check tire pressure on the fly, with your smartphone. Because in this all-connected world, even your tires need Bluetooth. Right.

Quarq Tirewiz - because you really, really need to be able to answer the question "What pressure you running?" (Source: bikerumor.com)

So is there too much of it? Too much tech to deal with? Not necessarily. The great thing about bicycles is that you can have a high-tech, all-electronic, network-connected road superbike, or a simple, purely mechanical singlespeed bike. Nobody forces you into buying the latest and newest.