SprSonik profile

Just installed one on my Yeti SB 5.5 this week. The cheap previous bearings were nice and crunchy, so I decided to spoil my bike.

to be fair, I've run Next SLs for over 5k miles without boots and they are holding up just fine in spite of countless strikes and gouges.

you won't get hardtail feel out of a squishy bike. If you like hardtails, you will likely always own one. I say that as a guy with a modified Chameleon and a Yeti SB 5.5.

You don't need a big burly bike to hammer most trails. I've run my local trails on true XC, light trail, and "Enduro" bikes as well as on my hardtails. The down times are barely different, favoring the bigger bikes. The up times are ridiculously different favoring the lighter bikes. Unless someone is truly smashing it, an Enduro bike is complete overkill. Of course people will ride what they want, and marketing is still favoring bigger bikes. But this new breed of more agile trail bikes might shift that soon.

Great review. I have been waiting for this bike since I got my 2018 Chameleon dialed in. I do wish it came in a better color (nude or black), but if it is lighter, absorbs chatter better, and puts down power better than the Alu version, this could truly be the best frame on the market right now.

Ummm...I raced my Alu Chameleon SS 2 days ago in an Enduro event, so I know at least one guy who will race his Carbon Chameleon when he gets it.