I have only used 1 bike since starting cycling over a year ago, my crux. Love it. Over 5k miles between road, trails, gravel. In the best shape of my life as an added bonus.

Personally, owning both MTB, road and gravel bikes, I have find myself gravitating more and more towards the gravel bike. This to the point where I am considering just keeping the gravel bike and having different wheelsets for that bike. It's the most fun and versatile bike for me and the riding I like to do. But that's just my experience. I totally get that people have different styles and preferences. Whether this means people riding pure road, pure MTB, off-road on road bikes (with wide clearance) or MTB on road with slicks and aero-bars. Each to his own. Different types of bikes are not mutually exclusive categories, anyway. What I don't get is the need to tell people which bike they should ride. I suspect there will be (there already is) a lot of "just ride a MTB" or "just ride a road bike" comments. Go ride the (style of) bike you love the most on the terrain you love the most.

I have a gravel bike and I also have a personal need for 2 different road bikes and a hard tail trail bike. It all comes down to what you need and what you want to ride.

Been using CX bikes for my outdoor bike over 10 years for the exact reasons wider tires, comfortable yet responsive, more durable yet light, and freedom to ride most all places. Was given 2017 mid-high tier frame with entry level build CX demo bike with mech disc 1x11 15x100mmTA front late Dec 22 sitting in team storage and slowy working on it to update it to modern standards. That was after trying some newer entry gravel bikes felt way too planted then others were needing key upgrades right away to truaxle, etc. Go mid tier gravel bike if buying new should be solid frame, and build right away just choosing the best fitting bike.

Drop bars are an absolute must on any bike I ride for more than 3km at a time. After 3km, flat bars start becoming the stuff of misery. I have made the embarrassing discovery that my lowest gear is 24/34. I have a triple crank set.

Having got back into cycling 15 years ago on a road bike, I then tried both mountain and hybrid. Then it was CX and adventure bikes. I often wondered what a 1X would be like and then in 2022 I became the owner of a Cannondale Topstone 4 with the Microshift Advent X 1X 10 speed. It was a revelation!. I ride mainly cycle tracks of loose gravel, tow paths and much rougher farm tracks. And some road sections, of course, some of which are VERY steep. The Topstone 4 handles all of the above with ease, as do the Microshift gears. I find the bike an excellent ride and when I bought it ( I soon added a second! ) the Alpine Blue model was available with a huge discount and a free Cannondale helmet!. My bikes get hard use most days and even if I could afford a much more expensive bike I wouldn't be tempted. My advice to anyone thinking of a gravel bike would be to get an entry model from a good manufacturer and have fun!.

I bought a Rodeo-Labs Trail Donkey two years ago, and it was the best purchase I ever made. It's my #1 ride, and is perfect for all the ways you described. Especially where I live with such crappy roads, it might as well me gravel all around me.

Gravel with saddle and steerer suspension and fast wheels is perfect. Nice looking bike btw!

I favor my gravel bike over my road bike, because most rides include some off road sections, which are no fun with 25mm tires ;-).

The bike I need is so small that it dosen't work that good for bikepacking, can't get all the camping gear with me, tried bikepacking with my road bike. The bags wil need to be small, still rubbing my wheels. So I bought a touring bike, with triple crank and bar end shifters. Very pleased with this choice, can ride exactly the same trails as a gravel bike. Plenty of low gears for hills and gets all the stuff with me in panniers. Use this bike for winter bike also, commuting to work with it, super comfortable to ride, weight dosen't matter to me.

I have a Ti gravel bike with two carbon wheelsets (one for gravel with 45 mm knobby tires and the other with 32mm gravelking ss tires) . It has suited my gravel and endurance road riding adventures with no problems whatsoever ! I am running a 2x GRX810 setup. Is it as fast as a purpose suited road bike or as suitable on some gnarly MTB trails ? maybe not, but it's all the bike I need !

Nice video David. I have the Canyon Grizl with SRAM Apex AXS 1x. I can vouch for all the points you make. I'm surprised at how much enjoyment you can get out of this style of bike. Excellent versatility and value for money.

I purchased a used Cutthroat two years ago. It is such a great 'all around' bike like you discuss. It doesn't replace my road bikes but kinda replaces my MTB since I don't prefer the super challenging MTB runs usually anyway. Funnily enough, I ended up building out my old rigid '90s MTB' with drop bars etc to be a second 'gravel bike' so my kids to join me.

Completely agree with you. I have a custom Burls titanium gravel bike with 2 pairs of wheels. My lightweight road bike is best for the smooth roads eg Costa Blanca/Mallorca but I love the versatility of the gravel bike for weeks/weekends away and the chance to ride different terrains.

Long time road biker and just bought a Topstone Carbon 3 for exploring the dirty bits around Stockport/Cheshire.... currently loving it and going to take it to France with me instead of my road bike for 2 months in May! 😁👍

Each to their own and obv depends on the type of terrain you live by, but for me it's Road and MTB. The MTB covers more % of off-road terrain. BUT whatever floats yer boat

I have two gravel bikes, one road bike and one mountain bike. So basically, four bikes is the perfect sweet spot.

Personally for a gravel bike that is a sort of do it all bike I still don´t get why you wouldn´t want at least two chainrings at the front cuz I feel it´s not that much more complicated and it gives you a lot more range. Expecially when you want to go fast on a road you got your big chainring and for slower more technical terrain you can use your small chainring. Also what I always wondered about are there bikes out there that have a carbon fork with no mounting holes but then have custom clamps made for that fork so you can bolt bags onto your fork Over all I agree tho Gravel Bikes are great even though I have my road bike and sperate gravel bike just because I like to go fast on the road well and gravel bikes were unaffordable when I first bought my road bike in 2020

I only ride gravel bikes. I have two. One is a Cervelo Aspero set up with 32mm road tyres, which makes a brilliant road training bike and occasional gravel race bike with 40mm tyres; the other is a 3T Exploro Ultra set up with wider tyres as a road/gravel crossover bike for more varied adventures and bikepacking. I’ll never buy a road bike again.

Sold my road bike a while back. Most of the riding I do here in the bay area involves mixed terrain. Also getting to a place where I could actually MTB requires me to ride a reasonable amount of road riding, going over the Golden Gate bridge w/ a mountain bike just feels painful to me :) So with that said, my most used bike is a Ritchey Swiss Cross w/ 700x38s

It’s funny, I bought a used 2016 Diverge as my “do-it-all” bike but tbh, it’s more similar to a road bike than newer gravel bikes so I’m converting that to a road bike and buying ANOTHER gravel bike to ride the rougher stuff. Strictly adhering to the N+1 rule of bike ownership

Picked up a 2018 Diverge E5 alloy with 105 as my first drop bar bike ever a few months ago…been on hardtails for commuting since for ever…the idea of being able to run a larger tyre on my first road bike being a major draw…it came with 32mil road tyres and I only threw on my first set of gravel tyres yesterday but kept it to a slim 33mil vittoria…I’m going on a trail ride with the kids soon..they are on hardtails so interested to see how I will go…TBH I am using the bike more on road than anything so now find myself lusting after a nice endurance bike…they definitely have a place but a real nice road bike still has a different aura

Absolutely love my Canyon Grizl, hoping to do Lands End to John o groats next year and would choose the Grizl over my road bike (2024 Merida Reacto 8000)

Hi David, love your videos. When is Defy 2024 long term review coming out?

Funny enough, I've been the down the road of been road rider only as fast as I could go too going crazy on the roughest mtb tracks I could, definitely spent alot of money on the bikes for those extremes. Yet out of all those bike I've only keeped my razor sharp criterium bike as the permanently mounted trainer bike used for warm ups only, it never sees the surface of any road these days, a useful but truly sad end for such a bike. So to fill the my need for riding without been bored out of my brains with either straight road riding (truly brain dead boring) or mtb only extreme rough stuff (mtbs have just got to good these days to be any fun, the risks needed for the fun rewards are to much and to painful when you balls up), I ended up spending high end for the cx bike first then gravel bike and have never looked back at dumping those other bikes out of my riding life. Now it's gravel bike 95% of my riding time and the last 5% on the cx bike, got the FUN & CHALLENGING FACTORS back into my riding and the rides are never boring, actually they do more too invigorate me to ride more miles and thus keeping me fitter which is a very good thing considering the injuires the body has accumulated over the decades of riding.

I have a Tarmac SL8 with Rapide CLX wheels and 28 mm tires. It's hands down the best road bike I ever ridden, and I owned most of the high(er) end ones during the past three-four years. It's almost as comfortable on our shitty roads as a good endurance bike, it's fast and effortless at speed as an aero bike and climbs like a dedicated climbing bike. All this doesn't change the fact that drivers on the road pass me by half a meter without reason, that I get yelled at, honked at etc. just because I'm also trying to be a part of road traffic, and so on. Sometimes when I go for a ride, I get home more anxious than I was leaving the house. It's absurd. I found myself to gravitating towards forest roads, byways wherever I can, utmost speed and efficiency be damned.

What’s the frame weight of the new Ventum GS1 featured here?

I have been eyeing the Crux as a next purchase for road/gravel/light singletrack. Technically a cx bike, not gravel, but those lines are blurry these days. Wish it had a UDH compatible frame though.

Here’s a slightly curly gravel bike question for you David (and / or the brains trust). ...Taking the mullet config further. Why not combine a road 2x crankset, with a mtb rear deraileur and cassette. EG SRAM D2 Road 46/33 chainrings on wide cranks (and wide front derailleur) with Eagle 12 speed AXS rear derailleur and 10-52 cassette? What would prevent it? Eagle Chain too short for 46 - 52? Imagine, then the bike really would be a jack of all trades, master of none. 46-10 for road / 33-52 for heavy bike packing loads! Anyone tried it?

honestly an xc mtb is the all road bike and a race bike on the other end while a gravel in between only half asses it imo

I personally think it’s the best bike for me. Most of my trails are very sedate so a gravel bike makes those trails feel exciting. They are fast enough on the road for most as well. Also and this is the big factor, the U.K. roads are soo poor that a focused road bike can be dangerous at times. 2 sets of wheels is perfect.

I need gravel trails close to where I live without having to travel for a couple hours. At any rate, if I do decide to ride gravel I'd just add 35mm tires to my endurance bike. Maybe not as functional as true gravel bikes with 45mm+ tires but for as little as I ride gravel 35mm tires on my endurance bike will be just fine.

I have 3 road bikes 1 gravel bike my Free Ranger (Which I use most of the time even on the club rides) and a Boardman Hybrid with suspension. Should I sell my road bikes and just go Gravel? I'm now reaching 62 years of age so super fast riding is out of the question being that I average 23 to 28kmph on the road depending on conditions.

Depends on where you live and how you ride. Where I live and as slow as I ride a Gravel bike makes sense. Too slow for a group rides and not rowdy enough for actual MTBing gravel bikes are still limited, just less limited.

Put a double ring on the front and I can see the reasoning. Single front chainring is way to slow, clunky and less fun. My gravel bike feels like it can do so much. More like a replacement for my winter road bike and moutain bike, in that it has guards and more winter friendly tyres.

Would you recommend a CX bike, or a gravel bike. And what are the differences?

Grevil f in stealth black and ekar…👍

The anti gravel brigade is active today. If you have trail at your doorstep or if you don't mind driving to the trails (something I'm trying to do less of) then a mountain bike might be fine. However if you ride a mixture of road and trails then a gravel bike is worth considering. Me I've gone for an all road bike with two wheelsets (gravel and road).

David, what do some blogers mean, when saying that gravel and endurance bikes are cumbersome and dull?

David wouldn't flat bars be a lot faster and manovrable on the trails . Not really lot of areo needed on gravel roads lol . ??

I understand that a gravel bike can be a fine road bike. However if you are really into road riding, and have a good road bike, a gravel bike set up for the road will not be the same. Gravel bike geometry will leave you wanting on the road, especially when cornering and accelerating. A gravel bike set up for the road will never match the quickness of a good road bike, in my opinion…

But I already have one

Unless you race, then most people don't need a race bike - being influenced by pros is laughable. Just get two sets of wheels to cover road/ odd-road bases.......and a Gravel bike is all you really need.

One question: who is this one person who doesn't have a gravel bike yet? 😉

I thought I needed an SL8 because it's the fastest bike ever made, ever ever

Own gravel and MTB's. Spend 90% of the time on the gravel.

Road Bikes for Asphalt... Mountain Bikes for anything else. I have a Trek Pro Caliber hardtail. Fast on gravel roads and comfortable on hard terrains.

Or you throw TT bars on a XC MTB hardtail and get better Offroad and... better on road because aero.

2 bikes for 2 entirely different purposes. This looks like nothing in comparison to Trek Madone. That's for the road. MTB and front suspension and 2.30 tires. Why make things more difficult than they really are?

framesets starting at $2,599 and complete builds going to $10,499.

when i first started riding mtb in the 90's this was often seen done by rigid riders.. Do we need it this time around. Not too sure on that. I would buy a decent steel road bike with good tyre clearance and have the best of all worlds.

Yeah and still slower than a road bike..! 😂

Gravel bikes looking more and more like a 90’s MTB everyday

Come on then, go do some mountainbiking on it. Let's see how you survive anything but a blue trail for them kids. We'll wait.

Nah I don’t. Either pure road bike or mountain biking. I don’t believe the lies of the industry.

Hate gravel no intention of doing gravel and gravel is a name gimmick.

1 reason to not get a new bike: my salary🥲