Review: Kona’s Unit X is like a singlespeed, but with 10 more gears?

The Kona Unit has a long history, from a Canadian company with an equally deep heritage. While Kona celebrates its 30th birthday in 2018, the Unit name dates back at least half that. The Unit was (and still is) Kona’s cross-country singlespeed bike. Affordable and fun and fast, it was one of the first ever ‘production’ singlespeed mountain bikes and it’s still in the line today.

Kona continues to delight its many fans by producing some incredible bikes, many of which seem a touch too edgy for the mega corporations to come out with, but which seem to sit well with Kona’s slightly anti-establishment, or at least devil-may-care stance. We’ve previously tried, and liked, the carbon Honzo, the Process and the Hei Hei Trail in the last couple of years and none have disappointed.

What then is this? The Unit X takes that challenging, fun singlespeed attitude of that original Unit and adds just enough gears that it’s no longer such a stupid idea. Especially if your knees aren’t what they were in 2003 (ahem…). Kona has taken that skinny steel frame and rigid fork and added 11 wide-ranging gears without seemingly reducing that sense of attitude, or compromising that classic Kona silhouette.

The singlespeed Unit still remains in the range, but now we can leave that for the youngsters.

With a bright paint job, plus sized tyres and matchy-matchy black components everywhere, the X is a good-looking machine with, as we’ll see, a whole load of hidden charms that expand its usefulness.

And, despite the ‘X’ name, it has 11, rather than 10 speeds, which will disappoint any classical scholars, but please anyone who’s ever had to shuffle an unsuitable bike to the top of a mountain somewhere, when the joys of a limited gear range have long since failed to be amusingly quirky.

The Bike

Kona has, not surprisingly, gone for steel for the Unit X. Specifically, Reynolds 520 butted cromoly, with a complementing slender steel fork. Both frame and fork will take plus tyres and, while the bike’s intended use is left pretty much open to the user, early promo videos showed a Viking-like beardy-man called Erkki Punttila mooring his fishing trawler for the evening and bikepacking his Unit X deep, deep into the woods.

In order to facilitate this kind of behaviour, the Unit X comes with bottle bosses all over the place: two sets in the main triangle and another set under the downtube. And then the fork blades carry another set each side. While they’re not the triple-boss fittings beloved by the bikepacking cognoscenti, they’ll do fine for their primary purpose of strapping more stuff to your bike (and other adaptors like those from Wolftooth or King Cage can add extra bolt-on flexibility). There are even mudguard and rack eyes on the QR dropouts of the fork.

Out back, the boss-fest continues with mudguard and rack eyes top and bottom of the seatstays. The dropouts themselves deserve a mention, as they’re Kona’s own sliding versions, should you wish to turn your back on all this technology and singlespeed your Unit (or add a hub gear…).

The boss theme continues on the downtube with cabling for a front mech and a seemingly spare set of cable guides, until you realise that it’s for a dropper post. Kona has specced a 31.6mm seatpost, should you wish to add a dropper post (and increasing numbers of bikepackers are running short droppers for enhanced loaded descending). Of course you could just add one because you’re running the Unit on badass trails and you want to drop the saddle in a hurry.

Gear-wise, we have a full SRAM NX transmission, with a giant 11-42T range (though still on a Shimano-compatible Formula freehub for future affordable spares), and up front is a diminutive 28T NX chainset. This is definitely a bike built for low gears and tall hills. The chainstay yoke is a thing of 3D beauty, giving endless mud clearance for the tyre (while also offering a bit of a shelf for it…).

Rather incredibly, we have a SRAM Powerspline bottom bracket with all the power of 2005 behind it. This sits very neatly inside the steel, threaded BB shell, but it seems incongruous with the rest of the recent 11-speed drivetrain technology.

Up front we find a good selection of Kona-brand bars and stem, decent lock-on grips, post and saddle as you’d expect in this mid-price range. Brakes are SRAM’s new Level T brakes, which we’ve already found pretty good, though the brake lever and shifter clamps are both wide enough, they conspire to put the shifters uncomfortably out of reach for all but the monster-thumbed.

The ubiquitous WTB Scraper rims are fitted to QR hubs with WTB’s popular Ranger 2.8in plus tyres front and rear. Refreshingly, the bike comes with rims taped, and a pair of tubeless valves in the box. Top work, Kona!

The Ride

Thanks to a mix-up, we’d ordered a medium Unit X, but received a size large. This turned out not be an issue. At 5ft 9in or so, I’m on the cusp of most mediums and larges, quite often preferring the longer top tubes that come with large frames. The large X fitted fine and was soon winching up and plummeting down the hills we have around here.

The bike looks smart and feels pretty sprightly to ride out on, despite surprisingly being (just) on the wrong side of 30lbs, usually a tipping point in bike feel. The bike was disappointingly hefty to lift though and it was hard to pin down where the extra chub was hiding. Steel frames are rarely light in the first place and SRAM’s NX groupset isn’t featherweight either. Add in the heft of the pinned Scraper rims and chunky tyres and it’s hard to make a bike any lighter.

Nevertheless, the low gears (some coincidence?) helped the bike spin up the hills in a stately, if not speedy manner. On more rolling trails, though, the slender steel fork and the relatively skinny tubes helped to add some ‘zing’ to the ride. Despite a decent reach to the frame, the front end felt immediate, lively and loftable, and with tyre pressures in the low teens (and sometimes lower) the Unit X encouraged much more spirited riding than you’d expect from a bike without suspension.

Despite Kona’s portrayal of the bike as perhaps being more of an adventure bike, it feels a little more like its Unit namesake: a bike that defies pigeonholing and which can be many things to different riders. To further perpetuate the steel frame legend, the bike does feel like it comes alive and there’s a feeling of being rewarded by every effort you put in.

If you ride the Unit X while chatting and admiring fields and clouds and hedgerows, the bike will keep you tracking true without any fuss. If you start winding up the wick, though, the bike will jump through hoops for you and on rolling trails it’s an absolute hoot – even while drifting sideways in the mud or the recent snow, it still felt sure-footed, though the Ranger tyres aren’t ideal for at least three months in every British year.

It does invite thoughts as to what else this bike would be good at, given the chance. With a pair of dramatically lighter 29er wheels and tyres, it could become a nimble South Downs Way killer, but as it is, it seems happy enough to plus bike tractor its way around. If much of your exploring is on man-made, or surfaced trails, whether that be gravel, packhorse, cobbles or trail centre, the Unit X with its plus set-up will be a giggle to ride.

If you’re venturing into more offbeat and unpredictable terrain, then a tyre change for something grippier would be recommended and, depending on how much of a hurry you’re in, a diet would help bring out the bike’s springy steel soul better than the rather dowdy gears currently allow.

Overall

The Unit X is a fantastic looking bike with a great pedigree and that iconic Kona look and feel. However, a perfect storm of nearly every component being slightly on the chubby side has robbed the bike of the playful feel that it so obviously has the potential to have. It would be nice to have the bike a couple of kilos lighter, or a couple hundred pounds cheaper, or perhaps it really is the sole domain of the bearded trawlerman-adventurer.

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Kona Unit X Specifications

• Frame // Reynolds 520 Butted Cromoly
• Fork // Kona steel plus fork
• Hubs // Formula QR
• Rims // WTB Scraper i40 TCS 27.5in
• Tyres // WTB Ranger TCS 27.5in x 2.8in
• Chainset // SRAM NX Powerspline
• Rear Mech // SRAM NX
• Shifters // SRAM NX
• Cassette // SRAM PG1130 11-42T 11 speed
• Brakes // SRAM Level T
• Stem // Kona XC/BC
• Bars // Kona XC/BC Riser, 760mm
• Grips // Kona Key Grip
• Seatpost // Kona Thumb 31.6mm
• Saddle // WTB Volt Comp
• Size Tested // Large
• Sizes Available // S, M, L, XL
• Weight As Tested // 13.7kg (30.2lbs)

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This review was published in Issue #117 of Singletrack Magazine as part of our ‘Unsprung Heroes’ group test. Keen to read more? You can check out all of the stories and features from Issue #117 of Singletrack Magazine right here.

Review Info

Brand:	Kona
Product:	Unit X
From:	Kona, konaworld.com
Price:	£1199.00
Tested:	by Chipps for 2 months

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