Bontrager Race XXX Lite bar/stem – in brief review
Carbon road cockpit
GBP £369.98 RRP | USD $579.98 Skip to view deals
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Though light and well priced for a carbon stem, the threads needed chasing out on the Bontrager Race XXX Lite. It’s something a bike shop will do when fitting, but we’d expect better.
The curvy, compact handlebar has a comfortable widening radius, drop and reach are pretty spot on, and a sharp transition from top to drop means no clearance issues in the drops.
The thin top section is flat-fronted, making cable placement easy. Performance is good – it can’t match the smoothness of some other options, but it’s impressive for the money.
This article was originally published in Cycling Plus magazine, available on Apple Newsstand and Zinio.
Authors
Warren Rossiter is BikeRadar and Cycling Plus magazine’s senior technical editor for road and gravel. Having been testing bikes for more than 20 years, Warren has an encyclopedic knowledge of road cycling and has been the mastermind behind our Road Bike of the Year test for more than a decade. He’s also a regular presenter on the BikeRadar Podcast and on BikeRadar’s YouTube channel. In his time as a cycling journalist, Warren has written for Mountain Biking UK, What Mountain Bike, Urban Cyclist, Procycling, Cyclingnews, Total Bike, Total Mountain Bike and T3. Over the years, Warren has written about thousands of bikes and tested more than 2,500 – from budget road bikes to five-figure superbikes. He has covered all the major innovations in cycling this century, and reported from launches, trade shows and industry events in Europe, Asia, Australia, North American and Africa. While Warren loves fast road bikes and the latest gravel bikes, he also believes electric bikes are the future of transport. You’ll regularly find him commuting on an ebike and he longs for the day when everyone else follows suit. You will find snaps of Warren’s daily rides on the Instagram account of our sister publication, Cycling Plus (@cyclingplus).
