Based in The Netherlands, BeOne produces a comprehensive range of bikes with the sort of attention to quality and design that you might expect from a Dutch company. Our test bike is a handsome specimen, featuring a full carbon frame with complete internal cabling.
At first glance it doesn’t look to have as tough a finish as some carbon frames, and a hard flick of the fingernails produces the sonorous ‘clack’ of thin walls and shiny resin. It is pleasing to the eye, though, and it offers tremendous value for money for a product that would have cost twice as much just a few years ago. But handsome, smooth, flowing lines and curvaceous surfaces don’t necessarily translate into correspondingly impressive feel and performance, and while the handling was neutral and accessible to most people, it all felt a little frail and brittle despite a 11/8x1½in steerer and stout bottom bracket area.
There was plenty of rail-like straight line high speed stability, but no desire to change direction in a hurry, some of that down to a bit of lateral flex from the aero fork blades. Shimano’s Ultegra controls and mechs provide faultless shifting, while an interesting mix of FSA Omega brakes, generic contact points, and classic Mavic CXP hoops on Shimano 105 hubs set it apart from bikes with a more homogenous groupset approach.
But the bike’s short cockpit and triple chainset don’t sit comfortably with the frame, which is light and racy: it’s trying to be both a user-friendly sportive machine and an outright road racer. We say pick one only: make it a racing bike! With unyieldingly stiff frames it’s more important than ever to get details like wheels, tyres, saddles and seatposts correct in order to dial in a bit of comfort. The BeOne’s oversized 31.6mm aluminium seatpost is just too burly and tough, hardening the ride and feel of the bike, and the San Marco Ponza saddle doesn’t help much either, though both are problems that can be fixed easily.
If you simply want affordable carbon and you aren’t too fussed about anything else, this bike will certainly get you into the game. A little underwhelming on the component front, and slightly underpowered frame wise, it nevertheless provided good entertainment value and performance.