Having been blown away by the 120mm travel Meta Trail V4 Essential we were excited to pull the Meta AM V4 Race out of its box in Spain and hit the trails hard.
Our sense of anticipation proved justified. Amid the sea of of smouldering brakes, chattering chains and swollen forearms that is What Mountain Bike magazine's Trail Bike of the Year test, the Meta AM held its cool to run out a well-deserved winner – despite stiff competition from the likes of Mondraker's Foxy XR and Whyte's T-129 SCR. Apart from the occasional saddle shuffle on climbs for some testers, the Meta V4 Race consistently set our testing benchmark straight from the box. It skipped and sprinted along singletrack with easy efficiency and responsive enthusiasm, linking every techy line like the missing piece of the perfect handling jigsaw. It honed down every descent, carved corners like a scythe, sucked up big hits and deep drops without hesitation and delivered us to the bottom buzzing for another run.
- Highs: Superbly controlled and beautifully balanced; efficient and responsive character; fully adjustable RockShox suspension; top value enduro-ready kit
- Lows: Slack seat angle needs forward weighting on climbs; direct sell rather than shop-supported
Whipping the 780mm bars straight in the 60mm stem, the Commencal’s long, broad, kinked top tube position was bang on. While the Monarch Plus shock is half hidden in the inset cold forged top tube mount, the dials and valves are easily accessible for initial setup or on-the-fly tweaking.
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The 160mm Pike fork needs no introduction in terms of flat out, stress free chaos control and the Commencal gets the threshold adjustable RCT3 version rather than the fixed damping RC of many of its rivals. While Commencal admits the lighter frame isn’t as stiff as the previous V3 chassis it’s still on point, and the slight flex helps stick the Meta's quality Maxxis treads to the trail like glue. The 28mm wide, tubeless ready Alpha rims give plenty of support and 32 spokes keep them stiff and strong.
Direct sales mean stunning value kit for the money
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