Posted by: JBV
i'm interested in having a second bike again, and thinking of a low cost hardtail with 2.8 650b tires. the Commencal Meta HT AM looks good to me. i'm not keen on a purely winch and plummet style hardtail with extreme geometry as i'm thinking of a bike for more mellow rides. anyone else looking at this bike, or own one?
Good timing. I've been looking into this space extensively the past few months. I run my hardtail 27.5 x 2.8 in the back and 29 up front. I was primarily looking for aluminum to help drop some weight, and prefer frame only as I've got my own build ready to go, but the models below all had decent value butbits in there $1600-1900 price range. I had my eye on the Ragley Big Al earlier this year, but covid supply chain issues ended that.
The Commencal did get updated geo for 2021, but the reach and TT per size is quite short despite the update.
The next class of hardtails I looked into were more 'trail', these included mainly the Specialized Fuse and Norco Fluid HT. Availability for either of these right now is an unknown due to covid presumably.
Moving along to the more 'enduro' class, I was also quite interested in the Rocky Mountain Growler and Norco Torrent aluminum, both are more aggressive based on the geo. Once again availability was an issue, and the Torrent's ETA was Nov.2021 even, wtf. I've had Chromag Rootdowns in the past and found them a bit overkill for me geo wise, so wasn't sure this is what I would have wanted.
As I wanted something basically now, I came across the NS Eccentric Evo aluminum. The geo looks on point, seems to be midway between the trail and enduro options I identified. Price is good at $380cdn shipped , and available frame only to boot. Medium and large is available immediately if that's what you need, mine is arriving early next week. https://www.lamacycles.com/en/ns-bikes-octane-one/frames/trail-enduro-dh/2020-ns-eccentric-alu-evo-29-frame