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PlusBike.com review VICE 3.0

Hot Read Hot read Jul 12

Plus bikes are the latest progression in Mountain Biking and the VICE 3.0 is our flagship bike – built with all the new features and standards found in the 27+ category.

Here’s what PlusBike.com has to say about our latest VICE 3.0 model:

‘Out of the box the Vice is alloy and orange. It presents well as a frame, hitting all the latest standards and thus being as future proof as possible parts wise. Tapered head tube, boost 148mm rear end and 110mm front thru axles are present and correct, plus two bottle mounts inside the front triangle. Cable routing is external under the downtube, so no bottle mount there, but the trade off is you get external cable routing. I know it’s not currently cool, but I am scarred by fishing around inside too many frames for lost bits of wire to think having cables you can access is a bad thing.

Once on board, the rider’s weight sits balanced between the wheels, and the stance is reasonably upright. I found the seat pleasantly comfortable, and the grips are of the solid lock on variety. The pedals are resin, and whilst they lack the pointy replaceable pins of their more expensive brethren, they were some of the most comfortable platforms I’ve seen as OEM equipment. It’s always pleasing to have good contact points, so marks to REID there.
In terms of performance not much needs to be said about Shimano gear, we all know it works. Deore and SLX sit lower down the off-road hierarchy and that means they lose a little adjustability and carbon as compared to their more expensive siblings, but they lose none of the industrial reliability and function that characterise the brand at this level. This sort of kit is mandatory for a bike that wants to be taken seriously.

Out on the trail and it feels like this bike rolls fast. The WTBs are quiet, but at 10psi in the Victorian mud we’ve been experiencing recently they still seem to have seven truckloads of grip given their size and lack of aggression. A good all round choice. When it comes to climbing the front stays reasonably planted, although the starting weight of almost 14kg, (or 31 pounds for Americanists), does come into play. The gearing is 1×10, with a 40 tooth big cog and a 30 tooth chainring, and as gears go I would say this is probably enough for the bike’s intended general purpose. If you are planning on long distance back country epics, or you are decaffeinated or unfit in hilly terrain you might want something lower, but for everyday use I think it’s a good choice REID has made.

Going down this is a fun bike. The cockpit is easy to move around in, the brakes are good and the handling is unsurprising and stable. The fork does not have the refinement of some of the offerings from Fox or Rock Shox, but it also lacks some of the numbers in the price tag, and once you are hurling down the trail it actually does quite a tidy job. With the grip plus bikes give it was not hard to find yourself with your bowels in your back pocket hoping things were not going to get messy. This does not feel like a delicate bike, it feels like you can grab it by the scruff of the neck and give it a bit of what for.

This bike packs a passel into its price, in keeping with the philosophy of value. With comfortable contact points and virtuous gears, brakes and tyres, this does ride like a more expensive machine. Yes, it has some heft, but it leaves the weight in your wallet as a result. It also feels quite versatile – it goes off-road, but it’s on-road manners leave it also open to some comfortable bikepacking or light touring.

To read the full review click here

Interested? Click here for full model specification and details

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