Plus all the latest news and reviews from the week
Welcome along to the latest edition of First Look Friday, our weekly recap of the spiciest content to grace our hallowed home page in the past seven days.
The BikeRadar news wire has been glowing hotter than managing editor Gary’s laptop as brands queued up to announce their latest launches and our tireless testing team delivered their verdicts.
Wednesday saw Canyon unveil a pair of new HighBar-equipped helmets and I put the Disruptr CFR through its paces.
But it was on Thursday that things really kicked off. First came news of the new Genesis Croix de Fer, which Jack Luke was on hand to field.
Trek followed with the release of two new gravel bikes – the Checkmate SLR, which Ashley Quinlan took for a spin, and the Checkpoint SL 7 AXS, with video supremo and mile-munching gravelista Felix Smith delivering a rare first-ride review.
Finally, Ashley Quinlan broke the news of a new BMC URS and told us how the bike rides.
That’s quite enough news for one week. Let’s get down to brass tacks with a look at a selection of delectable tech bounty keeping us busy at BikeRadar.
POC Cytal Carbon helmet
The Cytal Carbon is the latest high-end road helmet from POC.
POC says it’s constructed using tech “only seen on luxury sports cars”, with an integrated carbon fibre wing dominating the upper section of the helmet.
At a whopping £360 / $400 / €400, it’s priced accordingly too – it’s one of the most expensive road bike helmets ever to grace BikeRadar towers.
According to the Swedish brand, this carbon wing improves the helmet’s aerodynamic efficiency, keeps weight down and helps to support its structural integrity.
As with the recently released POC Procen Air, the Cytal Carbon was developed using CFD (Computational Fluid Dynamics) modelling to ensure optimum aerodynamics and cooling.
The Cytal Carbon retains POC’s signature styling, with a boxy angular appearance.
Unusually, though, it’s only available in two, relatively austere, colours – ‘uranium black’ and ‘hydrogen white’. Sadly, neither high-visibility orange nor pro-spec high-vis pink are available.
The POC Cytal Carbon is available in three sizes: small (50-56cm), medium (54-59cm) and large (59-61cm).
Fit is adjusted via a standard rotary dial at the rear, with Y-frame webbing straps and a buckle.
The POC Cytal Carbon has a claimed weight of 250g for a size medium.
- POC Cytal Carbon helmet: £360 / $400 / €400
Canyon Tempr CFR Road shoes
Launched last month, Canyon’s new Tempr CFR shoes are a premium option from the German bike brand.
The Termpr CFR Road shoes are, as the name implies, designed for use with road bike pedals (the Tempr CFR Off-Road shoes are – you guessed it – for use off-road on gravel and mountain bikes).
With a price of £319.95 / €329.95, the Tempr CFR Road shoes are aimed at the higher end of the market.
Rather than starting with an off-the-shelf last (the model foot around which a shoe is built) from its manufacturing partner, Canyon says it designed a custom one that’s unique to its shoes.
This, it says, is what enables its Tempr CFR shoes to achieve an ideal balance of performance and comfort.
Unusually, for a performance road shoe, Canyon doesn’t offer an arbitrary stiffness rating for the carbon sole.
When asked, though, it said “it’s stiff enough” and claimed it is competitive with other high-end road cycling shoes from major competitors such as Shimano and Specialized.
The uppers use what Canyon calls PeformFit Wrap, which sees the uppers wrap around the bottom of the shoe.
This is claimed to enable the uppers to encircle your foot and heel for a secure yet comfortable fit.
There’s only one width option available, but Canyon says its last and uppers are designed to adapt to a large percentage of the fit bell curve.
There are 20 sizes available, from EU36 to EU48, with half sizes from EU41.5 to EU46.5, and two colour options – white or black.
The claimed weight for a pair of size EU42 shoes is 500g (250g per shoe), while our size EU44.5 samples weigh 277 and 278g each, for a total of 555g.
- Canyon Tempr CFR Road shoes: £319.95 / €329.95
Magene P505 power meter spider
Magene’s P505 is a power meter spider designed for use with 8-bolt SRAM DUB cranksets and Shimano 4-bolt 110 BCD chainrings.
Offering a claimed accuracy rating of ＋/- 1 per cent, the Chinese brand says it has a power range of 0 to 2,500 watts and a cadence range of 20-240 RPM.
The spider uses accelerometers to determine cadence, meaning no frame magnet is required, and it has a rechargeable lithium-ion battery, which is claimed to last for up to 200 hours.
The spider is recharged by a custom magnetic charger cable, which can be plugged into a standard USB-A plug.
According to Magene, the P505 spider measures power, cadence, left-right balance and pedalling smoothness, and can transmit these metrics via Bluetooth or ANT+.
Given power meter spiders capture total power, rather than the power produced by each leg independently, we suspect the balance data will be estimated rather than calculated. That’s typically a limitation of all power meter spiders, however.
The same spider can also be had with a bolt pattern for 4-bolt 107 BCD for SRAM AXS chainrings, or for 5-bolt 110 BCD rings.
The Magene P505 power meter spider costs $349, although you’ll need to source your own crankset and chainrings to complete it.
It has a claimed weight of 110g, comparing favourably to Quarq’s DFour DUB power meter (which has a claimed weight of 165 grams for the spider).
- Magene P505 power meter: $349
Sennheiser Momentum Sport headphones
Sennheiser’s Momentum Sport headphones are designed to combine audiophile sound quality with heart rate and body temperature sensors for fitness tracking.
The headphones use a photoplethysmography (PPG) heart rate sensor and a body temperature sensor to share training data with fitness apps such as Strava and devices from brands such as Apple, Garmin and Peloton.
Sennheiser says the inner ear is one of the most stable parts of the body during exercise, making it ideal for capturing heart rate and temperature readings. The data can then be synced to the Polar Flow app.
For those interested in listening to music while they cycle or train indoors, the Momentum Sport buds use a new 10mm transducer, said to result in vivid sound and impressive bass – early testing suggests that’s an accurate description.
Transparency and Anti-Wind modes are designed to keep you aware of traffic noise and ensure your road safety isn’t put at risk, while Adaptive Noise Cancelling is there to mute the most chatty office menaces.
They come with a range of ear fins and tips to tailor fit to your ear shape and battery life is a claimed six hours.
That impressive array of features doesn’t come cheap, though, with the Sennheiser Momentum Sport headphones costing £279.99 / $329.99 / €329.90 / AU$529.95. This makes them more expensive than anything on our list of the best headphones for cycling.
- Sennheiser Momentum Sport headphones: £279.99 / $329.99 / €329.90 / AU$529.95