2022 Pinkbike Awards: Suspension Product of the Year Nominees
Suspension Product of the Year Nominees
Last year’s Suspension Product of the Year nominee list consisted of components that ranged from dual crown and downcountry forks to RockShox’s electronically controlled damping circuits. However, 2022 was full of waves with boatloads of new offerings from the red team, to trickling updates from other brands.
Brands like Fox remained fairly quiet and hinted at future developments in the world of electronically actuated suspension, but that remained in prototype form. RockShox, on the other hand, released a totally redesigned lineup of air and coil rear shocks along with three single crown forks that featured new technology to increase vibration damping.
Marzocchi debuted an affordable air rear shock aimed at the freeride crowd, while Ohlins overhauled their 34 RXF model, but aside from those moves, the Bomber fleet and Swedish gold groups remained steady.
Each of the four nominees for Suspension Product of the Year brought a clever approach to smoothing out the trails beneath us. Keep in mind too, suspension comes in many forms - there may be a surprise component on the list.
The 2022 Pinkbike Suspension Product of the Year nominees are…
Why it's nominated
For 2023, RockShox revamped three of their single crown forks with significant changes inside and out. One of those was the all-new Lyrik that pairs well with burly trail bikes and comes in 140, 150, or 160mm travel options. Although it kept its 35mm diameter stanchions, that’s about all that previous Lyrik has in common with the redesigned version. The top-spec Lyrik Ultimate in particular receives substantial benefits over the other models to make it one stellar fork.
First, longer bushing overlap areas and pressure relief valves can be found in the squared-off lower leg casting. Those bushings keep the Lyrik Ultimate gliding as free as possible and the controversial valves release any air that might build up internally to hinder performance.
Despite claims from RockShox that the new Lyrik is 20% stiffer torsionally, Mike Kazimer was won over by its comfort. That quality was no doubt aided by the elastomers, dubbed Buttercups, that the air piston and damper to ride on. This method of suspending the internal components is something we haven’t seen in a MTB fork before. RockShox also touts that this system alleviates 20% more vibrations than a fork without Buttercups.
Despite claims from RockShox that the new Lyrik is 20% stiffer torsionally, Mike Kazimer was won over by its comfort. That quality was no doubt aided by the elastomers, dubbed Buttercups, that the air piston and damper to ride on. This method of suspending the internal components is something we haven’t seen in a MTB fork before. RockShox also touts that this system alleviates 20% more vibrations than a fork without Buttercups.
A third generation Charger damper also saw a full architectural flip from a bladder system to a spring-backed IFP (internal floating piston) for the utmost independent control between high and low-speed compression. That’s a huge deal in terms of setup, taking less trials out of the equation. RockShox also worked tirelessly to make the damper as quiet as possible which doesn’t particularly increase performance, but if those gushing oil noises distract you, you’ll be smooth sailing on the new Lyrik.
Another piece of the puzzle to be revamped was the air spring. The DebonAir+ spring now uses more aluminum components for increased durability and the dimple which regulates the positive and negative air chambers has been relocated. That brings improved small bump sensitivity along with a higher ride height - both qualities that we loved about the new Lyrik.
Throughout the year, the Lyrik Ultimate left us all impressed by its smooth ride and noticeable adjustments on multiple test bikes.
From the review:
 | ... The previous Lyrik didn't leave much to be desired, but the enhancements the 2023 version receives take it to the next level. It's an ideal fork for a wide range of bikes, everything from those shorter travel, aggressive trail machines all the way up to bikes that straddle the line between enduro and all-mountain. With plenty of adjustability and smooth, silent performance the new Lyrik is going to be hard to beat. |
Why it's nominated
Not all coil shocks are made equal and the EXT Arma is built from a wealth of engineering based on two and four-wheeled off-road racing history. Each shock is machined in Italy to a stunning finish without any flashy colors, and are specifically tuned for the bike of choice. Inside, the shock is packed full of reasons to separate from the others on the market.
The most notable feature on the Arma is the adjustable hydraulic bottom out function that offers control through the last 15% of the shock stroke. Under heavy landings that use full travel, it feels like jumping onto a waterbed. A standard elastomer bottom out bumper doesn’t provide the feeling of slowly reaching the end of the travel. In fact, EXT actually trimmed the size of the bumper to let the hydraulic bottom out function do most of the work.
There’s also a seamless transition and no clunking when the shock shaft changes direction, so on the trail you might think you’re riding on a cloud. Less friction and more sensitivity is one of the highlights with the Arma and part of that fluid motion is due to the low pressure that the internal floating piston runs at - 40 PSI to be exact.
There’s also a seamless transition and no clunking when the shock shaft changes direction, so on the trail you might think you’re riding on a cloud. Less friction and more sensitivity is one of the highlights with the Arma and part of that fluid motion is due to the low pressure that the internal floating piston runs at - 40 PSI to be exact.
Another component that contributes to ease friction is the dynamic flex seal that the main shaft runs on. A lower force is required to bend the seal and begin the shaft displacement rather than a standard seal which first needs to overcome friction to slide.
Setting up the Arma isn’t a chore either since EXT will tune the shock for your bike’s kinematics. Finding your happy place with the controls should only take a few clicks from the middle of the dials because each of the external adjustments have a pronounced effect on the damping. The price of the Arma also includes two springs and available in 25-pound increments to dial in the sag depending on the type of trails you might be riding.
Throughout testing, the consistency and control that the Arma shocks provided for the Commencal Supreme and Antidote Darkmatter was in another league. We never experienced any unwanted feedback like fade or topout either. Given the performance, quick setup, and individuality of the support the EXT provides, the Arma was a clear choice for Suspension Product of the Year.
From the review:
| ... EXT is preached as the aftermarket suspension leader and the Arma is a prime example of the premium performance. There's no doubt that the price reflects this, but receiving a shock tailor-built for your bike will maximize it's potential. From the first lap on the Arma I realized I was cracking on harder than before. The control from this shock puts it on another level. |
Why it's nominated
Yes, another RockShox makes the nominee list for Suspension Product of the Year, which shouldn’t be a huge surprise given the overhaul they completed on nearly their entire product line, which we took a deep dive through here. One reason why the all-new Super Deluxe Ultimate air shock makes it on here is its suppleness. That’s not a characteristic many air shocks can boast about. The amount of adjustments that you can make to the shock also provides solid reasoning for why it made the cut.
The seamless action of the shock shaft moving up and down could have fooled me for being a coil-sprung damper at times, and that wasn’t particular to just one bike. Thanks to the wide range of pressures, the Super Deluxe Ultimate will work for almost any size rider or bike. Two different size air cans will cater to a linear or progressive suspension design. Both the positive and negative air volume chambers can be tuned to change the breakaway feeling and bottom out resistance with simple spacers.
Similarly to the Lyrik, RockShox battled to make the high and low-speed damper adjustments highly independent from one another. Starting from the open position, changing a click in either direction makes apparent changes on the trail, reducing the amount of time spent fiddling to find your sweet spot.
Similarly to the Lyrik, RockShox battled to make the high and low-speed damper adjustments highly independent from one another. Starting from the open position, changing a click in either direction makes apparent changes on the trail, reducing the amount of time spent fiddling to find your sweet spot.
We’ve seen hydraulic bottom out (HBO) functions featured on forks and coil shocks before, but never on an MTB air shock. The system mechanically slows the shock through the last 20% of the travel and works independently of the air spring. Adding a volume spacer to increase the progression will reduce hard bottom outs but will change the force at which the shock rebounds. With the HBO feature, you can have the best of both worlds; control at full travel without messing with the rebound dial.
The overall performance of the shock is also incredibly consistent on massive descents, even in the shorter eye-to-eye lengths. Given the affordability and features loaded into the Super Deluxe shock, the value that it brings to any bike is impossible to argue.
From the Trek Fuel EX-e review:
| ... Out of the saddle, there is very little wasted energy. That redesigned RockShox Super Deluxe is brilliant and might fool me for a coil shock if I couldn’t see it. The breakaway is stellar and keeps the rear wheel glued to the ground on the slipperiest, techiest trails. Grasping the lockout isn’t as easy as it has been with the previous Super Deluxe but both the twist-action of the lever and the support of the climb switch are solid. |
Why it's nominated
You might be wondering what a product like O-Chain’s Active Spider is doing in the Suspension Product of the Year nominee list. While it’s not a fork or shock, it does provide damping for another portion of the bike that moves - the chain. The Active Spider calms down the bouncing metal whip that can cause noises and hold back the rear suspension’s duty. In other words, your bike will feel smoother with this device installed.
O-Chain builds the floating spider to mount to almost any crankset on the market, including eMTBs. The chain-calming component operates by allowing the chainring to partially rotate on the crank arm, freeing tension in the transmission.If you haven’t seen them in action, check it out here.
On the trail, it can provide that chainless feeling which could be described as increased suppleness and sensitivity from the rear suspension. There’s also no arguing that it reduces the amount of chain slap against the frame too. When installed on bikes that were observed to have serious chainslap issues, the Active Spider reduced this considerably.
On the trail, it can provide that chainless feeling which could be described as increased suppleness and sensitivity from the rear suspension. There’s also no arguing that it reduces the amount of chain slap against the frame too. When installed on bikes that were observed to have serious chainslap issues, the Active Spider reduced this considerably.
A quieter ride is not only less distracting, but also positively reinforces that you’re riding smoothly. Whether that’s partially a placebo effect doesn’t eliminate the fact that the rear suspension works more effectively, and that’s a solid reason to include O-Chain’s Active Spider in the Suspension Product of the Year nominees.
From the review:
| ... The chain forces that the Active Spider isolates is quite impressive. I believe there is both a physical improvement to the suspension performance when the chainring can rotate to a degree, plus it adds a qualitative bonus by reducing the noises caused by chainslap. The small amount of lag in the pedal stroke is a tradeoff that is worth coming to terms with if the bike in question is susceptible to chain feedback. |
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It was meant pretty tongue in cheek, and I think it hit the mark.
No need to get too upset there
It's hard to keep track of which version you're actually buying
However, I am extremely pissed that I can’t change the stroke on my 2023 super deluxe coil because instead of just changing the travel spacer you also need to change the HBO post. When I called them, they said those posts MIGHT be available in 2023. I like their stuff but fox makes working on their products so much easier with parts availability and documentation. (Nitro fill set ups will run you around $100 and if that’s too much of a barrier for you, just send your shocks in. It’s easy to f*ck suspension work up.)
1 complain about the hub having not enough engagement
2 praise the ochain for reducing hub engagement
All joking aside, would love to read that article . . . link?
For pedal kickback, this means that if the angular speed of the hub is higher than the speed of the freehub body generated by the chain tension, there will be no pedal kickback or negative influence on your suspension. But it is not easy to reach this critical speed, because the faster you ride, the higher the possibility of harder compressions and the faster the freehub body speed reached by the chain. If it were easy to reach this speed, there would be no world cup riders that experiment with removing a sprocket to have an idle to eliminate pedal kickback.
However, it should also be noted that the kinematics of some bikes have no pedal kickback.
These aren't measurements, these are perception. In back to back runs, rigorously tested, everything else controlled for, I doubt there will be a measurable difference in speed.
Can the tester notice additional squish in the pedals? Seems likely.
Does additional squish in the pedals mean the suspension is performing better? Not sure.
But also — additional squish in the pedal even without improved suspension performance might be a good thing. I don’t know. Haven’t tried. Probably won’t.
As for Ochain the thing that people miss when talking about this is the force from the derailleur cage. On any bike that doesn't have a bb concentric pivot, the chainlength must grow and the slack is taken up by the movement on the cage, that not only has a spring which acts to extend the suspension, but also a clutch mechanism that resists suspension compression in the first place.
Riding chainless eliminates this completely (as well as the pedal kickback effect), on any bike. Ochain does nothing for the cage forces, so at best it eliminates the circumstantial pedal kickback effect in some places, and reduces vibration due to additional layer of isolation. Performance wise, it doesn't do much for you when you look at drawbacks. You would be better off running a more compliant tire setup over using it.
1. Chain slap affects the upper and lower chain unevenly as they are different lengths and different angles to the ground meaning that the reflected waves in each section of the chain tug at the chainring at different tensions at different times causing torques on the crank that can be felt in the feet.
2. Kickback is caused by chain growth on the tensioned top section of the chain. However, the bottom section of the chain also grows. The derailleur cage makes up the difference in both. Even in the case of a high pivot with idler that has next to no chain growth, the lower chain grows significantly through the suspension stroke. Actually it's worse with high pivots. This is where the derailleur clutch comes into play and causes additional forces on the chain as well as higher stoke speeds causing additional tension on the chain which may not be even top to bottom during a dynamic bump event.
I haven't tried an Ochain, but I suspect that it would reduce feedback of both these effects.
I also have an aluminium 4-bar enduro bike as well, which can get close to that level of grip simply by having a very good coil shock and lots of travel. More than one way to skin a cat.
I’m surprised nobody has posted this video from the NSMB review: youtu.be/dcgcZCgXX2o
I think this video captures what the Ochain does better than what pink bike did for their review. Regardless, they come to similar conclusions about the Ochain.
They might get a better feel of what the suspension is doing by spreading out the impulse of the non-suspension vibrations.
Clutch forces are much less important to this than the derailleur rebounding and snapping back into tension, which is what I imagine the o-chain is softening. You can make a huge difference in this feel by switching from a sram derailleur to a Shimano one but people still run SRAM.
Re: steel frames. There is a reason even carbon downtubes are so big these days and it is stiffness. Imo bumping to full sus steel doesn't offer as many advantages. It is the only cost effective way to make frames in small quantities though. Nothing against steel frames. Just arguing that yes, it is the same mindset and feeling smoother and being better are not the same thing.
Perhaps the explanation of ochain working is there...
My biggest issue is the marketing faff that's always around stuff like this. It's THREE HUNDRED EUROS. The average person buying this would be better off spending an hour turning some knobs. Cascade does this too. Their products make literally every aspect of the ride better according to their marketing. The fact that they make them for highly progressive bikes shows that people buying them don't know what they're buying.
Heck, in this very article Pinkbike does a better job of explaining what it does than OChain themselves.
www.ochain.bike/technical-support-page
^That talks about pedal kickback, doesn't talk about other chain forces.
www.worldwidecyclery.com/blogs/worldwide-cyclery-blog/o-chain-spider-explained-reviewed-by-neko-mulally
^Here Neko specifically mentions the braking thing and explains it.
It's also a drivetrain product, not a suspension product (????????).
Hardtail thing varies by location. I don't have one because I would eat wheels and because they aren't great at balancing wheel destruction and traction. If I were to get one it would definitely be steel. That is a situation where I would appreciate the feel.
TLDR
Ochain improves feel and helps when locking your wheel over bumps. Marketing may be misguiding. Gotta be worth 300 euros to you. Steel is real, skeptic of it on full sus bikes.
So a Penguin is driving his car down the road, when suddenly his vehicle starts making funny noises.
He drives it to the next town where he immediately finds the nearest auto mechanic, and brings the car in.
The mechanic says "it'll take half an hour to find the problem, but its a hot summer day so a penguin like you should stay cool - there's an ice cream parlor across the street you should try."
So the penguin goes across the street and gets himself a giant vanilla ice cream - now he makes a total mess of eating it, on account of lacking opposable thumbs to hold the cone. But, his half hour is up so he heads back across to the mechanic. He walks in an the mechanic comes up to him and says "looks like you blew a seal!" to which the Penguin says, "no! no! I swear this is just ice cream!"
After riding Marzocchis and various iterations of Rockshox HC2 dampers for pretty much my entire riding life, I think it's safe to say oil noise is not a distraction... If it stops making squishy sounds, that's a problem!
The normal Storia has a fixed HBO. The Arma, and eStoria have adjustable HBO.
They also claim that the adjustment range for the clickers is much wider on the eStoria than either the Storia or Arma. It also added a negative spring, lower friction shaft/seals, and a bunch of other stuff. It seems like a wholesale upgrade for the Storia.
*disclaimer. I'm not affiliated with EXT. I've just been investigating coil shocks for my bike for a bit, and was trying to wrap my head around what the differences were on these two models.
For the best value suspension upgrade out there, slip-on grips. Given the same diameter but no plastic core of a lock-in, there's more rubber between you and the bar.
With a similar effect as both of the above, Specialized T9 compound tires are another good way to calm/quiet the ride feel of a bike.
Unlike a Float X2, which is guaranteed to blow up twice a year with hard riding, American bombs have the propensity to explode decades later. To date, we have killed ~25K Laotians since we stopped dropping bombs on them due to this propensity. So in a way, you're right, we're great at killing shit, apparently even great at killing people in a country we were never even at war with, the people of Laos merely suffer from proximity to Vietnam.
Personally, I'm not so proud of how good we are at killing shit.
My info is from a BBC article I read on the topic from back when Obama formally apologized for the operation, we dropped 260 Million bombs across 580,344 bombing missions, the vast majority of which were not individual bombs but rather cluster bombs. I had incorrectly remembered that 20% of the ordinance remained unexploded, it was actually roughly 30% during OPB, but the estimated 80 million unexploded bombs was correctly recalled.
The reason your estimated weight-to-bomb ratio is incorrect is because cluster bombs are generally considered a single unit before being dropped, but obviously split into hundreds of bombs by the time they hit the ground. Take for example likely the most popular bomb of the war, the "Pineapple", which contained 360 bombs per unit, each of them plenty capable of killing and maiming tens of people.
In conclusion: American ordinance blows up not often enough. The Float X2 blows up too often. Don't be proud of the American propensity to kill when we should be ashamed.
Edit: Also don't show me misplaced patriotism because I will go off on a tangent.
Let’s just say I wouldn’t be surprised if the DOD placed a large order of X2’s to supply Ukraine with a newer, more successful, ordinance.
Who uses Vietnam statistics to discuss 2022 suspension products? Acting like the US hasn't been firmly involved in warfare since...
I think gramps mixed up his pills again.
For the current price I would convince myself it was working
Should nominate a seat that provides great damping for my ass, and grips that dampen my hands. Maby some shoes that provide damping in my feet or a helmet that will dampen the impacts from me hitting my head against a wall whenever I venture into this website.
The others are mostly the average product cycle rehash type that will receive a new iteration every 2-3 years. These are expected to be better every new release. Ochain is going on many DH racer bikes now... could be ubiquitous and everywhere in a few more years time over all the gravity disciplines. Can make any bike better. How is that for game changing?
2023 RS Super Deluxe Ultimate coil RC2T-
It doesn’t work well, we are selling them with our own piston fitted. The hydraulic bottom out adjustment is a nice addition.
Cons - with the standard piston in, they're a poor shock, as there's a serious lack of oil flow through the piston on the rebound stroke. The HSC adjustment is a gimmick. Spares availability is pretty sketchy.
Honestly, the 2020super deluxe RC3 shock you have is better! I don't know how RS have done it, but all their 2023 shocks and fork dampers are worse than the previous versions! I honestly couldn't believe what I was looking at when I started testing them a few months ago!
Have been on RS stuff mostly Dh or 10 years but finally had enough as could not get it set up right , megneg was the only thing that worked really well , as for the lyrik I had to buy and lost model just so I could use the B1 air spring as the newer C1 was awful , now running a mezzo Pro and a CDB inline coil , and couldn’t be happier , finally have no RS or sram stuff on my bike….
and has also run his own suspension shop for 25 years as , I never said I used him to service my stuff
I can do that myself , he has access to all the R/S technical info before you even see it so he can tell which stuff is shite or not , sounds like you are more of an expert than him so crack on and keep believing all the marketing shite that FOX and R/S pump out to make you believe their products are better , it’s just in this case they are worse , so have a happy Christmas and new year and enjoy your expensive toys xx
Plus didn't Fox take the design for the X2 from the anarchist handbook?
Do your knees hurt bootlicking Fox all day?
People take things super serious and it's fun to get them would up.
Personally I still prefer the feel of an old-school DBair with its meatier damping.
But that update is one of the notable updates to that fork compared to the prior model....