Review: Canyon Lux Trail CF 8 – the best value bike of its type?

Daz reviews the Canyon Lux Trail – another XC/trail bike in a long line of this ilk that he’s tested. Images by Rob Lockhart. I’m sure it was just an …

By dazh

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I’d assumed this was alluding to the fact that BoJo couldn’t find his arse with both hands.

Weight // 11.8kg (claimed)

Cmon, this is piss poor. You had the bike for how long, and you couldn’t be arsed to put it on the scales and find out one of the most important things for a bike of this type….

Cmon, this is piss poor. You had the bike for how long, and you couldn’t be arsed to put it on the scales and find out one of the most important things for a bike of this type…

Give him a break, possibly weighed it and and an editorial decision was made to stick with the claimed weight?

And maybe the tested weight will be added when the review info is filled in?

Review Info

Brand:
Product:
From:
Price:
Tested: by for

Cheaper than my road bike!

Worst bragg ever 🙄

Sorry folks, the scales are at the office and I missed the chance to weigh it when it came in and when it left again.

Get them to lend it to you for another 3 months:-)

Over £5k.

Do you have twice as much fun as on that Boardman the other week?

No not good value. Sorry.

It looks and sounds like it’s about 12kg, and a pretty impressive kit on it, but it’s properly aiming at the XC and weight weenie trail market, not a bad thing these days, and 5k isn’t horrific when you compare that to other brands fighting it out at this level.

I’ve got a CF6 currently on order. I’ll weigh it when it arrives…

Sorry but the headline judgement around value is misleading, best value cannot surely be aligned to a £5k price tag unless you’re trying to generate clickbait, which we wouldn’t expect from @singletrack. At £5k you are clearly out of the value end of the market (which exists in plentiful supply between £1.5k and £2.5k) and into the medium to the high end of the market. I could list 5 brands of bikes that could be pitched against this, albeit weighing a couple of pounds more, however at half the price, which would easily win the vfm argument.

Whatever the definition of a value bike. Daz is right. If you price up the cost of the Axs components, xrc wheelset, fork and shock. Those parts would easily take you up to 3500 leaving about 1500 on the carbon frame.
Not to mention try getting your hands on some of that stuff currently.
A good bike to buy, break down and flip on eBay.

Budget and value are very different things. Whilst this bike is clearly not a budget bike, for the kit you get it seems pretty good value to me.

I ordered the CF 6 on the day it was released. I’d been in the market for a down country style bike as they fit the riding I want to do*.

It came in a few weeks, far quicker than I thought. Only ridden it twice as we are in the middle of the CX season.

I’ve not weighed it but it is lighter than my Scandal ;). 12kg is probably about right for mine.

Great bike, fits me really well and rides superbly. The last FS I had and rode for any length of time was an FSR 26″ so really not a fair comparison. For most of the last 15 years I’ve had hardtails, racey alu things to long travel steel jobbies. It is nice balance between XC speed/weight downhill fun for an XC rider. I was at Hamsterley and Kielder. I set many PRs on the way up and on the way down. I had no trouble pointing it down some of the steeper off piste stuff at Hamsterley. It’s probably not the most subtle rear setup but it is good at what it is intended for. Even without the lock out it felt firm climbing and putting the power down and then softened things up when it got faster and rougher. That might annoy some people as it lacked small bump sensitivity. But I’m used to riding hardtails, cx bikes and stiff road bikes so to me it was like riding a cloud!

I also looked at the Scott Spark, Sonder Cortex and a few others. Value/budget wise it came out on top, and it was in stock! Only downside is the press fit bottom bracket – that is more based on hearsay than experience, my CX bike has been fine with one and that get’s hammered more than any other bike in terms of slop and jet washing.

*I’m definitely the target market for a down country bike. Long XC rides on natural trails and manmade red/blacks. Enjoy the odd bit of steep technical stuff on rides but I don’t go looking for it specifically. Dabble in some competition, short XC and marathon.

Thanks for that post jonba – you’ve helped put my mind to rest about buying a bike without a test ride! I currently ride an ’09 Turner Flux so basically can’t swap a single part (apart from the saddle!) which meant the CF6 looked really good value for money.
Canyon have also dropped the price by £150 since I ordered it and they immediately passed this saving on without me needing to query it.

Budget and value are very different things. Whilst this bike is clearly not a budget bike, for the kit you get it seems pretty good value to me.

Yep, for what you get it seems very good value to me.

Depends how you measure what you get.

Fancy components are just cost (sometimes a necessary cost).

Grins are what you get.

Value is £ per grin (or something like that)

I knew I’d get in trouble for saying 5k is good value. All I’ll say is go have a look at how much an AXS equipped Epic Evo costs!

Sorry about the lack of weight measurement. I didn’t have a digital hanging scale to hand and my bathroom scales massively over-report (honest!). Not sure what difference it makes though. Even if the claimed weight from Canyon is optimistic it will only be by a couple of hundred grams so that shouldn’t stop you buying one.

Maybe STW should only review sub £500 Halford specials and see how popular that proves….

£5000? But you could buy a secondhand Swiss watch, a handbag or some hifi speakers for that… 🙂
I guess value is in the eye of the purchaser.

Would this still be considered decent value once the Brexit import tax has been applied? Great looking bike and spec and ticks a lot of boxes for me. I’m just wondering how much the bike would actually cost once delivered to my door?

Just checked and it’s £5149 including all taxes. You probably all knew that already though. Apologies for the daft question above.

I’d been hovering between the Epic Evo, Blur TR and Scalpel SE for months until this appeared. Solved all the problems of availability, spec, cost or geo that the others had.

My Medium CF6 arrived (three weeks early – awesome!).
With a pair of M540 pedals it weighs 12.4kg on my (admittedly uncalibrated) luggage scales.

I won’t get chance to ride it until Thursday so I’m hoping my views are closer to Darren’s than Pinkbikes 🤣

Was seriously considering one of these. Cracking value for money with a great spec list. Geometry is more or less on point, although it’d be perfect with an extra degree off the head angle.

Out of sheer luck though, I managed to find a Transition Spur in the size / colour I wanted. Nowhere near as good value but sometimes you have to follow your heart.