Santa Cruz's five-star rated Vala is now available with an aluminium frame, with prices starting at £4,899 for the Vala AL Deore; that's well under half the asking price of the £12,753 range-topping XX AXS RSV bike.
Santa Cruz’s Vala scored a perfect five out of five when I tested it at the start of 2025; its performance wooed and impressed me, its ride proving to be faultless.
The Bullit, the Vala's longer-travel encore is also seriously impressive. Clearly, there's something in Santa Cruz's new four-bar layout.
Of course, the £9,999 asking price of the X0 AXS RSV Vala is enough to make almost anyone wince and the AL version is intended to answer that.
While the new alloy bike is made from aluminium rather than the brand’s luxurious CC carbon fibre, it shares the carbon bike’s outline and highly commendable Horst-link suspension.
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Also shared is the Bosch Performance Line CX motor and 600Wh battery, plus compatibility with the 250Wh PowerMore range extender.
Internally routed cables – via ports on the side of the down tube – SRAM’s UDH, loads of chain-slap protection, and water bottle and accessory mounts within the front triangle are all present and correct.
Like the carbon model, this alloy one still gets Santa Cruz's legendary lifetime frame warranty and free replacement bearings for life.
What you don’t get, however, are the geometry and suspension-kinematic adjusting flip chips in both the rocker link to seatstay pivot and the lower shock mount.
Along with the alloy frame, this is clearly another of the brand’s cost-cutting moves, but the increased simplicity could also be a ploy to appeal to a different kind of rider – those who are maybe looking to just ride the bike rather than fettle with it.
In terms of the geometry, the Vala AL is set somewhere between the carbon model’s high and low positions.
As is shock progression – it’s roughly 27 per cent instead of the CC’s 26 per cent low-progression or 29 per cent high-progression setting.
There are two models in the Vala AL range: The Vala AL Deore, retailing for £4,899 and the Vala AL 70, costing £5,599.
The most affordable Deore model is fitted with Shimano’s Deore 12-speed drivetrain, and RockShox’s Psylo Gold RC fork and Deluxe Select shock.
The more expensive AL 70 has SRAM’s Eagle 70 Transmission drivetrain, a RockShox ZEB Base fork and Super Deluxe Base rear shock.
If you’ve been pining for the flawless performance of the Vala, but the carbon model has proved a little too expensive, this alloy version could be your best bet to experience some of the magic without having to spend a fortune.
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