I currently have a Madone 9, mechanical Ultegra, rim brakes, with Easton EC90 Aero 55 wheels. I’m interested in a new bike that has electronic shifting, disc brakes, wider tire clearance (30+), is somewhat light and aero (sounds like the holy grail). For some context, this bike is for crits, road races, and tempo group rides. I also would like to do BWR San Diego and local “groad” races like Huffmaster Hopper (hence the wider tire requirement).
Isn’t the Madone a relatively light aero bike? Forgive my ignorance, but most modern bikes fit at least a 28mm tyre right? I’m just not seeing anything significant you’d get for $8k
I like the red paint on the SL7 Pro over the Factor paint jobs (and even better than my teal tint SL7 Comp Rival). Coming from a gen1 Domane I was blown away by how much I love the SL7, however I think these super bikes are all great and come down to personal preferences on ride feel, color, and things like amount of proprietary parts, previous experience with the brand, warranty, wanting to support your local shop, etc.
It’s somewhat light but the SL7 and Ostro are lighter. It may not be the most rational decision but I want also want a new bike because having a new bike is fun.
The SL7 may also have a better resale value since Specialized seems to be a more recognized brand. Being in Norcal, I’d also like to support Specialized. However, I would prefer a SRAM group set because of the full wireless, but the Pro only comes with a SRAM 1x option… I have to admit that the red tint is nice!
I was narrowing my “i want” list for 1 year now and it is never ending task and with your budget is really hard to buy bad bike. Can be not “perfect” bike but won’t be bad. Additionally in the current market you could probably resell any bike for parts and make profit out of this
IDK if anyone reads the Gran Fondo online magazine (it’s pretty awesome), but they recently did a super-bike showdown, and the SL7 came out the winner for all-around speed.
I’d go with the Factor. Some background: I haven’t ridden Specialized since racing a Stumpjumper in the early 1990s (after racing the heck out of a Rockhopper frame to the point I could pull the chainstay into the big ring). I bought a Factor VAM early last year, right before the Ostro VAM came out (I would’ve purchased that instead). I love the ride of my Factor. I don’t know that this bike has any more proprietary parts than any other high-end (or upper mid-range for that matter) model. Also, as you no doubt saw, you have a lot of options for a custom paint scheme. I’ll admit that I did not want a Specialized, Cannondale, or Canyon because they are so common, but I looked at them wondering if that was where I had to go. Still, performance and comfort still came before wanting to be different, and I picked the Factor.
One comment regarding the VAM and its discs, and I don’t know if this applies to the Ostro or not. My LBS replaced the discs with – let’s say more exotic – ones that dissipate heat better. The discs on the VAM – again, I don’t know if they made the Ostro’s discs larger – are on the small side so they end up doing a lot of work. I live in Switzerland and do a lot of climbing, which means I do a lot of descending on steep, curving, narrow, two-way roads with plenty of blind turns where a car, tractor, horse, carriage, cyclist, or walker may be coming up, going down slower, or crossing the road. In other words, there’s a lot of braking and after a year, the stock discs just needed to be replaced. That said, I never had a problem braking. There was a lot of, let’s say, verbal feedback from the discs that alerted others to my presence, which also gave me a headache on long descents.
I enjoy reading the reviews, and this one had an interesting set of tests to estimate real-world speed differences between the bikes. Definitely worth a read, although it only has these bikes in the roundup:
BMC Teammachine SLR01 ONE
Scott Addict RC Pro
Specialized S-Works Tarmac SL7
Trek Emonda SLR 9 eTap
Wilier Filante SLR Astana-Premier Tech Team
and didn’t include the Factor Ostro VAM. Compelling support for the SL7, if you buy into the test methodology.
Their magazine is great for the writing and pics as well as their willingness to compare different kinds of bikes, so the validity of their testing is really secondary to me. But it’s hard to find head-to-head comparisons otherwise, so it may be unique.
Genuine question: are SL7 owners happy with the new compression ring solution to the steerer tube issue? I find the longer expander plug a strange part of the answer to an issue with the compression ring. It makes ne wonder if something else is amiss…
appreciate the review! A Chris Froome, on his YouTube channel, talks about the disc brakes and their annoyance a bit. To be fair, he’s not a fan of disc brakes though.
