It’s the end of the week, the sun is shining and it’s time for Fresh Goods. While it may have been slim pickings the past couple of weeks, this time the delivery drivers have been queuing round the corner…
Boardman FS Team
This bike has had us a little slack jawed with amazement. Halfords’ own brands have had a somewhat poor reputation in the past, but the Boardman bikes have been doing an awful lot to counter that. This is their entry full sus trail bike that we’ve got in for Issue 65’s affordable full sus bike test. The triple butted aluminium alloy frame has got nice looking flattened welds everywhere and uses a four bar linkage at the back to give 130mm travel. Up front there are Rock Shox Sektor forks with rebound and lockout adjustment as well as 15mm Maxle. There’s a SRAM X7 2×10 drivetrain with a FSA crank up front and (new 2012) Elixir 3 brakes. Finishing kit is an array of own brand stuff that all looks functional too. The price?
Price: £1,000
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From: Halfords
Told you it was madness. Four bar linkage, ten speed…
Small swing link drives rear shock…
2×10 FSA crankset – and you can see the asymmetrical rear stays in the back of the picture…
Tapered headtube too…
Good looking thing it is…
We’re going to see a lot more post mount rear brakes in the future. Expect the International Standard brake mount to be internationally ignored within the next couple of years…
Trek Madone 5.2
Sim has got himself a shiny new road bike after smashing his old one (and himself) into bits after crashing into one of the many Meles meles beasts that prey on roadies round here. After hitting the furry monster at a reported 30mph, Sim’s been a bit limpy and road rashy and his bike was no better either. The lovely Miss Chris Garrison from Trek came to his aid with this, the latest version of the classic Trek Madone. It’s the 5.2 model, which is the entry level version of the mid range carbon fibre OCLV frame. It’s got a full Ultegra group, Bonty wheels and it weighs 16.5lbs. Sim’s looking forward to building his strength and fitness back up on it…
Price: £2,800
From: Trek UK
Lovely lovely carbon.
It’s got a built in space for the ‘Duotrap’ ANT+ sensor in the chainstay…
The bars have the wrong kind of rise though…
We reckon we could shave off about 0.2lb by removing all the warning stickers plastered in it too.
Internal cable routing is very neat…
..and the seatpost fits on the outside of the seat tube, with marked gradients to get the height absolutely perfect…
Trek Scratch Air 9
It’s big, it’s burly and it’s made for getting gnarly, it’s the Scratch! Matt rode one at the launch a while back and this bike is in for the test in Issue 66. The theme is ‘Winch and Plummet’, so bikes for suffering up the top and then going totally mental on the way down – which should be just in time for you to think about getting a bike that’ll handle the Alps or big mountains closer to home in summer.
Price: £4,200
From: Trek UK
This is the lighter version of the Scratch, using a high volume can Fox RP23 instead of the DHX RC4 shock found on it’s bike park based brethren the Scratch Coil. You get 170mm of rear wheel travel via the ABP concentric dropout pivot, which uses the latest 142mm thru axle ‘Convert’ rear end. The shock is actuated from both ends by the Full Floater system (stop sniggering) and there’s a set of 140/160mm Fox 36 TALAS forks up front.
Everything matches nicely too – some thought has been put into the design here…
Following on from the Carbon Armour found on Trek’s composite off road bikes, here we’ve got some Alloy Armour to reduce the chance of your down tube getting dinged. Bit like knee pads for your bike…
DT Swiss wheelset is looking sharp…
Direct mount front mech and ISCG mounts with chain guide as standard mean it shouldn’t need any tweaks for downhilling.
Crank Brothers Joplin uppy-downer…
..and a tapered headtube from the people that started the whole tapered thing off…
Rock Shox Cap
Braaaap! Sim is throwing some Mytholmroyd gang signs in this cap. This means ‘bust a cap in that badger’s arse, homes’ ‘unleash the fury of your muskets ‘pon that badger, brothers in arms’. They’re quite traditional round there.
Catlike Whisper Plus
Is it a cat impression or an aero tuck? Either way, Catlike helmets are perhaps best known among the tarmac-riders, but this one is still good for mountain use, coming with a removable peak. It’s shot through with more holes than an MP’s expense excuses so there’s loads of airflow and it’s light too. As well as being styled like one of our favourite cheeses, the outer is designed to spread an impact across many points on the helmet to further dissipate crash energy.
Price: £149.99
From: Catlike
Eagle Eye DV219 camera
Craig from Eazycam headed over with a selection of less seen wearable video cameras for our upcoming web test. This is, as you can probably guess, more designed for ‘covert’ use, but we’re looking forward to seeing how many positions we can mount the dinky lipstick cam in. It uses a Micro SD card plus 128Mb of internal memory and it records at a maximum of 720×576 at 25fps.
Price: £140+VAT
From: Eazycam
Action Camera DVR1036
It’s a more conventional helmet cam now, using a rubber strap to mount it and a 1.3M Pixel CMOS sensor to record VGA 640×480 at 30fps. It’ll take up to 32GB SD cards and runs on AAA batteries and has a neat little IR light a la Contour so you can see where it’s pointing…
Price: £35+VAT
From: Eazycam
Eagle Eye HD119 Sport DV
This is a proper 1080p HD helmet cam, recording at up to 60fps. There’s a neat little LCD screen to see what you’ve recorded and it comes with two Lithium Ion batteries and a remote. The 85° angle lense rotates around 300° so you can align it properly and it comes with a full set of mounts in the box as well as a mains and car charger. Recording is on SD cards and there’s a HDMI interface as well…
Price: £165+VAT
From: Eazycam
Jeez that Boardman FS Team looks not half bad and for the money !!, maybe a case of Halfrauds no more me thinks, guess its why they binned GT with this kit on show now.
that eagle eye camera looks a lot like a contour camera!
In the first pic the board man looks like its carbon I almost feinted when I saw the price. Unreal spec for the money. Glad my subscription starts on #65 so I can read how it rides 🙂
What a lovely B’man, I wish I could buy one 🙁
£1000! Amazing bargain.
Is it just me, but the little plastic spoke protector disks just look gash, especially on a road bike that’s nearly £3K.
wowzers that boardman is a major bargain
is that scratch air 4.2x better???
And it’s got a Monarch too!
£600 jump to the next (and only other) model up in the range, spec not even that much better. Strange.
That Boardman is going to be a C2W favourite.
Macgyver, spoke protector has been removed as have all the warning stickers. Saved almost 27g!
Purdy Treks.
The boardman looks amazing value for money and it’s better looking than many more expensive bikes
But how does it ride, that’s the question!?
Id love to see a feature where someone takes that Boardman round a typical trail centre and documents the comments / looks from the MTB fashionistas, then does the same but in stealth mode with all Boardman identifying stickers and markings removed
See how peoples attitudes differ
That is one nice looking well specced bike for £1k I hope it rides as well as it looks
Any idea on weight?
Ive a feeling with Boardman and Saracen turning out such good kit 2011/12 will be the year of the ‘budget’ brands and big manufacturers may actually have to start seriously thinking about their own pricing structures
At that price it’s almost a crime not to buy that Boardman.
Agree with the comments above – the Boardman looks amazing value and very well thought out. Hope it rides just as well
The only down side is the big ring looks like it is made of Swiss Cheese 🙂
That Boardman is very nice looking, it will be very interesting to see how it rides…..
i want that madone (what size is that one?)
Rocketdog – The Madone is a 56cm.
Chipps is out test riding the Boardman later – but you’ll have to wait ’til April the 21st when Issue 65 is out to get our verdict 😉
A little birdie told me the pie plates were left on intentionally.
what does the scratch air weigh? is it still heavy – must be 34lbs ish surely?