Nov. 1, 2016, 9:10 a.m. -  Andy Eunson

#!markdown The unique colour is what makes Renthal desirable. It is. Immediately obvious that a rider has chosen an aftermarket product for performance reasons rather than matchy matchy aesthetic reasons. The other reason to buy a Renthal or other recognised brand name is for the confidence that the company's name carries that the product won't fail on you. I started running name brand carbon bars years ago because the aluminum bars of the time were pretty thin walled and looked to my eyes as being a bit too light. Never a failure, it wlas all in my head. I had seen aluminum road bars fail back in the day. I'd had steel steer tubes fail, but no carbon fails until very recently and that was a cracked road frame that was warranted. In case people don't know, Deda invented the 35 size for road. A few years later it was adopted for off road. The big sprinters Greipal liked it for stiffness. I think I would be hard pressed to feel a difference in materials or diameters of bars.