I understand the reviewer had limited time on the bike, but there is no real detail on how the bike rode. And it bears repeating: This is a. Theyve played a monumental role in The Shimano Dura Ace build with hydraulic disc brakes costs $5,850, and the Ultegra disc brake model is $3,575. So I have plenty of experience with frame geo and mechanics. Spinhirne-Martin says yes, and reiterated that he wants to grow the bike industry, not put other brands or bike shops out of business. Lets look at the numbers. In that sense, Viathon hit the nail on the head. Its also not the Bike Utility Vehicle that you get out of a Salsa or even the Santa Cruz Stigmata, with their functional braze-ons intended to extend time away from home base. Does spending more get you a faster gravel race bike? But given youd be in person with the bike store, theyd most likely have a better chance in getting the specifics absolutely dialled. With both, you get two great carbon bikes, that differ when you break down the components. Illiac Artery Endofibrosis - I've got it. When assessing the new Viathon R.1 road bike, I first chose to judge the proverbial book by its cover. 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Create a personalized feed and bookmark your favorites. The history of the bicycle business is, in one sense, a history of powerful outsiders coming in to teach us dumb yokels how things are done in the Big Leagues. Widgets, Explore Ok Fishes, here is the interview we were all waiting for!! Viathon swears its the latter. Walmarts top-of-the-line M.1 hardtail mountain bike has 120mm travel with RockShox components, Stans wheels, Level Ultimate brakes, and Continental tires. And the two price points for Dura Ace and Ultegra place the Viathon alongside some of the budget-friendly racing bikes from Canyon that feature equally impressive component specs. Filter bikes by year, weight, components, price, and performance. A. Yee / Cyclocross Magazine So, at a quick glance, the Viathon seems like a steal. The $5,850 price tag for the Dura-Ace build is still a lot of money for many consumers. And that really summarises the G.1 quite nicely. Dont let the affordable price entice you if youre looking for a more well-rounded bike. Sports Hernia/Inguinal Disruption Surgery. Read more. Whats it like to be an American cyclist living in France? Please enter your public display name and a secure password. The Viathon G1 is one of the more affordable carbon, gravel bikes that's well suited to riding sketchy roads. Viathons goals seem to be crystal clear with the R.1: Build a race-ready road bike for a high-end audience without the high-end price tag. Thats one of the wonderful things about this bike: You get reliable bike with a great build for less money. For those riders hoping for a super-reactive bike that follows your every twitch, I suggest you look elsewhere. At this writing, the various models are listed at "Summer Sale" prices on the Viathon website. Viathon builds a quality bicycle at a competitive price. Get access to more than 30 brands, premium video, exclusive content, events, mapping, and more. I followed with an opinion column about Viathon's unique formation, business model and value proposition. The bike reviewed here, the new G.1 GRX 600, provides a perfect example of those economies of scale. On its own, Viathon strikes me as a modestly interesting enthusiast brand with some solid, value-oriented bikes that feature industry-standard design and technology. Equipped with a SRAM XO1 Eagle drivetrain that shifts seamlessly, Stans 29 carbon wheels, and an FSA K-force carbon handlebar, this thing was designed to climb. If you think the pricing for the big mainstream brands is out of control, you'll be happy to hear that the Viathon's direct-to-consumer business model means an R.1 with all the fixings. Fond of bikes, pow, and dogs. Im in GearJunkies Minneapolis office, a small blade in hand, ready to unbox a bike. Granted my personal bikes 150mm fork made it tough to have as much fun on the Viathons 120mm fork, I still felt unstable on the more technical parts of the trail with its steep 69.5-degree head tube angle. I pitched the idea to my management as a way to more quickly enter the market and change our perception, he said. August. The bike has a bit of a disjointed ride feel due to the stout front fork which is stiff in contrast to the forgiveness exhibited by the rear stays. A. Yee / Cyclocross Magazine I can always add larger volume tires and reduce the pressure for additional comfort when riding gravel or chip-seal, but a wet noodle frame is just painful when youre dying climbing for hours in the mountains.. And I suspect Viathon isnt relying on a deep tech story to market its bikes for a simple reason: the frames dont seem to offer clear innovation in design or materials. MAYBE pick a test person that is more XC based, as it is an XC bike. Viathon opted for a low-geared 46-30T chainring matched with a 11-34T cassette. Thankfully, like so many of the gravel bikes we tested in Sedona, there is scope to add more seated comfort through a more flexible 27.2 mm seatpost. New bike brands come and go, but its rare that one makes as big of a splash with its debut as Viathon, a new direct-to-consumer marquee that launched this week. Our sample had no foam liner to silence it, but again, Viathon assured us production bikes do. With both, you get two great carbon bikes, that differ when you break down the components. They seem to offer a solid value for a full carbon bike. The Viathon would make for a great training steed, long-distance gravel grinder, or your next ultralightbike packing rig. Walmart are best known for their $300-$500 bikes that. "With Walmart's reach, we will create an awareness of the brand.". The geometry, however, told a different story than what Viathon portrayed as the M1s intent, and it felt much more like an XC race bike, than an everyday trail bike. With 11 out of the 12 bikes tested at Field Test having some iteration of GRX on it, youll know by now that it just works. [Eroc43] To find out, I snagged a Viathon M.1 | XO1 for a ride while out at Sun Valley. Home; Shop. Enter your email for the top stories in mountain biking, plus product picks and deals delivered to your inbox each week. The Viathon is best suited for XC terrain unless youve got some real moxie to take it down some gnar. I asked how it was all going and how many bikes have been sold. Other numbers are an almost exact copy, too. Well, so much for that. The Fizik Tundra M3 saddle was not comfortable in the slightestespecially on longer climbs. Kudos to them, but that story stretches back some 15 years and is still far from over. The G1 itself, judging by its cover, looks like a tailored gravel race bike, where carbon matters in terms of stiffness and power transfer, and a more racy geometry means better aerodynamics, and less playing around. Viathon aims to find out, and its got a good product to perform that experiment. Gravel as a discipline also seems to be a little more straightforward than mountain biking, where there are countless sub-genres of bikes. That's a fine goal, but let's not kid ourselves: $2,300 is both a lot of money and also. But the company would not release sales data. 2 - You can't buy these bikes at a Walmart. . It's been just about four months since a line of consumer-direct carbon road, gravel and mountain bikes premiered from a new brand called Viathon, emerging out of the bright Sea Otter sunshine like the goddess Athena springing full-formed from the forehead of Zeus. Two days later, Im pedaling steep singletrack above Lake Superior. Brand manager Spinhirne-Martin said a search of similar Trek, Specialized, or Canyon bikes will net a conclusion that they are all significantly more expensive for a similarly specced product., Spinhirne-Martin came to Walmart after 10 years working in the industry at Competitive Cyclist. Per my more enduro-focused background, Id also opt for a shorter stem. With a trendy 25 mm internal width, the welded alloy rims are wider than they are deep. But what was remarkable about Viathon was the identity of the brand's owner: Walmart. Good question, Dan, and one we'll come back to in just a minute. Viathon was created to shift consumers thinking. Watch to get professional road cyclist Joe Dombrowskis view. For bikes, Walmart has historically been an opening price point mass vendor, as Spinhirne-Martin put it. Lightweight carbon frames: Viathon bikes, including the Dura-Ace road bike, Ultegra model, R.1, and G.1 bikes, are crafted with durable, lightweight carbon frames to give you an edge over riders with . Mountain Bike Deals, Copyright 2023 Blue Spruce Ventures LLC | All this went down in April and May of this year. I weighed the M.1 later with a handheld scale. So Viathon designed & engineered three bikes - the R.1, G.1 & M.1 - each new carbon frames unique to the brand (designs owned by Viathon, ie. Why was one of the worlds most budget-driven companies focusing on the upper echelon of the bike world? I am a professional mechanic, and have a hand built over 175 custom frames from steel or Ti. Theyre quality products, but neither really belong on this bike. Slowtwitch approved IT Band rehab? Walmart isnt a brand most turn to for upgrading their bike, but Viathon could change that perception. That fits the narrative of this bike overall: It may lack the personality of a racing bicycle that costs twice as much, but it shows up for work and does its job reliably. The terrain varies from flowy cross-country trail to downhill-inspired gravity tracks. It bordered on jarring on frost-heaved pavement, especially in the front end. Specializeds highest-end hardtailthe S-Works Epiccomes in at a whopping $8,520, whereas Viathons most expensive model starts at $6,000. Performance, comfort, speed, agility, and other characteristics require in-person evaluation, which is tough to prove for a brand like Viathon, which is available only online. And other direct-to-consumer brands like Canyon have a big head start on Viathon in terms of reputation. Others are concerned about how this will undercut bike shops. Certainly Viathon's not to that point yet, but time will tell. Spinhirne-Martin says Walmart is launching with the hardtail to fill in holes in what they already offer on the Walmart.com marketplace. Here are some features to keep in mind as you shop. Either way, its there as an intended feature. Thats a challenge. For the last update and a link to the introductions, Click Here. Walmart isnt currently targeting the kind of customer who wants the latest carbon layup or the greatest new geometry, nor is it targeting customers who self-identify as cyclists. Viathon is jumping out of the gate with three model families to start. Thats exactly what we sought to answer with the high-value Viathon G.1, a carbon gravel bike thats backed by the biggest of big retailers Walmart. The GRX 600 build also has Mercury G3 wheels, with a 25mm internal width, and IRC Boken 700x40c tires, for a setup that should provide a wide footprint. Viathon says it wants to bridge Walmarts current low-price offerings to the bike-enthusiastbusiness. They seem to offer a solid value for a full carbon bike. Enter the gravel bike. Ten minutes of testing was enough for me to spin around and swap in my preferred Specialized Phenom. [, Official FIT ASSISTANCE for Canyon Speedmax CFR, CF SLX, and CF (disc & rim brake), Official Canyon Speedmax CF Owners Thread, Official FIT ASSISTANCE for Cervelo TT and Triathlon Bikes. The Viathon G1 is a bike that is a high performance machine with a good set of components out of the box. The company cited industry data. Its wise to see if that character fits with yours. As it happens, I prefer this kind of steering, which youll commonly find on aero bikes and endurance bikes with longer trail figures. Best Bike Trails | Walmart thinks so, and the retail juggernaut is betting its customers think so too. The quick and dirty synopsis? I have been swapping parts around and will finally get to ride it today. It's a full carbon gravel bike with modern geometry, an understated look, and a price that's refreshingly affordable. We tested the brand's top-end M.1 Mountain Bike for 6 weeks to gain an. The R.1s trail figure measures 59.7mm, which is quite long for an all-around bike. We have incredible traffic on our site. Walmart didnt opt to adopt more modern geometry, possibly because its current customer base will have to take a few steps to catch up to the rest of the bike market. Viathon R.1 Road Bike For speed demons, Viathon's high-end R.1 Dura Ace road bike runs $5,850. The G.1 RED eTap AXS that is the subject of this review is Viathon's newest gravel model and will be available sometime in September. by Rick Vosper. Company Online, Viathon has three offerings to choose from: hardtail, gravel, and a road bike. Although Viathon has dropped the seatstays for a more compliant-feeling ride, the ride dynamics still feel harsh in the rear, and especially so up front. Amazon Pick. And they certainly didnt skimp out on components. But it gets the job done. Their $18 million investment went a long way for the areas trail infrastructure, making it an unsuspecting cycling mecca nestled into the Ozark Mountains. With a feathery weight, effective geometry, and componentry to rival the best bikes on the market, theM.1 is a relevant consideration for serious riders with a cross-country bent. So were considering lateral stiffness, vertical compliance, weight, ride feel, cornering stability, and even the finish. All rights reserved. sadha location divinity 2,
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