All things being equal a more aerodynamic bike is better.Unfortunately there are compromises to be made to achieve this.Namely weight,stiffness and ride quality.The venge,foil,S3 etc all give up some of these compared to their conventional siblings.At the giant launch we were told the design criteria for the Tcr sl was stiffness,handling,weight, ride quality and lastly aerodynamics……in that order.I can confirm that mine is the stiffest bike I have ever ridden…..it makes the soles of my feet hurt and I never noticed how much my bars flexed before.Would I swap that to save 5 watts of power?Not bloody likely!

Totally unconvinced by some Aero road frames. Aero efficiency is a combination of riding position and frame aero, yet many aero frames seem to have a taller headtube, meaning the rider (as long as they are quite supple) is not going to be able to achieve such a good position, and as 80% of air resistance is from the rider, getting the right riding position is much more important than the aerodynamics of the frame itself.

My missus does a lot of Time trialing, year before last she had a very fancy full carbon frame, super aero. Last year she had a basic Alu framed Bianchi, which she was able to get a much better position on. She went much faster last year (some of this may be to do with training, but some was definitely position)

I should correct the gist of my earlier post, apologies.. The Cervelo study says that although aero has more % gain potential than weight in a bike, over a long, alpine ride with some drafting, under the power of a normal rider, it’ll even out – no real suprise.
I remember listening to that presentation and the general chat after was that the average UK road rider is better served by an aero bike than a light one, plus thinking an aero bike would be more of a (small) advantage than a light one for the riding I do. And then carrying on riding a steel road bike that’s heavy and not aero )

If it helps in any way, I have an addict Sl frame from 2010 and very recently had a foil on an extended test period. I gave the foil back pretty damn quickly, didn’t like the ride at all, too harsh and odd handling. Not for me thanks I’ll stick with the addict. Like some people are saying, a properly fitting bike is the primary focus for me with handling and stiffness (not harshness) next in line, then weight then aero.