I recently read a review of some cranksets in a magazine. Mostly it reads light strong shiney blah blah. The last line however of the Deore review has me confused a little. It read something like this crankset is still much more XC than Freeride.
Why?
Is it simply because the bashring is made of papier mache, are the bearings going to collapse if you land on them too often, or are the magazines just covering their arses in case punters start paying significantly less for their components?

No steel pedal inserts is the main thing IMO. Not something you would consider until you've ripped a pedal out the crank arms whilst doing something stupid.

have been riding dh xc and freeride on insert free alloy cranks for many years and its never caused me any issues

No steel pedal inserts is the main thing IMO.

yeh

(didn't think deore had a bashring either though)

I'm guessing because is marketed as a cheep XC/trail crank, not as a freeride crank?

I'm not convinced that steel inserts are nececary. I've got burgtech PHF's on the old design XT crank, if any pedal was going to rip the thread out, its those badboys!

have been riding dh xc and freeride on insert free alloy cranks for many years and its never caused me any issues

I'm 18st and like big drops.

I'm guessing because is marketed as a cheep XC/trail crank, not as a freeride crank?

I'm not convinced that steel inserts are nececary. I've got burgtech PHF's on the old design XT crank, if any pedal was going to rip the thread out, its those badboys!
I suppose it depends on how heavy handed you are. I'm also not the smoothest of riders.

ok doug you probably need them more than me

I'm not 18st and I'm not rad

I do sometimes hit rocks and I've stripped 2 crank threads

thats funny i checked that out this morning on the brand spanking new set i just bought, M545possibly. It has steel pedal inserts according to the fridge magnet.

I'm not 18st and I have ripped a few pedals out to.

SOOB – is it a double ?

shimano tend to put inserts into the doubles & not the triples ?

I'm 16.5 and the only time I ripped pedals out was by accelerating up a hill, nothing to do with impacts or drops lol.

A "well-built" mate ripped the pedal out of his old style XTs. The moment of death was a classic JRA, but he'd been doing jumps and drops on them.

I'm sure that there are people out there quite happily riding quite terrifying stuff on cheapo or lightweight kit, but for peace of mind I'd go with something that's been designed for the job.

they look like inserts to me

it is a double, as was the review!

22/36/bash

imo the bash is probably only going to last one bash, but ive got 104bcd spares