Long story short: the Cannondale Habit Carbon LT is a great little bike. Key question: would…
The Boardman MTR 8.9 has an awful lot going for it.The cover of this book may look 2013, but it reads just in 2023.
- Brand: Boardman
- Product: MTR 8.9
- Price: £1,800
- From: Boardman Bikes
- Review by: Benji for Singletrack World Magazine Issue 147
The Boardman is essentially a Halfords own-brand bike named after Chris Boardman, the erstwhile road time trial and velodrome legend from the previous century. Both of these facts instantly put the MTR 8.9 onto something of a back foot when it comes to kudos from the off-road cognoscenti. Dirtbags like ‘cool’ brands with ‘pure’ MTB heritage. A roadie brand from Halfords (of all places) just doesn’t cut it.
You will very rarely hear an experienced mountain biker recommend a Boardman bike if someone asks them ‘what’s a good mountain bike to get’. Is this snobbery justified? Let’s find out.
The Bike
The matt black… er, everything on the Boardman MTR 8.9 is either ‘tasteful’ or ‘boring’, depending who you ask. One thing’s for sure though, it does help the MTR hide its slightly old-fashioned silhouette. The tubing of the MTR gives it the look of a mountain bike from ten years ago, when hydroformed front triangles were in vogue and the rest of the tubes all looked like they came from different suppliers.
But this is all cover-of-the-book judging isn’t it? The rather dated appearance may be one of the reasons this bike doesn’t charge nearer £2k. Leaving aesthetics behind, let’s talk about the more important stuff.
The rear suspension is a trad four-bar – pivot on the chainstay and all – with a swing-link driving the shock mounted to the top tube, delivering a generous 145mm of travel. All of the cabling, bar the final section of dropper post, is externally routed. Which, again, some will think makes the bike look ‘old’ but others (like us) will be pleased to see because internal cable routing makes life harder than it needs to be for most folk.
In terms of build kit, the MTR 8.9 is pretty good. Dropper post, decent cockpit, good brakes, wide-range gears, the comfiest saddle we’ve ever sat on. There’s nothing here that we’d change until it wore out. The 150mm travel RockShox Gold 35 fork is a good performer and has the benefit of being really easy to work on and keep working tip-top.
Even the tyres we’d keep as is. Some ‘showier’ bikes may come with Assegai front tyres rather than the venerable ol’ DHF but… we actually prefer the DHF.
The Ride
With all the components doing their thang just fine, it’s left up to the frame geometry and the suspension units to keep things tickety-boo. Starting with the geometry, the MTR is a great example of something not-perfect – or super up to date – being, actually, perfectly fine. Sure, the bike would probably handle better with a slightly steeper seat angle and a slacker head angle but… jeez, for a bike that costs the same as some premium suspension forks, the MTR 8.9 is insanely capable.
It feels much, much more stable at speed than the 66° head angle would have you think. It’s also a perfectly fine place to spend many hours in the saddle and on the hills despite its mediocre seat angle. Admittedly I did wang the saddle as far forward as the seatpost clamp physically allowed, as well as tilting the nose down, to help with rider positioning. The generous chainstay length does help prevent undue front wheel wandering or lift. Hey, the head angle is improvable with an angleset headset at some point down the line if needed.
Perhaps the most impressive aspect of the Boardman MTR 8.9 was its suspension performance. The RockShox Gold 35 fork is great. It never felt overfaced across rough stuff, or noodly or binding-y under hard braking. Four-bar designs can be overly squidgy, vague and collapse-y if not done well, but the rear suspension here is properly sorted. Sorted so much that it is ‘invisible’ and consequently very easy to totally not think about during riding.
The MTR feels nicely supple and grippy when climbing or cruising, but quickly asserts a nice level of support and feedback when things get faster and/or rougher. It does as much as you need it to, when you need it to. Nothing excessively active or unpredictable. The rear shock itself is a lengthy 230x60mm unit and its generous size no doubt helps its capability, ease of set-up and overall predictability. It is a seriously impressive rear suspension design that wholly offsets any concerns about how retro the frame tubing itself looks.
To turn closer attention back to the components, because they can make or break a bike at this price point, we can spot two easily overlooked items. One good, one bad. The bad: the vertically orientated dropper post lever is hard to go back to when you’re used to shifter-style horizontal levers. The good: 30mm internal width rims will work fine with modern aftermarket tyre purchases. And while you run the tyres that the bike comes with (which you should do because they are great all-rounders) all you need to make them tubeless is a set of valves and some sealant because the rims and the tyres are tubeless-ready.
Overall
Whoever it was at Boardman who was tasked with building a full suspension 29er trail bike that has to retail in real bricks-and-mortar Halfords stores for significantly under £2k has done a damn fine job and deserves plenty of kudos.
Perhaps the killer question with sub £2k bikes is ‘can you live with it for a few years without hitting a brick wall?’ (metaphorically speaking). We think the answer is a pretty close-run thing, but we’d say ‘yes’”. The suspension is fabulous. Almost all the geometry numbers are workable. It’s only really the relatively limited dropper insertion and pretty mediocre standover that limit the bike’s radness potential for those who may wish to go down the tekkers route of mountain biking.
As a Traily McTrailface trail bike, the Boardman MTR 8.9 has an awful lot going for it. The cover of this book may look 2013, but it reads just fine in 2023.
- Frame // 6061 Alloy, 145mm
- Shock // RockShox Deluxe Select+ 230x60mm
- Fork // RockShox 35 Gold RL 150mm
- Wheels // Boardman Boost 29er Tubeless Ready
- Front Tyre // Maxxis Minion DHF EXO TR
- Rear Tyre // Maxxis Minion DHR II EXO TR
- Chainset // SRAM NX Eagle, 32T, 170mm
- Drivetrain // SRAM NX Eagle 12-speed, PG1210 11–50T
- Brakes // SRAM Guide T, 180/180mm
- Stem // Boardman Alloy, 31.8mm
- Handlebars // Boardman Alloy, 780mm
- Grips // Boardman Lock-on
- Seat Post // Satori Sorata Pro Dropper, 150mm
- Saddle // Boardman MTR
- Weight // 16.3kg
Geometry of our size L
- Head angle // 66°
- Effective seat angle // 75.5°
- Seat tube length // 475mm
- Head tube length // 110mm
- Chainstay // 447mm
- Wheelbase // 1,225mm
- Effective top tube // 638mm
- BB height // 33mm drop
- Reach // 467mm
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Review Info
| Brand: | Boardman |
| Product: | MTR 8.9 |
| From: | Boardman Bikes |
| Price: | £1800 |
| Tested: | by Benji for Singletrack World Magazine Issue 147 |
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