DT Swiss XMC130 fork review

DT Swiss have added reliable consistency to the always excellent performance potential of Pace’s lightweight trail forks, but at a serious price.

The basic architecture hasn’t changed much, with the mix of hollow machined uppers and carbon fibre lowers still outstanding in terms of stiffness-for-weight. At 1,648g they’re as light as a lot of 100mm race forks.

You get the same controlled damping and increasingly progressive travel as previous forks. It needs a fair wallop to get the last 20mm of travel. We love the lock down, tunable automatic release of the Launch Control for steep climbing too. Every DT fork we’ve tried has felt the same. Even after several hard months of testing, several sets have been faultlessly reliable. 

The only thing you’ve got to watch is that passing bushes don’t knock the rebound lever round without you noticing.

You’ll have to wait a bit for post mounts, and while the planned QR15 through-axle versions will add even more stiffness, the difference won’t be as dramatic as on Fox forks. It’s just a shame about DT pricing.