Mondraker Arid Carbon RR review: so capable on the trails I'd happily leave my mountain bike at home

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Mondraker won’t be a brand familiar to most drop-bar riders. Initially, it focused on developing high-end enduro and downhill mountain bikes, riding a wave of fast-evolving design in the mountain biking industry.

The brand introduced groundbreaking designs such as the Foxy XR, with its ‘Forward Geometry’. It featured a very long top tube and front-centre (the distance from the centre of the bottom bracket to the front axle). 

This genealogy can easily be seen in the Arid gravel bike.

With the Arid, named after an area with dry, rocky and loose terrain, the designers at Mondraker set out to create a bike that can handle the discomfort of this sort of terrain, easily hold a line and find traction where grip can be close to non-existent.

Priced at £5,799 / $6,499 / €6,499, the Arid Carbon RR brings MTB-inspired handling to a gravel bike, and it does it without compromising its all-round capabilities.

Mondraker Arid Carbon RR frameset

The Arid’s frame is made using what Mondraker calls its Stealth Air carbon fabrication process. 

Each tube of the radical-looking layout is optimised to deliver certain characteristics. At the rear, that’s maximum compliance, via those unique triangulated joints at the top of the seatstays, where they join the seat tube.

In the bottom bracket area, it’s all about stiffness for efficient power transfer, while the material in the head tube is beefed up to ensure the handling can cope with the most challenging terrain. Yet it still runs a standard headset with a 1-1/8in upper bearing and 1-1/2in lower bearing.

The Arid frameset is also fully equipped. The full internal routing keeps the aesthetic clean, and hoses and cables out of the way.

The Arid uses FSA’s ACR system to route the hydraulic brake hoses internally through the headset.

There are three water bottle mounts, plus top tube mounts, and triple ‘anything’ mounts on the fork legs.

There’s clearance for 50mm-wide tyres, and the Universal Derailleur Hanger enables compatibility with direct-mount derailleurs, opening the possibility of running mullet builds mixing SRAM’s latest gravel and mountain bike drivetrain parts. 

The Arid is designed to sport 1x drivetrains only, though.

A clever down tube storage port, with a smart pivoting cover, hides space for three internal bags to carry a comprehensive set of emergency tools. Completing the technical details is a threaded T47 bottom bracket shell.

The full Arid Carbon range is now available in four builds: S, R, RR and RR SL. There are four new colours: Aura Blue, Ultraviolet, Mirage Silver and Superblack. This means you can select the spec and build that suits you in your colour choice.

Mondraker Arid Carbon RR geometry

The Arid gets a heavy dose of its ‘Forward Geometry’ design from Mondraker's mountain bikes. That means an exceptionally long front-centre and, therefore, reach. This measured 423mm on my large test bike.

In comparison, one of my current favourite all-round gravel bikes, the Giant Revolt, has a reach of 393mm in the same size. The Arid’s 613mm stack height, meanwhile, is 3mm lower than the Giant's.

The head tube angle is very much in the go-anywhere gravel realm at a slack 70 degrees.

The layout is corrected for a suspension fork, but it has a shorter fork offset of 45mm. As a result, the trail is a huge 83mm, fitted with the stock 45mm tyres. 

In theory, that should make the Arid a much more stable-handling proposition when riding seriously rough surfaces.

The Arid also has a low centre of gravity with a low-slung bottom bracket height of 269mm. All of this adds up to a bike designed for off-road stability above all else, albeit you run a higher risk of pedal strikes on the roughest terrain.

The Mondraker’s wheelbase bears out the bike's focus on stability, with the 1,089mm significantly longer than most gravel bikes.

Mondraker Arid Carbon RR build

Mondraker’s Arid RR build is based around SRAM’s Force AXS XPLR groupset, which means the same shifters and brakes as road-going Force AXS but with a longer-cage rear derailleur to allow for the broad 10-44t 12-speed cassette. 

The derailleurs, shifters, crankset and brakes are all the previous-generation Force XPLR, but Mondraker assures us bikes are now available with the latest ‘E1’ version of Force, rather than the ‘D2’ models seen here.

Up front, the Force 1 carbon crankset features the brand’s power meter, paired with an X-Sync Eagle 40-tooth chainring.

The Arid rolls on Mavic’s Allroad Pro Carbon SL wheelset, which weighed in at 1,521g including tubeless valves when we tested them. 

These are fitted with Maxxis Reaver tyres in a rock- and root-friendly 45mm width. The tread pattern features a low, widely spaced centre strip that’s offset with large side knobs and a centre sipe in each block. These sipes are claimed to enable the blocks to deform quickly to provide grip in loose corners at speed.

Mondraker relies on its own-brand components for the cockpit and seatpost. In this case, it’s an OnOff semi-integrated stem in a short 80mm length, matched to an OnOff S9 GR carbon handlebar. 

Its compact drop and 16-degree flare, matched to a deep aero-shaped top section, looks slick – and the 46cm width (measured centre-to-centre at the tops) is generous on my large-sized test bike. Generally, a wider handlebar will offer greater leverage, resulting in more control than a narrower cockpit.

At the back, there’s an OnOff SR carbon seatpost with a 15mm offset and a long 450mm length on my large-sized test bike; smaller sizes get a 400mm post.

Due to the low-slung, sloping top tube, there is a good deal of exposed seatpost, which can help promote compliance. 

Fizik’s gravel-specific short saddle, the Terra Argo X5, tops it with chromoly rails.

Mondraker Arid Carbon RR ride impressions

With the Mondraker Arid’s low-slung, slack and long design, I expected a bike that would be a little awkward and ungainly on tarmac and smooth gravel roads but come alive in more technical terrain. 

What I got certainly excelled on the most technical and challenging routes, but it wasn’t slow or bland when it came to the easier surfaces in between. 

That said, with the combination of 45mm tyres and the relaxed front end, it can feel as though a bit more effort is needed to maintain faster speeds on the road versus less gnarly gravel bikes. However, it didn’t feel as ungainly as more gravity-focused gravel bikes such as Nukeproof’s (admittedly extreme) Digger RS V3.

I appreciated the stability on steeper climbs with little traction on offer. Having a front end that tracks easily and doesn’t get unsettled by rough surfaces while sitting in the saddle makes the Arid a very capable off-road climbing companion.

Its 9.09kg weight also comes into play here, especially with the lively feeling Mavic wheels and Maxxis tyres. I was left with the impression that the Arid exhibits far more zip when heading uphill than it has any right to, considering its off-road-focused geometry.

On princess gravel and tarmac, the Mondraker is some way behind racier gravel bikes such as Wilier's Rave SLR ID2 when it comes to maintaining higher average speeds. However, venture further off-road and the Arid comes alive.

On one of my favourite gravel routes, there is a section of singletrack through the woods that turns into a natural, tight and twisting singletrack descent that falls 225m/730ft in a mile/1.6km.

Here, the Arid was absolutely in its element. The balance and control afforded by the geometry, wide bar and big tyres come together to make a bike that flows with stunning ease. Its ability to temper roots, rocks, hollows and jumps is up there with the best bikes for this kind of rowdy gravel riding, such as the Cannondale Topstone Carbon, GT Grade Carbon X and Santa Cruz Stigmata.

I’d have loved to get the Mondraker equipped with a dropper post, for a couple of bomb-hole drops where the saddle was in the wrong place for a moment. 

That said, the combination of big-volume tyres and the compliant frame meant I didn’t miss the control and comfort usually afforded by a suspension fork. This surprised me, because I’m something of a convert to gravel suspension on my own bike.

I also managed to strike a pedal hammering through a particularly rocky section. The Mondraker’s bottom bracket height of 269mm is only a couple of millimetres lower than the Parlee Taos I tested it alongside, generally making this a greater possibility.

That said, the trail on which this happened was very much a mountain bike trail, and your average mountain bike has a minimum BB height of around 310mm – a good 40mm higher than the Arid.

It would be churlish to hold this against the Arid, though – it's more a testament to the confidence it inspires to be able to take on trails and tracks usually reserved for mountain bikes.

Mondraker Arid Carbon RR bottom line

Mondraker has done a very clever thing with the Arid Carbon; it has brought the gravity-fuelled thrills of more extreme gravel bikes such as Nukeproof's Digger RS, Evil’s Chamois Hagar and Lee Cougan’s Innova Super Gravel without compromising its abilities elsewhere. 

It's not as rapid as a Cervélo Áspero 5 or Wilier Rave SLR ID2 on tarmac, but I’d more than happily accept the loss of a few watts of efficiency on tarmac and princess gravel that comes with the Arid’s design.

When it comes to getting into the most technical, exciting and challenging terrain, I can’t think of many bikes I’d rather be riding than the brilliant Arid RR.

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