Hygia Brakes Full Review

Hygia may be new to the North American market but they are already starting to leave an impression. In only one short year they have taken their product and made many substantial improvements as well as some new innovations in hydraulic disk brake performance. I have had there products on all my bicycles since spring 2011 and have put them through countless hours of abuse. Read on to hear my experience with the Elite and Aspire brakes and my overall impression.


The first set of brakes I tried from Hygia were the Elite and Elite Carbon Brakes. I liked the clean sleek look of them and their lightweight design was also very impressive. They are classified as an all mountain brake so naturally I felt the need to use them well above and beyond their intended purpose. In Kelowna around spring time the first place the snow melts and exposes some wonderful moist dirt is generally Knox Mtn. It's full of fast shale chutes and flat singletrack corners. Riding Knox is a fantastic way to brush off the cobwebs at the beginning of the season and a great place to wear in my new brakes. I was surprised with how much power they offered given their compact size and weight. The only place the brake really showed its true colors as an all mountain brake is during prolonged braking when some fading became noticeable. They well surpassed my initial expectations and I actually continued to use them on my downhill bike for a couple months after this. I also installed the elite brakes on my NS hardtail and slopestyle bikes. The brakes performed great on these bikes, without the hard braking of steep downhill trails they didn't suffer from any fading. One of my favorite features of all Hygia's brakes is that they come with an option of stainless steel braided brake hoses. I have always ended up buying after market stainless braided lines for these bikes because I have found that stock hoses always kink and bend and need to be replaced frequently. This was a huge selling factor for me and made setting up my bikes way easier since my brakes were ready to go right out of the box. I've lost count of how many times this season I have forgot to unwrap my cables after doing a couple tailwhips but the hoses have held up great and I have yet to break or rip one out.


By the time the season was in full swing and I was living up at Silver Star Bike Park I had gotten my hands on some of the Aspire brakes. These are Hygia's purpose built downhill brakes and after my experience with the Elites I was really looking forward to trying them out. They use much larger pistons at the caliper and hold more fluid in a small reservoir on the lever to help dissipate any excess heat. The first thing that stood out with these brakes was the shape and feel of the levers. They are very comfortable and easy to adjust to your desired reach and pad contact point. Silver Star was a great testing ground for them covering tons of vertical each day and really testing the brakes durability. The Aspires offered more than enough power but still modulated nicely and weren't to grabby. The brake fade was an enormous improvement over the Elites and it was very clear that these brakes were built to handle harsh prolonged descents. I never had any major issues with the Aspires, they performed great all season and always offered solid braking and I was never left desiring more power. The price on these brakes is a lot lower than comparable brakes from the leading competition. I suppose that is one of the advantages of going with a smaller growing company when you are in the market for new parts. The Aspires offer a fantastic alternative to expensive name brand brakes and still offer very competitive performance.


As the season progressed I got an email from Hygia that compelled me to put a set of Elites back onto my downhill bike. They had taken some of the technology from their ceramic headsets and incorporated it into the Elite brakes. They made ceramic pistons to replace the original pistons in the caliper which would dissipate heat much more efficiently. I was pretty excited by that news and my mind was racing with the potential to possibly eliminate brake fading all together. So I put these new ceramic elite's onto my downhill bike and once again began to test the all mountain brake well above and beyond. The ceramic pistons made a very noticeable improvement and while I did still manage to get the brakes to fade a bit, it took a lot of prolonged heavy braking to do so. The ceramic pistons now come as an option in all the elite brakes as well as the option for a carbon lever and stainless braided hoses and they come in a variety of colors making the brake very customizable. I'm looking forward to seeing these innovations incorporated into the rest of Hygia's line.


Just goes to show that sometimes the little guys shouldn't be over looked and they might have something just as good as the big brands, potentially even better. Hygia is continuing to grow and improve their products and should most certainly not be overlooked when you're looking for the next upgrade on your own bike.



-Garrett Robertson
http://www.lamacycles.com/en/blog-garrett-robertson.htm


NS Bikes
Hygia
Spank
Deity
Fox Head
DeathGrip Racing
SilverStar Bike Park
North Shore Billet