Fresh Goods Friday 689: The Testing! Testing! 123 edition

Hello, welcome to another Fresh Goods Friday, not quite live, definitely unscripted. I'm

Hannah. I'm Benji, hello. And shall we start with some product? We have some product, we

did it. We actually got something in, amazing. The bike you have seen before but we thought

we'd have a nice, very shiny bike in the background so it looks more interesting here than the

curtain. That's an Orbea Rion, no it's not. Orbea Ocam, LTM team, I think. Okay. There we go with an

orange boing. Technical stuff. Yeah. It's quite similar to a Rion. Not a Rion, a Vion or a Valon. Oh yeah, there you go

Yeah, look, sunglasses, because obviously sun is coming. These are made of old fishing nets

Sun is always there. Like, let's just see, 85% recycled fishing nets. Oh right, well the frame, I presume

Okay, do they bend? Is it bendy? No. Oh, that's a shame. Can you not bend them out of the way of your

helmet thing? No, those are wiggly. Those bits are wiggly. All right, good. Anyway, I am going

somewhere that is forecast. For nose pieces. Yeah, it's forecast to be sunny in a couple of weeks so I should

be wearing those. Where are you going? Stades. Portugal and more than that, I'm not telling you

Although the whole experience has put me off ever booking a holiday with Rion Air

I'm going to the Forest of Dean in two weeks, I think. You are. Good, I'd rather go there, it's rad

Good. And then we've got, oh, gloves. That's my theme. Gloves. So these are Glybie gloves

What is Glybie? Glybie, it's a climb, isn't it? I think so. A roadie climb. I think so

Tour of Italy. Giro. Andi. Hampstead. It's usually like snow at the top, isn't there? Bad weather

So we've got some knitted gloves here. Knitted? Yeah, they're like knitted. Oh, like fancy shoes are

So you put one of your gloves on. Which one? Whichever you like. I can't see this one. Are they the same

Hilarious. They are. They are both, obviously, they're 100% briskers. There's no newness about these

We've had these before but it's like, I need more than one pair, please. And so does Russ

so we've got another pair in. So unless you live, they're not going to go down to minus

8 billion, whether people want winter gloves, but for a lot of the time, thin Clorino palm

slightly kind of padded on the back. Good. I like them. Right. So I think this brings us neatly

to a question that was on the forum from Snotrag, who has an attractive username. Choose your

usernames carefully when signing up to Singletrack World because you're stuck with them. So Snotrag

asked us how often we ride bikes and whether we ride bikes enough to be able to test more than a

handful of stuff in a year. Now, my answer to this is partially that we test a lot of stuff

Because I use the evil Strava, I'll tell you. You can go and find out if you find me. On average

I'd say about five times a week, currently four, but when the weather's a bit better and the

clocks change is the key thing and you go out in the evening then, kid obligations

But I think the critical thing is that there's not that many walks of life in which you get to use

lots of different ones of the same sort of thing. So it's like a pair of gloves. We can put on a

pair of gloves and instantly we know like the features that we're looking for in a pair of

gloves and the things that might go wrong and the things that might be comfortable. And then you go

out and you ride them in like wet weather, hot weather, cold weather, whatever. And that's kind

of your testing done, isn't it? It depends on a lot of people. There's a point kind of about

destruction testing or wait until something goes wrong. I mean, nothing is going to be

wait until something wears out before it gets written. Mainly because things last too long

And we would go tits up if we waited. You'd never get to read a review if we waited for a whole year

Things are tested for a decent amount of time for any problems to show. The classic one would be

like flat pedals. You need to give those. It's all very well. So anyway, the great, really grippy

you need to give them riding a lot, probably give them about three months to see if any play

develops in the bushes and things. And how much gunk gets into them. Yeah. Yeah. That kind of thing

Whereas you wouldn't really wait to see for a lot of things. You need to look after them as you are

expected to. Like forks as well. You're not really going to ride those for a year without doing a

lower leg service because you are told to do a lower leg service. So that's what you do. But in

terms of reviewing, you want to do a little bit of durability or give them a chance to go wrong

and go to see whether they work. Try to go with as fresh a slate blank slate as possible or a fresh

slate and not go in with too many preconceptions. I don't weigh anything before I ride it because I

don't want to know. I try not to look at the price as well. I just want to ride the thing

I always know the price. It's hard to avoid. I'm quite good at forgetting numbers, so I find it

quite easy. But like we've ridden so many helmets, so many gloves, so many bike shoes, whatever

pedals and then all the other stuff as well that as soon as we're on it or pick it up or put it on

we kind of can feel like this one is different to that one because like we've had 10, 20 helmets

with different clips and different fastening arrangements, which is something that most people

in the population don't get to experience in anything. I think the only thing I can think of

that you try lots of different ones will be like pens. Imagine you pick up a pen and you'd grab

a random pen that's lying around. So you can instantly go, oh, that one's kind of comfy

That one's kind of crappy. That one doesn't really work. That was a bit scratchy. Yeah. Maybe bread

If you change your brand of bread, you know that that one's quite nice. That one goes stale

But there's not that many walks of life in which you get to use lots and lots of different things

and kind of know lots of differences. There's a whole overlapping as well. So yesterday I went

out on two different bikes and probably everything I was wearing and some parts would have been

swapped out on the bikes to be swapped, tested parts. So usually look, look at me. I've probably

got about 10 things that are being reviewed on me. So, oh yeah, I suppose I'm doing that aren't I

I would say we don't plough through as much as we could get away with, I think. I think we'd

certainly test things for longer than a lot of folk would do. And we have special Calderdale

mud to like really grind the shit out of everything as well. I don't ride in Calderdale very much

I ride in Rossendale. Where the mud is really deep. Beautiful pine needle loam town

Not really. You get a load of bloody puddles everywhere, ain't there? That's the thing that destroys stuff. But what do you want to know about a review? It's what you can't experience

by looking at it. You ever kind of get a glimmer of what something's going to be a bit like. But

in terms of my job, I say it is not to wreck something or ride it to the ground. It's to tell

you how it performs and how it feels. But I also tend not to be concentrating on the

negative-ness, like how they work in bad shit weather. You're just the bag of positivity

Benji. Well, it's just that review means find problems. No, review is tell people what it's

like. Yeah, what it's like and we all find it useful as well. Yeah. Like what particular features

this product's got versus what that product's got. A bike's a bit of a classic one, really. You

can't test any bike to destruction, say, as a pivot bearings, because pivot bearings, even the

worst ones, you're probably going to get six months out of them. We don't get bikes for six

months. But I can tell you how it rides after about, some of them vary, some need some parts

up and out. I wouldn't like to write up a full-stop review until you've had it a month

which should be a dozen rides on it. Probably something like that. Okay. Well, snot rag

Hopefully that answers your question. You've got some more questions in the big black book

of questions, haven't you? Yes. Go on. What else have you got next? I don't know what questions

you've got. These are into my inbox. This is how many are expecting. The next question that will

come in is why Benji's still got a 2010 calendar. Well, because we're recycling the paper. That's

why we've got a 2010 calendar. 2010 holds a special place in my heart. And happened to be the one that

was just sitting around and we tidied up this week. So we asked in a newsletter, a member's

newsletter, I think, what do you want us to review? Actually best. That's in it. Emails

arrive in my box. What's my email? Benji at single track world.com probably would get to me. I think

it should do. Uh, Paul Davey wants me to have a go on a bird ether nine, which is highly likely

Okay. Interesting. We need a likelihometer. Yeah. I think it's out at 27, five. I don't know

See, that's why she got it. I don't know. Good name. Daniel Rumble. Are we ready

I would like to see a review of XC hiker bike type shoes for UK three seasons

I'm totally not testing. I can get out of that. It needs to be SPD because she's not here. Let's

volunteer Amanda for that one. Yeah. Or maybe James Vincent. He likes to walk around with his

bike on his back. So that's quite likely because why not? What hiker bike? What constitutes a

hiker bike shoe? I guess it means it's not going to be like fiberglass stiff race. So you're going

to put your foot down and slide down. You need ones where the cleats don't stick out so far that

you just tip toe in on rocks. Yeah. Okay. Right. What else? Mary Garner. I'd like to see some

features on e-bike care slash simple maintenance. I have to look after them. I think to avoid

whether anything e-specific products are worth it or not. Things like that. So that's probably

eminently doable. I don't know. I do much different to my e-bikes that I test than to

other than not being able to loop the chain that easily because you've got to stick a tool in to

make the chain go back. But I just ride them. Should you look after them more than a normal bike

I don't. And I've not noticed any more incidents of them going wrong versus right. Although it is

a lot more expensive. So it's probably more of a tragedy if it does go wrong. So maybe you should

just be more diligent than you would be with a normal bike. Unless you're going to wear it out

by cleaning it far too much. Like those Californians get really upset when you wash your

bike. Oh my God. Yeah. Right. Okay. Next question. Sarah Beard. Enduro 27.5 tires, please. For non

e-bikes. Okay. Now then. Probably will do. Cause I've got a 27 and a half inch rear wheel on a

longer term bike build at the moment. So yeah. So you love tires. If you were to test a..

Sound effects. If you were to test a 29 tire, would you say that it would perform exactly the

same for the 27.5 version of it? Is there any difference in reviewing the same tread pattern

tire in a different size? Well, this up until this year, I'd say it's so blanket 29, that it's not

really been an issue. It's popped into my brain as being a problem. But now we're in the era of

mullets. I think there's a lot of people who are like, Oh, I've got a tire. I've got people riding

around a mullet with the stock OEM tire that it came with. Like we are. I am. Where's my tire pile

29 ones up here. 27 is like, Oh, it's all the rubbish ones that hung around things. So I'm

trying to get some 27.5 tires in really. But if you're on a 27.5 bike, let's say you've got a bike

that's 27.5 front and rear, and you're looking for a new tire. Could you look at one of your 29ers

reviews and go, Yeah, that's how it works there. It's a good tire. I'll buy it for my 27.5. Or

would you say that it's a different, like it's not applicable? Actually, it's almost identical

There we go. So if you're looking for a new tire, it's a difference of what's touching the ground

which is what about that much. Is this that much of a 27.5? It's fine. Cool. So there you go. If

you want a new tire and you're struggling to find one in a 27.5 review, then go for a Benz 29er and

it's fine. And Benji does love tires. So his tire reviews are good. Honestly, don't just get some

tires. Don't just get some tires. On that bombshell in sight. There's a giant Stance 29 one. It's fine

It comes with a DHF and a dissector on the back with a single compound OEM ones. And they're

all right, but they are quite a handful at the moment. Yeah. So there is quite a marked difference

when you put something fancier on. Something good on. Right. That's the conversation for another time

You want more questions? Send more questions to Benji, to all of us, and we'll try and answer them

in this obviously prescriptive, condensed and concise way. See you again. Bye for now