The New Bird Aeris: A 120mm Travel Fun Machine

North Hampshire based company, Bird Cycleworks, has just delivered us a press release about its new full suspension mountain bike: the 120mm travel Aeris. Bird already has an Aeris in the lineup, which is a 140/150mm travel All Mountain bike. Shrinking things down a little, the new Aeris 120 looks to take the same big-bike geometry and package it into a lighter and more efficient trail machine. With so many good trail bikes popping up this season, it looks like this could be the versatile do-it-all bike for most British riders.

While Bird Cycleworks is only three years old, they claim to have learnt a lot in that time and so they’ve poured all of their resources and knowledge inoo produce the new Aeris 120. If you’re not so fussed by carbon uber-bikes and the pricepoints that come with them, you’ll find there’s a lot to like about this bike. It’s built with alloy tubing, features a threaded bottom bracket shell, and uses external cable routing for the rear derailleur and brake lines. All pivots roll on Enduro Max cartridge bearings, and you’ll find a threaded 148x12mm Maxle out back locking down the rear wheel. Ease of service looks to be high on the priority list with this one.

Check out the full word from the Bird below;

“Designed by us in the UK from the ground up, the Aeris 120 is a hard riding trail bike, but climbs like an XC whippet, while keeping the fun levels high when the trail heads downhill. At Bird we don’t do catalogue, so rather than pointing to a frame in a brochure, throwing some new geo at it, making a sick edit and calling that done, we’ve used our experience gained over 3 years to make the best short travel FS we can.” – Bird Cycleworks

The Bird Aeris 120 features:

• 120mm rear travel
• Designed for 130mm travel forks
• All new tube-set, designed to give the best stiffness to weight ratio
• New mini-collet axle system w/Enduro Max bearings
• Metric shock sizing
• Double bearing shock mount to give the smoothest suspension movement
• Threaded bottom bracket shell
• Removable ISG05 mount
• External cable routing for rear derailleur and brake lines
• Stealth cable routing for dropper post
• 148x12mm Maxle rear end
• One piece brake/axle assembly for maximum precision and minimum squeal
• 1x specific rear end for maximum stiffness
• Bottle cage mounts!
• Colours: Powder Blue, Tungsten Grey, Burnt Candy Orange
• Sizes: Small, Medium, Medium/Large, Large, X-Large
• Frame price: £850 – £990
• Complete bike price: £1665 – £3995

There’s 120mm of travel out back, which is controlled by a four-bar linkage and a new Metric sized RockShox Deluxe rear shock. Bird have minimised the welding on the Aeris 120 compared to their existing Aeris by using chunky billet machined sections where they can. That includes the upper seat stay yoke, where a stout bridge connects the stays to the swing link.

The pivots roll on Enduro Max cartridge bearings, which pack as many ball bearings into the cartridge as possible. This helps to increase load capacity, and is ideal for low-rotation items like rear suspension pivots. Also on show on the new Aeris 120 are the locking collet pivot hardware, which in our experience is a durable solution for keeping each pivot bolt tight and squeak-free.

Geometry on the Aeris runs pretty slack and long for a 120mm travel trail bike. That includes a 67-degree head angle, 430mm chainstays, and 330mm bottom bracket height. Reach is quite long, with the M/L size getting a 470mm reach with a 63cm effective top tube length. While we’ve not had a chance to ride one, by the looks of things, the Aeris 120 errs on the aggressive-likes-to-go-fast-downhill side of the trail bike spectrum.

Like what you see? Well you can check out more via the Bird Cycleworks website. Bird sells direct to consumer, and they offer a hefty range of options for complete bikes if you’re looking to build one up from scratch. All bikes are assembled in their north Hampshire factory, and they also have a range of demo bikes that you can take out and ride for yourself.