Look Trail Roc+ Flat pedal review

The Look Trail Roc+ Flat pedal has a forged aluminum body, two cartridge bearings, a needle bearing, 10 replaceable pins per side and is made in France.

• Brand: Look
• Product: Trail Roc+ Flat Pedal
• From: Look
• Price: £159.90
• Tested: by Benji for 3 months

Pros

• Cool aesthetic
• Well constructed
• Pedal body is tough

Cons

• Lack feel
• Tall pins get bent
• Sit very close to crank

Look are well known for their clip-in pedals, especially ones for dropbar tarmac-going bicycles. The Look Trail Roc+ Flat is their premium flat pedal offering and is made in France, just like their premium clipless models. This French-made-ness partly explains the high price tag.

Weight wise, they came in a 406g.

In terms of construction, it’s a forged aluminium body (103 x 101mm) with a chromoly axle inside spinning on two roller bearings and a needle bearing. They have ten pins per side (you’ll notice I reduced this to nine pins per side because I removed the centre pin).

They don’t offer much in the way of concavity. Even when assessing them in the correct way (ie. top of pins to centre of pedal body as opposed to just assessing the pedal body). These are a pretty shallow pedal. By my measuring, the amount of concavity on offer is around 4.25mm. As comparison, a DMR Vault‘s concavity is around 6mm.

They are quite a striking looking pedal with a certain élan to them. Sort of a Euro-fied Burgtec vibe with their stepped edges. They are available in black, silver or orange.

On the trail there’s decent traction on offer from the tall skinny pins. The pins are effective sole grabbers. I did find that because the pedal body sits so close to the crank arm, I had to frequently look down and reposition my foot so that I was engaging the full complement of pins; my soles were always missing the inner pins.

And you can see for yourself the amount of bent pins that I’ve ended up with. It’s always hard to say whether any other pedal would have fared any better during the same test rides but frequent bending is often an issue with any pedals that have tall pins.

At least the pedal body itself has remained damage free so replacing pins is fine. And the bearings still feel impressively smooth and un-baggy.

With flat pedals there is always a compromise required. Feel, traction, durability – pick two. These Look Trail Roc+ flat pedals have okay traction and good durability (well, the bearings do anyway). They just don’t have feel.

Overall

Whilst the level of construction is impressive on these made-in-France flatties, they aren’t quite there in terms of feel. They lack concavity. The traction on offer is good, so long as you don’t mind having your foot sitting very close to the crank arm.

Join our mailing list to receive Singletrack editorial wisdom directly in your inbox.

Each newsletter is headed up by an exclusive editorial from our team and includes stories and news you don’t want to miss.