PINKBIKE FIELD TEST
Specialized Enduro S-Works
Words by Mike Kazimer, photography by Trevor Lyden
The venerable Enduro received a massive makeover for 2020, and the result is a bike that looks a whole lot like Specialized's Demo downhill race machine, minus the dual crown fork. All models of the Enduro have 29” wheels, 170mm of travel, and carbon frames.
The new Enduro still uses a Horst link design, with the chainstay pivot located below the rear axle, but the shock now sits lower in the frame and the main pivot location has been shifted. Those changes allowed Specialized's designers to increase the amount of anti-squat by 40%, and to add more end-stroke progression to prevent unwanted bottoming out on bigger hits.
Specialized Enduro S-Works Details• Travel: 170mm rear / 170mm fork
• Carbon frame
• Wheel size: 29"
• Head Angle: 63.9 / 64.3°
• Seat Tube Angle: 76°
• Chainstay Length: 442mm
• Weight: 32.5 lb / 14.7 kg (Tested)
• Price: $9,750 USD
•
www.specialized.com Along with the suspension changes, the Enduro borrowed a page from the Stumpjumper EVO's book, and now has a 63.9 or 64.3-degree head angle, a 76-degree seat tube angle, and a generous reach of 487mm for the size S4.
We tested the S-Works model Enduro, which gets all the bells and whistles, including a frame that's 250 grams lighter than the standard model, a SRAM AXS wireless dropper post, Shimano XTR 12-speed drivetrain and brakes, Fox Factory 36 fork and Float X2 shock, and Roval Travers SL carbon wheels. All of those niceties add up to $9,750 USD.
ClimbingYou're never going to mistake the Enduro for a short travel trail bike, but it is an efficient climber, especially considering how much travel is on tap. The increased anti-squat is noticeable, which help give this big beast much better acceleration than before. Like the SB165, it's a bike that has a very gravity oriented focus – it'll get to the top of a long climb without putting up much fuss, but it's best suited to riding areas with long climbs and long descents, rather then somewhere with mellower, more rolling terrain.
The low geometry setting is exactly that, and we experienced a decent number of pedal and bashguard strikes with the shock set in that position. The higher setting, which raises the bottom bracket height by 7mm and changes the head angle to a still-slack 64.3 degrees may be the way to go depending on how rough your climbing trails are, or if you care about the end of your cranks.
The Enduro's seat tube angle is 76-degrees, which isn't out of the ordinary, but it'd be nice to see it get even steeper for a less stretched out climbing position. A 40mm stem, rather than the 50mm Deity that's spec'd would help with this as well.
Descending Hands down, the Enduro felt the fastest out of all the bikes in our test fleet. While the longer overall length was occasionally noticeable while climbing, it wasn't a detriment in the bike park or on more natural trails. There's a massive amount of stability, both in the air and on the ground, and having the weight nice and low in the frame makes it easy to rocket through the turns. It takes a little more effort to pop up and over obstacles, but if you mistime a jump it's not the end of the world – the Enduro will just smash through whatever is in the way.
The Enduro never faltered, no matter what we took it on, whether it was high-speed jump trails or steeper, more technical downhill tracks. This is a bike that wants to go flat out all the time, with handling that's about as close to a downhill bike as you can get without being the real deal. Even though it does all right on mellower terrain, it doesn't have the same 'all-rounder' feel that the Ibis HD5 delivered - this is a bike for letting it all hang out on big, fast descents whenever possible.
As far as components go, the Roval carbon wheels held up to all of the rock smashing we subjected them through, the AXS electronic dropper post never ran out of juice, and the XTR drivetrain rattled off perfect shift after perfect shift.
I feel like all these product tests should have to have a 1 1/2 hour ride on some crap twisty red clay terrain that the bike just bogs down into and you actually have to pedal it and move it around relentlessly in that slop convincing yourself that it was worth it to have a $10k 32lb 29er 365 days a year instead of a $2600 Canyon Spectral for it all while you know that next week you're gonna load up your $2700 YT Tues and go to Windrock for a weekend of shlt slinging, rock hammering, bike cartwheeling off into the scree rock...good times.
Some place like this:
www.trailforks.com/trails/rocky-river-trail
seriously if you are trying to say you are objectively only reviewing this “frame” and it performs better than others then why in the world test the 10k one? Oh because it’s lighter, more efficient peddling, and has attributes that take the riding experience up a notch. You can not objectively say these build kits do not influence the overall feeling of the bike. If this is a field test on stock bikes then the bikes should all be the same price point. If this is a test about the frames the bikes should all have the same build kits.
I read a comment in the gt review about how doing more bikes and more comprehensive testing would be way to expensive, I.E testing frames with all the same build kits, but I don’t get how that’s true, you bought all these 8-10 k bikes.....maybe like idk buy the 5k ones and test double the bikes? Seems silly to try and pull budget card when talking about the tests, but then test bikes that disregard budget.
If 2 lbs makes the gt heavy and it’s noticinle as you say,
Just to clarify: the use of % is an old trick used by statisticians to show differences where there are none, or none of significance. In this case one can be pretty sure that the handful of seconds of variation measured among bikes is simply due to the overall variation among runs, unrespective of the bike used (plus, perhaps, testers fit and experience on a specific bike). Ignoring that, and reporting mean differences as % is just meaningless, no much better than tossing dices and reporting the results of a few tosses as indicative of trends.
If they insist in reporting the results of these "test runs" they should hire a statistician, they clearly have no idea of how to interpret the results ... or publish all the results not just an average %
2. It's got bench cuts on so many trails it's hard to get pushed down an offer camber bank.
I've never gotten to ride Blackcomb. That looks awesome and raw.
But my point is it is a cake walk way to test that bike physically. 99% of rides on that bike for 99%of people will be spent slogging away on a shallow, mundane trail within 30 minutes of work. That is the suckiest bike for what most of us do. And a great way to be reminded of how having a giant 32-34lb do all rig is crap on 9 out of 10 rides...is riding the trails like I linked.
Whistler is a cake walk for the reason I listed for that bike, but everyday riding elsewhere is a miserable sufferfest on it. That make more sense?
And the other part of my post is that why would you want to thrash your daily ride bike at the park? It will spend way more time on trails, so why make the bulk of your rides boring for $10k
The trolls on this website should go form a new website, with better statistics
It's obvious that it will shine when only going down the mountain. It's obvious that is the intended use is as a race machine, but it's not built how most racers would and it's price is not "multiple bike ownership" friendly so the person who buys this thing is probably putting in most all their miles on it elsewhere, so why not test it how most all of us will ride it...a day in the park, and 3-4 days in the meadow.
So why not take it out and ride it on the stuff that the guys buying will and give that test?
I just did a ride with a bike tester well known product tester. He was on a sick bike for the trails we were on that day. It cost $7000 less than the bike in this review, weighed within a pound and I'd love to traded bikes with him for that trail.
But on the other 3 rides that same week, I would have hated myself and not enjoyed it. For what we rode that day, I was salivating.
@peschman can you translate? I don't speak Brit.
The vast majority of people buying the $10k spec likely also have a shorter travel rig for riding tamer terrain, but the percentage probably drops towards more single-bike owners as you head lower down the price sheet.
That being said I’m wishing for an raw aluminum version of this enduro (like the stumpjumper evo) with an XT-12spd & fox 36/X2air performance elite spec.
No mention of the Shimano brake problem?
m.pinkbike.com/news/review-shimanos-all-new-xt-4-piston-brake.html
This is one of the reasons it's good to compare effective top tube numbers, rather than just sizing off of reach. You can have two bikes with identical reach numbers and significantly different top tube lengths, which affects how the bike feels during seated pedaling.
Let’s have something more representative of what real eSTAs actually are. Maybe that’s STA at a standard height.. 800mm?
Obviously grinding some of the clamp off will negate and warranty and all bets are off. At 165lbs I think I have some margin with regards to what kind of load a post is designed for. I'd imagine that companies need to assume that someone of at least 225lbs is going to be using their product and thus design for that load.
As for ETT, that's a better measure, but even then I believe most companies measure that horizontally from top-center of head tube to middle of seatpost. At 6'5" my saddle at full extension is above my bars leading to a much longer ETT and a horrible climbing posture.
Anyway, maybe for bikes like this and the Santa Cruz bikes, just a "the actual seat angle is considerably slacker than the claimed angle on the geometry chart" would help others take note of the issue.
It would be nice if companies can print out what the STA would be at say 25% rear shock sag – especially those bikes with longer travels
I have even seen reviews where they proclaimed that bike A felt more comfortable than bike B due to the steep STA, when we actually measured at a range of seat heights bike B had steeper STA throughout all heights. Same applies to BB height (at sag), reach, HTA etc.. Ie marketing placebo effect in full force.
- rider with bike 2-3 yrs old hears/reads hubbub about steep sta's
- rider is in market for new bike, buys something with claimed steep sta but the reality is that its similar to the old one when they get it on trail in real world, and there's not much difference
- rider feels the sta debate is a load malarky
FWIW when I flip between my 2 bikes - one with 79 actual and one with 77 effective - I feel a fairly big difference in climbing position, everything else equal.
Also another solution would be for a saddle to have a more rearward mount. The rails could go directly downward from the rear and allow clamping from there to the midpoint. Would accomplish the same thing.
In 2019 you would think that geometry between bikes would be more comparable but there is hope!
Check out this calculator which gets you your STA for your saddle height and sag:
www.datumcycles.com
These "tests" are really just comparing a few shuttle runs and have no relevance for how a bike performs. Want to do a test run? Use a real loop, with as much uphill as downhill and use a dozen testers, not two.
Cherry on the cake? They do not report real times, but instead show % differences. The use of % is an old trick used by statisticians to show differences where there are none, and I bet that there is a as much variation in the individual runs on a single bike than there are among runs across bikes.
"That thought is fitting, though, because the E29 has the wherewithal to offer downhill bike-like performance, and we'd say that it makes more sense for roughly 80% of downhillers to be on an S-Works Enduro rather than their gravity pigs, if cost was no factor, that is."
And that was back when the enduro had a 67.5 ha!
m.pinkbike.com/news/specialized-enduro-s-works-29-test-review.html
212mm dropper, 200mm rear travel 27.5 wheel, front is 29" 180mm travel, 9-46 cassette.
I also think that despite the name (that probably sells better and hints at being pedal-friendly), this and some other "enduro" bikes are not really enduro race bikes but modern day freeride bikes for hucking, bikepark etc. that are still good where there's no uplift/shuttle. Not aimed at the pro racers but rather the amateur who needs it to handle a large variety of riding from big days to DH, but doesn't care how fast it is on flats/ups. The real "one bike"?
Interestingly... lots of their insta and various other shots, show them riding the new Slayer quite a bit... wonder if they'll use it next season??
That said, I'll bet some pros are upstroking their rear shocks and forks-running lighter frames to save some energy on the transfers. When you're sponsored, doing stuff that might void a warranty isn't a problem.
it seems like some are, some aren't. Pivot riders are on the Firebird29, Pole riders are on that 180mm beast.... but yeah lotsa interesting setups going on.
for sure. so many enduro rigs are now in the 64hta ballpark. i'm looking forward to geo calming down but love what's happened even as of late especially with most categories going steeper sta and slacker. funny that a handful of trail bikes are fully onboard with enduro geo. interesting times. it will be nice tho if consumers can continue to choose how their 140 bike handles. like some want it slack AF while some just want it snappy and quick. the Sentinel was what woke me up to woke geo. 'hey this thing is fine a trailbike. cool and confident' tho it's not peppy enough for all preferences.
Then again plenty of of the fastest guys are monster trucking it. Sam being one of them. 165mm+ 29er with sticky DH tires and a very soft fork
I don't own one of these but my bike has very low shock placement and when you add in the bb height and the bb drop of a 29er it's magical.
www.lightcarbon.com/all-new-lightcarbon-trail-mtb-frame-lcfs958_p118.html
My bike.
I'd also disagree that it's not responsive or it's hard to get the front wheel up, I had two Transition bikes previously and I've been able to land features, slow and fast, with greater ease on the new Enduro. Part of me wonders if it's shock related, since mine has a Super Deluxe Select+ instead of the X2, which I've found to be somewhat firmly damped compared to the RS shocks in the past.
I'm in the same range (~181cm) and at a Pivot test event I instinctively picked a large after doing a quick lap on the car park without knowing any geometry numbers, although the large had much more reach than my current bike... those steep STAs make seated pedaling on a smaller size kind of uncomfortable.
I might add that I've got a weird 35,5" inseam...
Notably, despite being 5'9" (175cm) tall, I went with a large Slash this year to get a 450mm(ish) reach, same as a medium Ripmo. Both bikes are amply agile. Standover on an XL Slash wouldn't have worked for me, but I did try a large Ripmo-didn't like it even tooling around a parking lot.
I experimented with lots of long WB bikes and eventually came back to a short WB with a long chainstay. 29” wheels with heavy tires and cushcore are so stable that I preferred the agility of the shorter bike. And I don’t want to leave an athletic position to keep front wheel traction.
I feel like most bikes are sacrificing everything to straight line rocks a few percent better
As far as sizing goes, a large Ransom fit me well (I'm 5'11"), and I went with the S4 on the Enduro. Realistically, I'm probably in between an S3 and S4 on the Specialized due to the top tube length; I prefer the S4 for the extra stability.
I can not for the life of me decide on getting something like this over a little shorter travel bike because I still have to climb a lot. The Sight seems like the best choice but if this Enduro 29 climbs just as well then...
Mind-warping down hills but I crossed it off the list because of the uphill sluggishness.
Racers though: the new Enduro would be the one to get.
Effortlessly blitzes downhills.
Great bike.
That being said, I'm sort of obsessed with the idea of a S-Hole so unless the next Slash has a TWAT and loses the KnockBlock, I'll be looking for a nice 2019 S-Works E29.
Is the Kona worse than the Wreckoning?
performance difference 1.2%
What bike should I buy for mountainbiking???? Maybe a Clunker????
The point I'd like to make is that (as a journo but not in the bike industry) it always seems a bit odd to me that the bike media all allow brands to just send out whichever model they deem most suitable.
I'd argue that PB in particular has enough clout to be a bit more fussy and to specify you don't want the silly bling top end model, and perhaps to persuade the brand that they'd be better served sending a more realistic model anyway.
I get that there are commercial relationships with the brands too - but I think your readers would appreciate PB being a bit more assertive in this regard.
32lbs is pushing into DH bike weight. literally, my dh bike weighs 1lb more.
it doesn't exactly seem like it's a brawler, given that someone snapped the carbon wishbone links.
Are you at the top end of a size's height range and slammed the saddle all the way forward (doesn't look like it in the pics) and it still was too long? No? Then the seat angle is fine.
I guess if people are sceptical, a PB user will have to perform an independent huck to flat with appropriate sag and share the results. For science.
The 160mm+ rear travel bikes I've ridden just feel like they have so much weight transfer when sag is set correctly, plus extra beef to deal with DH runs, that they just feel sluggish to me when pedaling.
But I'm not certain the SJ Evo really pedals any better due to kinematics.
Where is Kavic to defend his honor?
It would make a great do it all bike for here in the UK with a 180mm Boxxer.
I currently have the 2015 Enduro Evo Expert with 180mm Boxxers!
Since you just brought up the Norco Sight, Is there anyway you could give an ETA on an in-depth review for that? Enquiring minds want to know.
I'd buy the 1% slower GT force...
www.shrani.si/f/1k/vT/3ps1GkXB/2019-11-16-125548.jpg
So I guess it really has happened. We'll see how these hold up long term, I guess. Does anyone else have other pictures/info on this issue?
S-holes indeed.
I think it climbs better and my times indicate the same, I've been PRing climbs on the Enduro by a fair margin, it bobs less and responds better than the Sentinel to out of saddle pedaling. The only hard part with the climbs is the length of the bike, like the video said, tight switchbacks and turns require you to go super wide to get around them, but I don't think it's markedly worse than the Sentinel. It is a longer bike, but I don't think the transition was as odd for me as going from the Smuggler to the Sentinel.
I had a hard time getting the Sentinel set up properly with the shock. It was either too soft and bottomed out a lot or it was too firm or too progressive. I expect a better shock would have made a difference, but the Enduro for me was a lot less of a setup compromise and a much easier to setup bike.
The Enduro is faster up and down, but what surprised me was that on the slow speed stuff, it retained the same responsiveness as the Sentinel and Smuggler. There is one drop here that's small, but has an awkward landing and a very short run in, so you can't really get a ton of speed. I was worried I wouldn't be able to hit it with the Enduro due to the length or that it'd be more work to land it properly, but I found the opposite, when you push into the bike, it gives you a really responsive feel and return.
Sheesh
????
Excerpt:
Richter said he didn’t blame Specialized for its position. “If I found out someone was riding wheels with Café Roubaix on them, and they didn’t come from my shop, I would be concerned. If it fails, it reflects on me. Sure, I could disclaim it and say it’s not mine, but it would still reflect on me,” he told me. “So I understand Mike’s and Specialized’s position, especially as one of the biggest bike manufacturers in the world.”
“Because of their size, Mike’s either loved or hated,” Richter said, adding that he was ready to move on. “But I met him face to face, and he’s very personable, very charismatic. I feel no ill will towards Mike or his company. Ten years down the road, I hope we can sit down and have a beer together and laugh about this.”
except that it weighs more than my downhill bike!!
better looking toptube + steeper seat tube angle and i would really consider to buy one. the suspension design really seems promissing.
This is a legit bike. Just a shame it’s made by an eBike company that has zero concern about the future of mountain biking and trail access. It’s kind of amazing that a company focused on mass market bikes that are easy to ride and inoffensive and on some vague future where everyone rides an ebike.
Make no mistake. Specialized sees our future as fully electric and wants to be the first to get there and they want to dominate. Glad they gave us this bike as a parting gift to the “acoustic” era.
also, who the fk does 5 mile rides? that must take forever. i ride my spotless S-works down to the shop every Saturday and talk to the endurobros about shiny new bits. glad i snagged those ti-ano eeWings before they sold out!
also, the big S is dope AF. they offered me a discount on one of those newfandangled mopeds for buying an S-works. i'm practically stealing from them and now my bros can't ditch me on the climbs!