Orbea Occam LT M-Team review

The Orbea Occam LT M-Team is an engaging ride. It requires and rewards an accurate rider who pays attention at all times. Which is not a bad thing.

• Brand: Orbea
• Product: Occam LT M-Team
• Price: £8,599
• From: Orbea
• Tested by: Benji for 5 months
• SQUIRREL_TEXT_13048560

Pros

• A rewarding ride
• Firm, sporty ride
• Great fork and shock

Cons

• Stiff-ish frame
• Air shock versions may not feel as sorted
• Expensive

The Occam LT. The LT stands for ‘longer travel’, as opposed to ‘long travel’. A 150mm rear travel mountain bike is not long travel. This LT suffix is to differentiate this Occam from the slightly shorter travel (140mm) Occam SL.

If you don’t want to read our recent ‘Orbea Occam LT or SL? Here’s how to decide‘ feature, then I’ll do my best to sum it the basic gist. Here goes…

‘Trail bike;’ is such a broad term these days that Orbea decided to split their trail bike offering into two models: Occam SL and Occam LT. As well as a bit of suspension travel difference, there’s differences in geometry, build kit and suspension kinematic.

Enough about the twin trail bike theory, back to the Occam LT.

Geometry chat

Those of you who may remember our previous Orbea Occam LT review will recall that while we liked the bike, it felt a bit not-quite-there in terms of modern geometry. The steep 66.5° head angle and lfoty 508mm seat tube (XL) being the two main issues of concern.

Well, I’m happy to report that Orbea have gone back to their geometry drawing board and brought things into the year 2024AD, for the most part.

I personally still think the head tube lengths and chain stay lengths are both on the short side (on the L and XL sizes especially). But taking my spoilt brat hat off, the geometry on the Occam LT is better than a lot of brands’ trail bikes. And the head tube can be pretty much sorted with a simple handlebar swap. And the chain stay lengths aren’t as silly short as some.

Orbea make a bit of noise about their ‘steep and deep’ priorities. This phrase refers to their bikes’ seat tubes and dropper post insertion ability. Basically you can install longer travel dropper posts into Orbea mountain bikes because the seat tubes are basically straight all the way to the BB and they aren’t very tall.

The seat tube on this XL size bike is a very agreeable 460mm length. That’ll accept a 200mm post easily. And most XL size riders will be fine with a 230mm post even. This alone makes the Occam LT a great proposition for riders who like to ride steep, and/or sketchy tekkers descents.

The other geometry numbers that have really upped the Occam LT’s abilities are the head angle and the reach. Orbea have always been pretty long reach bikes and the new Occam LT maintains this with a reach of 505mm on this XL model in Low geo setting.

Yep, Low geo setting. The Occam LT has a flipchip. The chip is on the rear shock yoke and is very simple and quick to use; a 6mm Allen key is all you need to loosen the bolt, raise/lower the bike, and retighten.

Having said that, this bike will live in the Low setting. At 342mm the Low setting isn’t even that low. Which is a good thing by the way. It’s nice to see that Orbea have worked out that we no longer need low slung BBs when the bike’s wheelbase is decently long (1,285mm on XL). The seat angle – often the victim of flipchipping – stays sufficiently steep at 77° also.

Frame stuff

The Occam LT uses a different carbon layup for each different size to try to ensure that the Small size rides like the XL in terms of flex, or lack of it. The Occam LT is on the stiffer side in terms of chassis feel. Which is fine; it helps contribute the bike’s responsive and zippy overall feel.

Okay then. Do we talk any more about thru-headset cable routing? The Occam LT sports this feature. Whilst I’d rather not have thru-headset routing, it wouldn’t put me off buying a bike that had it. I’m going to leave the debate there.

The down tube is where you’ll find Orbea’s new LockR. This is one of the better execute frame storage designs out there. It’s easy and positive to open/close and the lid doesn’t let in as much wetness as rival designs can do. The whole implementation of LockR reinforces the general vibe that this is very well made frame. Everything is very neat with no overbuilding nor undernourishment. You can see why Orbea owners stay Orbea owners.

Despite the LockR, you may not need to put a multi-tool into the down tube; there’s a dinky-but-does-most-things multi-tool stored in the pivot of the rocker linkage. It’s held in place by a magnet and is actually a really useful thing to have.

The side-sided strut may annoy some riders who are only seemingly only allowed to use their right hand for operating a water bottle, but as a leftie I’m fine with it. I’m also a sucker for asymmetrical frame braces. Blame that supercool Specialized Demo that came out with it a few years ago.

The chainstay protector is another just-so item. Chunky enough to do the job well without being excessive. There’s also a modest little rubber flap attached to the back of the seat tube that stops stuff falling between the gap ‘twixt seat tube and stays yoke. These rubbers – combined with the effective internal cable management – makes the Occam LT impressively quiet on the trail. Zero clicks ior creaks.

Suspension stuff

The 160mm travel Fox 36 Float Grip2 is one of my favourite forks, so the Occam LT is off to a winner there. Through a combination of volume spacers and comprehensive damping adjusters you can get this fork to behave in a wide numbers of ways. Soggy but rampy. Firm but linear. Fast or slow. Or any combination of those really. This really helps when you’re trying to achieve a balanced feel on a bike. A Fox 36 also just feels less stiff-dead than a Fox 38, to me anyway.

The rear shock is a coil Fox DHX Factory with rebound and low speed compression (LSC) damping adjustment (as well as coil preload). As a lighter rider I installed a 450 weight spring to achieve the sag/feel that worked best.

The rear suspension design on the Occam LT is ideally suited to the free-moving silky action of a coil shock. There’s a lot of anti-squat in the design which I suspect may make pedaling along feel overly stiff and skittish with an air shock installed. I also suspect that the progression (22% ish) of the rear suspension may make full/deeper travel hard to achieve for lighter riders if it was air shock-ed.

As it is, run fully open, the Fox DHX coil does bob a bit when pedalling. This is a good thing; it means you can dial in a click or two of LSC and/or rebound to quell it. You don’t have to run the shock at its fully open ‘stops’ to get your traction. You can get things how you want/like/need them to be.

As is often the case with coil, it’s the increased level of midstroke support that produces the most joy. Not to mention the sheer consistency of feel thoughout the stroke. There’s no dead zones. Or rapid rebound zones. Or ‘missing in action’ zones.

Ultimately, the suspension stuff on this particular Orbea Occam LT M-Team is great. Pretty much as good as it gets on an off-the-peg mainstream brand. I am going to predict/suspect/accuse the air shock specced Occam LT models as being a but more difficult to set up in a way that isn’t compromised in some way (supple, supportive, full travel: pick two).

Speaking of overly firm, the tyres that came specced on this bike were everything but. In the durometer sense at least. They were actually very firm in terms of casing. Maxxis 3C MaxxGrip DH Casing tyres are all well in the right time and place (gravity racing, or winter woodland sessions) but the first couple of rides on the Occam LT had me wondering if I was coming down with a debilitating illness. Everything not-downhill was so slow and arduous.

On the trail

After swapping tyres to something less OTT but still capable, the Occam LT massively increased in swiftness and pleasantness. The combination of geometry and nicely performing suspension made for a bike that was enjoyably efficient at climbing and contouring.

Sure, the shortish chainstays required a little bit of rider focus to get a bit hunched over the bars to prevent undue wheel lift, but it was manageable. The steep seat angle and sheer reach of the bike made it nowhere near to seesaw fore-aft pitchfest wrestling match of bikes of old. The not-low bottom bracket height also definitely made for a bike that did not feel overly stuk to the ground. You can play about on the Occam LT if you want to.

When it comes to descending, despite the coily and Fox 36 goodness, it rides very much like a trail bike as opposed to an diet enduro bike. For once, I don’t really think geometry was the main factor here. The head angle is fine, the reach is great, the standover is amazing. I think it was more the frame (and maybe wheel) lateral stiffness.

I will confess to probably being to used to (and loving) ‘flexy’ bikes. And this test period has involved sojourns my longtermer Orange Switch 6, a Starling Megamurmur and even a Yamaha Moro 7 ebike is relevant. All of these are not-stiff bikes.

The Orbea Occam LT is a different ride. There’s not a lot of give to it. I found myself ’50-pence-piece-ing’ around corners where the bike reacts quicker than I expected and I need to correct things and then often correct the correction. The Occam LT is not a harsh ride. In fact, I’d say it pretty median for where carbon mountain bikes are these days. It’s not as stick-stiff as a Canyon Spectral CF can be for example, but it’s not quite as soft as a YT Jeffsy.

As a descender, it just requires a bit more attention than the front end’s geometry and rear end’s coil aesthetic suggests. And, truth be told, as well as me being perhaps overly accustomed to flexy bikes, I may also be overly fixated on short stems. Shorter stems than the one on the Occam LT. It’s not like the 40mm stem is exactly long but regardless, I would have liked to have put a 32 or 35mm stem on there. But I couldn’t. Due to the integrated stem/spacers/headset arrangement. Frustrating.

A quick rundown of the build kit before I sign off on this review. The high end SRAM brakes and wireless drivetrain were flawless. Didn’t give them a second thought. The in-house OC carbon bars were fine. Not overly stiff. Not an odd shape/sweep. Wide. Enough rise (when combined with all the stem spacers at least). Ergon grips and saddle – fine. The OC dropper worked fine. The similarly Oquo wheels were really nice – quick, fast rolling, fast enough engagement.

Much like a lot of higher tier Orbea models, the value isn’t amazing. There’s a lot of own-brand finishing kit here which, nice as it is, is still own-brand finishing kit on a £8,599 pushbike. But, if you’re happy with your hard-earned going into a crisply made cabron frame, decent Fox suspension and SRAM AXS, then that’s fine by me.

Overall

Not exactly an impressive value proposition but the Orbea Occam LT has a super nice frame sporting great all-round geometry numbers and a suspension combo that is one of the best out there. The Occam LT is an engaging ride. It requires and rewards an accurate rider who pays attention at all time. Which is arguably not a bad thing. If you like your ride experience to be super intense and involving from the get-go until you collapse back at your doorstep/carpark, you’ll really dig the Orbea Occam LT.

Orbea Occam LT M-Team specification

• Frame // Orbea Occam OMR Carbon, 150mm
• Shock // Fox DHX Factory, 210x55mm
• Fork // Fox 36 Float Factory Grip2 160mm
• Wheels // Oquo Mountain Control MC32TEAM
• Front Tyre // Maxxis Assegai 3C MaxxGrip 29×2.5in DH Casing
• Rear Tyre // Maxxis DHR II 3C MaxxGrip 29×2.4in DH Casing
• Chainset // SRAM X0, 32T
• Brakes // SRAM Code Silver
• Drivetrain // SRAM X0 Eagle AXS, 10-52T
• Stem // OC Mountain Control MC10
• Handlebars // OC Mountain Control MC10 Carbon 35mm, 800x20mm
• Grips // Ergon GE10
• Seat Post // OC Mountain Control MC21 dropper, 200mm, 31.6mm
• Saddle // Ergon SM Enduro Comp
• Weight // 14.8kg

Geometry of our size XL

• Head angle // 64° (Low)
• Effective seat angle // 77° (Low)
• Seat tube length // 460mm
• Head tube length // 120mm
• Chainstay // 440mm
• Wheelbase // 1,285mm
• Effective top tube // 653mm
• BB height // 342mm
• Reach // 505mm

Review Info

Brand:	Orbea
Product:	Occam LT M-Team
From:	Orbea
Price:	£8,599
Tested:	by Benji for 5 months

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