Speed Date: BH Lynx 4.8 29er 9.7 Carbon

First things first. I reckon this bike looks cool.

I know half of the population of the world would disagree but in my opinion you could get a bike that’s a hell of a lot uglier than this. If you’re going to spend thousands on a bike it’s going to have to be easy on the eye and I reckon this is a looker.

Disagree?

Well that’s fine, but let me also tell you that apart from its swoopy curves and some of the best graphics on a bike I’ve seen, it’s a really, really good bike to ride.

I don’t know a great deal of nerdy facts about the bike – I’ve not really got much of a clue about spring rates and whatnot, probably because I spend so much time riding bikes rather than reading books about them. What I do know is that it’s quite slack, it’s got 120mm of travel via the Dave Weagle “Split Pivot” swingarm, it’s got noticeably short chainstays, it’s equipped with a Fox CTD rear shock which employs some kind of floating mount that separates pedalling and braking from suspension action, a gorgeous Fox CTD Kashima fork and it’s dripping with top-end XTR and DT Swiss components. It also comes as standard with some surprisingly-brilliant Michelin Wild Racer and Wild Grip’r tyres.

I’m told the completely-carbon frame is just short of 2.5 Kg, which is pretty impressive for a 120mm travel 29er frame and built like this, it’s very light. Somewhere around 11 – 12 Kgs I think.

Cable routing is mostly internal and includes guides for the cables for dropper posts. There wasn’t a dropper post included with the bike, but BH probably assume that you’re going to upgrade the stock carbon post. I have my own opinion on internally-routed cables based on hours of swearing and prodding cables into blind orifices, but once they’re in, they’re in I suppose.

I was ‘looking after’ the BH Lynx for a few weeks and I pretty much didn’t ride anything else. I loved it.

It’s brilliant. It climbs like nothing else I’ve ridden – it loves loose and gravelly ascents and the lack of weight means that it’ll do it quickly if you’ve got the legs and/or the inclination. Downhill? It’s a slack-ish angled, 29er, 120mm travel-equipped bike with thru-axles front and rear. It’s as good as it sounds like it should be. Like I said, I couldn’t stop riding this bike and I was genuinely gutted when I got the email from Chipps asking for it back.

What’s wrong with it?

Well, not much. That is, unless you consider the expensive rear shock right in the firing line from mud and debris from the rear wheel “not much”. It’s a pretty bad place for a rear shock, to be honest. The last thing you need is small rocks whacking your shaft….

Other minor niggles are that the bars are a bit narrow (even 5 years ago, before bars got silly-wide they would still have been on the narrow side) so you might want to swap those and I had to tighten one of the pivot bolts after it became loose. It was towards the end of a very bumpy 6 hour ride but you might want to make sure you take a tool with you on rides that includes a Torx driver, just in case.

Oh, and it’s fabulously expensive. But isn’t everything nowadays?

Review Info