Giant nailed it with the new Trance 29er; it is an impressive revamp to their trail bike line-up that was begging for a 29er. With a stout 115mm of travel out the back, 130mm up front and a nice relaxed shape it’s going to be very popular.
Let’s talk about our new Trance test bike!
We frothed pretty hard over the Trance 1, the $5499 version from the same platform, it was a bike we felt challenged the need for a carbon frame at that price point to the sacrifice of key spec areas. Check out that in-depth review here: Giant Trance 29er 1 review.
Long-Term test and cross country race conversions.
When the opportunity came to use the top-shelf model as a long-term test bike we accepted, we have loads of new kit coming our way that needs a home; we’re talking about Shimano 12 speed XTR… Wait, what!? Yes, we secured a complete M9100 XTR groupset, and we’re so excited to fit it and get it out there.
We also have SRAM Eagle AXS coming to Flow HQ… Yes, it’s super exciting, this stuff looks magical, so stay tuned!
We also want to use the Trance in a race. Which might not sound too crazy, but we aim to tweak and modify it to bring it closer in performance and feel to the Anthem 29 without too much fuss, we’re talking about cockpit setup, tyre choice, suspension setup. You can bet there are many people out there who own a trail bike and may enter a race a couple of times a year, so they wouldn’t necessarily need a full-blown race rig.
DVO, a smaller suspension brand specced on a Giant, interesting!
The DVO Suspension has our attention, with minimal experience with their gear over the last few years we’re eager to see how it stacks up against the main guys FOX and RockShox. So far we’re a little puzzled with the fork, exacerbated by the fact we spent a couple early rides turning the slow speed compression dial the wrong way, not exactly their fault, we should have looked closer.
We set the pressures and sag to their recommended base-settings listed on the DVO website, and by the looks of it, we might need to get in touch with the Australian DVO crew if we need additional tuning done to the rear shock. As it is now, the suspension feels beautiful and composed, but the middle compression mode in the Topaz shock feels quite light, we’ll delve a little deeper for our next update.
That’s it for now, keep an eye out for future updates, next time this bike appears it might be vastly different!