Despite our large sample being a very serious slab of bike, Velocite’s SRAM Force-equipped Geos is still relatively light. We figured we’d best tell you that, as Velocite work both direct and through bike shops, so you might actually not pull it out of the box yourself. More tellingly, you might not immediately realise from the ride either…
- Highs: Reasonably light frame with forgiving rear and accurate front end. Can be bought direct or via your local shop for pro setup and sizing advice
- Lows: Slightly soft power delivery and heavy wheels dull acceleration; it isn’t Di2 compatible, and kit value is shop brand rather than direct sell comparable. Sizing is limited, too
- Buy if: You want an obedient and enjoyable but not punishing all-rounder
For a start, the Velocite own brand wheels are relatively heavy, and the Continental Ultra Sport tyres are fairly weighty too. There’s a bit of softness in the straight-gauge spokes, slim carbon cranks/spider and, seemingly, also the frame itself, despite the use of a BB30 bottom bracket.
These combine to make the Velocite slightly slower to accelerate than some, and the rider less keen to put a big gear into a full nelson and force things when faced with a steep climb. Once you’re rolling, though, it holds speed fine and we’ve certainly ridden much worse for the money.
The payback in terms of rear end smoothness becomes more obvious the further you ride, too. There’s a bit of chatter coming up the big diameter seatpost at slower speeds, but once you’ve got some flow going on, the compact-style sloping top tube frame definitely takes a lot of the sting out of badly fractured surfaces.
SRAM’s Force groupset is very similar to earlier Red
That said, you can’t relax totally in the rough, as even with a long stem and wide bar theoretically adding more flex into the cockpit, the front end is much less forgiving. It’ll jolt your hands and sting your wrists if you hit a big pothole head on and we had to regularly change hand position on longer rides.
On the plus side, you do get very accurate front wheel placement and no hint of braking judder even on the steepest plummets. A short wheelbase also kept the Geos very keen on direction changes too, but that front end beef meant it never started to feel nervous even at high speeds.
Build quality isn’t in doubt, either, as the Geos has full carbon dropouts and all-carbon bearing seats rather than alloy inserts for the oversized bottom bracket and tapered steerer fork.
The Velocite has a great finish and was very accurately made, too
Excellent frame alignment is also better than most big brand name bikes we clamp our calibrating tools on, although a limited four-size range does leave the largest and smallest riders in the cold.
This article was originally published in Cycling Plus magazine, available on Apple Newsstand and Zinio.
