Mondraker MIND is a GPS enabled telemetry system. As well as being able to help you set up your suspension it collects data on suspension activity while you’re riding. This is relayed back to an app on your phone allowing you to see where you’ve ridden and what your suspension was doing at the time.
- Brand: Mondraker
- Product: MIND Telemetry
- Price: Included with certain Mondraker bikes
- From: Mondraker
- Tested by: Sim Mainey for three months
Telemetry is one of those buzzwords that gets racers and bike nerds hot under the helmet. Essentially telemetry is gathering data about what the bike is doing in certain situations. Based on this data it’s possible to make changes and achieve the perfect setup. For racers telemetry is a very useful tool in the going fast arsenal, which is why you’ll often see wires, sensors and boxes strapped to race bikes in training and mechanics with laptops in the pits. But Mondraker thinks that telemetry can be simplified to be useful for everyone, not just racer types. So they created Mondraker MIND.
How does it work?
There are two Mondraker MIND units, one for the fork and one for the shock. The shock master unit is integrated into the frame, just on the rocker link. A corresponding magnet is found on the main pivot point. The fork master unit plugs into the bottom of the fork steerer tube, looking like a mini mudguard, with a magnet stuck to the back of the fork lower, although the one on our test bike needed a zip tie to stay put.
By monitoring the strength of the magnetic fields (stronger = closer = under compression) the system is able to work out where you are in the suspension travel at any point. Combined with GPS information the myMondraker phone app can overlay what your suspension was doing at a specific point in a ride.
With a SIM card and GPS system inside the main unit you don’t even have to bring a phone along on rides – useful in theory but I don’t think anyone rides without their phone these days. Do they?
What’s the myMondraker app?
This is where you interact, digitally, with the bike. Everything from registering your bike, accessing support and arming a burglar alarm is done within the app. It’s also the brain behind Mondraker MIND.
Open up the app on your phone, scan the barcode on the MIND fork head unit and the bike appears within the app. Fill in a few details about yourself, such as weight, and the app will walk you through setting up the suspension. This involves sitting on the bike, letting MIND take some readings and then altering shock pressures until the app is happy. It’s easy but it’s also accurate. Using the app’s recommended sag and damping settings I was only a click of compression away from a well-balanced set up I felt happy with.
Once you’re good to go MIND moves onto recording your rides. It does all the usual stuff, logging distance, time, speed and elevation but it also shows the number of times the bike was bottomed out, how many sick jumps you’ve done and the max travel used for both fork and shock. A very neat graph showing the amplitude of suspension that corresponds to a map makes for fascinating viewing.
As you’d expect there’s the ability to link your STRAVA account to the app and share rides on Facebook.
Does MIND just monitor the suspension then?
Yes, but currently it’s limited to just how much suspension travel you use. The sensors don’t monitor shaft speed (how quickly the suspension compresses and extends) so it can’t provide information on changes to compression and rebound settings. It can make recommendations on damping when you set up the bike, based on Mondraker and Fox’s experience, but this isn’t live information that is monitored and changes during riding. Arguably this would be more useful to know than how much travel is used – after all a rubber ring can do that for most people.
Do the sensors work from the e-bike battery?
No, both units need to be charged independently using the USB-C cables included with the bike. The batteries will last a couple of rides, but if you leave your bike for a week you’ll find the battery low. The myMondraker app will tell you the battery levels but it’s one more thing to check and charge before you head out.
Can I fit MIND to my bike?
MIND comes as standard to the Crafty Carbon, Foxy Carbon and Raze ranges and isn’t retro-fittable, although in theory there’s nothing stopping you fitting the front sensor to any bike.
What’s Mondraker MIND like to use?
As mentioned above the set up procedure is quick, easy and gives you a solid suspension baseline to work from. Ride to ride things are, for the most part, again easy. Turn the bike on, open the app, connect the bike and press a button to start recording your ride. When you’re finished, press the button to save the ride and then upload it to the cloud. Retire to the sofa with a beer to relive your ride from your bike’s point of view. Sometimes it’s as simple as that, sometimes it isn’t.
It can take a while for the GPS to acquire a satellite but what was more of an annoyance is when the app logged me out just before I was about to set off for a ride, which happened a few times. As the app doesn’t autofill the username or password (iPhone 12 Pro, iOS16) this meant I just didn’t log the ride. I’d rather be riding than fiddling with my phone. To begin with I also had issues uploading the ride. Deleting the app and logging back in seemed to solve the issue.
Looking at the interactive map and seeing how much travel was used where is certainly revealing, tallying feelings with figures and working out what the bike was actually doing. The graphs and information are interesting but it would be good if the data was turned into post-ride setting suggestions. I found that using the MIND recommended suspension settings I was regularly using about 85% of the shock’s travel. The bike felt good, but it had me wondering if it was worth dropping the pressure a little, something I did play with. Although it was good to have this information and make some changes based on it, I had to work it out for myself. It would have been better if the app had volunteered some suggestions based on the data collected during my actual riding. This would help make MIND a much more useful, proactive tool and become the onboard suspension tuner it has the potential to be.
Overall
For those who love collecting and analysing granular data about every ride then Mondraker MIND is very appealing, and if you’re looking for a bit more guidance on setting up your suspension MIND makes things very easy and straightforward. If you’re not into poring over data, connecting your rides and all that stuff you can safely ignore it altogether with no detrimental effects – other than you’ll have paid for something you aren’t using.
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Review Info
| Brand: | Mondraker |
| Product: | MIND Telemetry |
| From: | Mondraker |
| Price: | N/A |
| Tested: | by Sim Mainey for 3 months |
