Review: Funn Black Magic Flat Pedals

These Funn Black Magic pedals are one of only two plastic pedals in this grouptest. The pedals arrived unpackaged and with pins already in. Apparently, retail ones come with a pin pack and nice little socket key for installing them. If you get some, I’d recommend using that to tighten them all right down, as ours lost most pins on the first ride, which certainly made for an interesting final descent.

Since getting replacements and making sure they were tight, they’ve not lost any more, despite a few months of the harshest local riding we had to offer them. As you’d expect from plastic pedals, the pins rely on captive nuts for retention, and the portion of pin that shows is a conical stud with hex flats on the lower half.

Funn don’t revlea exactly what these are made from, just that they’re a fibreglass reinforced thermoplastic. They’re only available in black, though the pins do come in different anodised colours. to give small highlights of your choice. There are slight horizontal cutouts through the ends of the body, though I’m not sure why as they’re very narrow, trap a little mud, and probably don’t save much weight on a plastic body.

In use, I found them okay most of the time, though tended to slip off them a little on seated climbs. The conical pins aren’t amazingly grippy, and despite slight elevation differences over the surface of the body, overall the pedals feel very flat. In all, grip is average, and they remind me very much of the generic flat pedals I was riding six or seven years ago.

What’s surprising is that they’re not generic, but unfortunately they just feel that way. I shared them with a couple of other testers, who both said the same things: competent, perhaps a bit too flat, and not very exciting. Both had other preferences, and so do I. It feels brutal and unfair to say it like that, but it’s true. These aren’t terrible pedals by any means, they just feel like designs have moved on and there are better options out there.

Over the course of a few months of winter weather, their performance and the way they spin didn’t degrade at all, so they evidently have decent sealing. Behind those seals, you’ll find a fairly typical combination of one bearing and one DU bushing per pedal. Opening them up at the end of the test revealed a bit of dirt had got in from the crank end, but not so much they were running any rougher or in need of attention yet.

Some of the fittings, like the pins and alloy end caps, as well as the molding itself, have obviously been made with some care and attention to detail. The small bits of branding, detail and reinforcement show some design efffort. Unfortunately, on the whole it just feels like they have a little something lacking compared to the competition.

Overall: Competent yet unexciting flat pedals with an average amount of grip. They’re functional, but for a bespoke molding, there’s just a bit of magic lacking. They’d be nice on a commuter or my BMX, but for MTB, there are lots of other options I’d reach for first.

Review Info