Foldable Bikes Party: Specialized Ruby Comp review

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The Specialized Ruby Comp is the overall winner of the BikeRadar Women's Road Bike of the Year Award, and with good reason. It's a fantastically comfortable, fast and stable ride with above-par spec for the price.

For the BikeRadar's Women's Road Bike of the Year Awards, we tested over 22 bikes at three different price points: under £1,000 (roughly $1,500), £1,000 to £1,500 ($1,500 to $2,000), and £1,500 to £2,000 ($2,000 to $2,500). The Specialized Ruby Comp was the £1,500 to £2,000 category winner, but it also takes the overall award, because of its exceptional performance, comfort and value for money.

All the bikes were tested both by the BikeRadar team, and by a specially recruited panel of our readers, so this review reflects the combined opinion of a number of female road cyclists.

Introducing the Ruby Comp

The Specialized Ruby Comp is a bike designed around endurance and sportive/gran fondo riding, and features women's-specific geometry. Specialized is interesting in that the company develops geometry for its women's bikes based around data collected from numerous bike fits. How that data informs the angles and tube lengths varies from bike to bike, so rather than a catch-all 'shorter reach, more upright position', Specialized will develop female-focused endurance geometries, race geometries and so on.

The Ruby Comp consists of a Specialized FACT 9r carbon frame and FACT carbon fork. The seatpost is also carbon, while bars, stem and cranks are alloy. The Ruby comes in at an impressive 8.23kg, one of the lightest in our test overall.