"Lightweight stuff's great, until you encounter rocks. Then it tends to bend.."
Lots of rocks at fort william, my 25lb Soul managed just fine 😉 Obviously that's not superlight but it's light for its purpose and strength. I did bust a spoke but only because I'm a clumsy idiot, the 4X track proved a bit much for me 🙄
For me it maybe is largely placebo effect… my Idrive was 30lbs and felt much heavier and less responsive than my Hemlock at 29lbs but that's not such a big difference. But there's things I can do on the Soul that I can't on the Hemlock, really steep explosive climbs, muscling the bike around on tight descents… Spent about 10 minutes yesterday repeatedly failing a techy section on the big bike which I can do every time on the Soul just because I can bully the Soul around more.
But then I'm not powerfully built, and I don't carry much weight, so maybe that's why I can't do these things with the bigger bike, probably if I was a bit stronger I could overcome thta.