There is A LOT to like about the Canyon Spectral ｜ 2025 Pinkbike Field Test

This bike doesn't have as many adjustments I don't think, but I don't really feel like I need to do much to it other than get rid of KISS and we're all set. Alright, this is a very bright Canyon Spectral CF. CF means carbon frame, of course, carbon fiber. This one's got dual 29 inch wheels. You can also run it as a mullet. 140 mil rear travel and 150 mil fork. It did have that KISS system with the spring steering bonger thing, whatever you want to call it. We pulled that out, but it does have a storage box as well. And the Canyon Spectral CF weighs 32 pounds, 7 ounces. What do they say about this bike? Well, I got to bring it up on my phone because they have a lot of copy written down here. Canyon says the Spectral CF is the quiver-killing machine, trail-slaying all-rounder, and has playful handling with grin-inducing capability. That's a lot. We're going to get into the review with our first impressions here. Different bike than the Canyon Spectral. Oh, you can hear the KISS rattling away. Going to have to adjust that somehow. There is a spring rattling inside the top tube. I don't like that. Other than the rattle, this bike feels good. This bike feels very solid for being 140 miles. Yeah, I turned the KISS system on. We'll see if I can feel it in any of these other bits. That's pretty solid unless you're going slower, but the bike does feel super nice and calm. Yeah, it's on that rougher stuff where you do feel the shorter travel, but it's fine. I guess this would probably be the limit to what most people would want to take a bike like this on, but the fact that it feels comfy is definitely a good testament to what it can do. You can see it because it's a bike where you might go the bike part a couple times a year, and then the rest of the time you're on slightly mellower terrain. The back end doesn't feel super long, so it is easy to kind of pick it up and place it. This bike doesn't have as many adjustments as I think, but I don't really feel like I need to do much to it other than get rid of KISS when we all sit. Yeah, and then this kind of bermy, pumpy stuff. That's really where the Spectral feels sweet. Playful is always a funny characteristic, but that's what this bike feels like. Kind of a goof-off bike to some extent. That's a lap on it. Yeah, very enjoyable first lap. Excited to spend more time with it. All right, we've got a special delivery on the way. It's going to have our initial ride impressions. At least the three words we first thought about the Spectral. Look at that, coming right down. And also some questions. Let's open up this beautiful package and see what's in there. This one's actually kind of hard to open. It's like Christmas morning. I don't want to tear the wrapping paper. All right, three initial words. We got bright, happy, and fun. Yeah, those are my words. Those are my initial impressions, so I think they hold true. Yeah, I mean, the paint color has not changed. It's still very bright. It has consistently made me happy, and I do think it's fun. We nailed it. First ride, set, done. We're going to start with the climbing questions. First one is, does it feel punchy thanks to its short travel? I'd say it does. Yeah, this bike is super well composed. It's got 140 mils of travel. It kind of sits a little bit higher when you want it to, but then when you do go in rougher terrain, it's got really nice traction. It's got a very ideal blend of the characteristics you want for a short travel trail bike. Yeah, I think Canyon did a great job with balancing the damping you need to handle bigger hits on the descending. We'll get to that later, but also keeping it high in the travel, keeping you moving forward. It doesn't feel like it wants to bog down and stick to the ground. It covers terrain really nicely. Yeah, exactly. It feels like a trail bike should. All right, second question. It's got a very slack head tube angle relative to what we tend to think of as a trail bike. How does that play a role here? Yeah, it's a 64 degree head angle, so that's kind of the head angle we see often on longer travel enduro bikes. Canyon likes this head angle because I'm pretty sure it was on the Spectral 125. That was their short travel thing that we reviewed two seasons ago, and I think it works a lot better on this bike. It's a little more travel. It's slack, but it doesn't feel slack. It just kind of feels normal in a really good way. It doesn't feel like it's lethargic. I didn't feel like I needed any special system to help me keep my handlebars straight. It just kind of feels normal, and I just mean that in the best way possible. Yeah, you kind of alluded to it. We took the Kiss system off this bike very quickly. It doesn't really feel like you need any sort of steering damping. It's not flopping or getting too erratic in any scenarios. I found even on really steep climbs, you do just kind of sit into the bike nicely. It doesn't feel like you're too backseat or trying to keep the front end from washing out. Yeah, good. And kind of going back to the pedaling performance we mentioned, it's one of those bikes you can kind of stand up and pedal, and it goes forward, which some bikes feel like they're almost trying to drag you backwards, but this is the one that's got that nice peppy manner where you're just getting propelled forward. Super fun. Yeah, and I think along these lines, I did use the climb switch occasionally on this bike. I didn't think it was critical, especially not in technical climbing, but I did a long ride with a bunch of fire road climbing and found that it was nice. It just preserves the geometry, keeps you from sitting into it too much, but not critical. Yeah, I didn't use it. I can't picture where it is, which is a good sign for me. If I've used it, I can often imagine reaching down, but for me, I can't picture where it is. Yeah, I mean, it's convenient. It's like Super Deluxe's is right there, and the way that the shock is mounted, it makes it easy. Third question, final one. Does the downhill ability of this bike hurt its climbing abilities? It's kind of a foreshadowing. I guess we're alluding to the fact that it has very good downhill abilities. I didn't think it did. Me either. As we said earlier, the damping helps it on the climbs just as much as it does on the descents. On to descending. So this bike, we have a few bikes that have just 140 millimeters of travel, while other ones in this test have 150. Does that limited travel affect it on the downhill? Does it feel rough at all? No, I don't think so. I think you notice feedback in this bike. You can sense through your feet and hands that you are pushing into terrain. You can get a sense of what you're hitting, but it doesn't feel chattery. It's just knowing that you're there. I like that feeling. Yeah, so this bike, compared to some of the longer travel bikes in this bracket, you do notice that it has less travel than, say, a bike like the Bronson, which kind of has a deep feeling, feels almost like closer to an enduro bike. But I think that the Spectral does a good job of preserving its travel. So you're getting some of those deep, really chunky or steppy bits. It's not just hitting the bottom all the time, so I think that helps it make the most of that 140 mils of travel. Yeah, I had a handful of bottom outs on the bike, but I didn't want to change anything else in the stroke, so I actually didn't add volume spacers. It just felt like when I bottomed out, I expected to. Yeah, it's like you're supposed to be hitting, like, oops, I went somewhere I might not normally take a 140 mil bike. One of them was the G out of a big rock roll, and I was like, that is unsurprising, and it felt normal. It's okay to use all the travel once in a while. That kind of brings us to the next question. Does the geometry outride the travel? We've got this fairly slack bike, but not a ton of travel. Is it compromised because of that? No, I don't think so, because I don't think the head angle paints the full picture. The bike, I don't have all the numbers off the top of my head, but it rode low feeling. I think, like, feet and hands feel, like, lower to the ground, kind of gives you this connected feel. It also means that compared to something like the Bronson that stands up pretty tall, like, no matter how you've got the setup, it's just inherently that way. I found that the Spectral was more of a, like, low slung, you're leading with your hands and kind of cutting turns athletically as opposed to, like, standing up in a defensive position. Yeah, and we should just, a little side note on here, the bike we're on is a size medium, a Canyon size medium, which their medium tends to be almost identical to a large from all the other companies. So, across the board, these bikes have fairly similar reach numbers, but it is something, definitely look at the geometry chart before you buy. I think we're all happy with this size medium and it's 480 reach, but just keep that in mind, because if you think you're normally a large and you get a large, that bike's probably going to feel too big for you. Even for me, I wouldn't size up on this bike. This medium, which is a crazy thing to say, but this medium is the one that fits me. And how about wheel size? Would you rather this bike is available with a mixed wheel? It's got the flip chip. Would you rather have mixed wheels? No, I found that the full 29 setup we had rode like a mixed wheel bike, which is kind of a hard thing to articulate, but there's an element of how a bike cuts turns, especially in steeper terrain, where mixed wheels have a certain way about them, and this bike felt like that. Yeah, I agree. It's one of those bikes where if I just rode it and never even looked down and someone was like, oh yeah, it's a mixed wheel, I'd say, yeah, it definitely is. Yeah, I thought it was at first. Yeah, you can really carve the rear wheel around. I think chainstays are fairly short, but something about the balance. But it's a cool feeling. I really like how it's what you want from your little shorter travel trail bike. You can just snap through turns, has that level of energy, kind of like that slalom-y feel. Yeah, it feels balanced too. I think you alluded to the sizing earlier. This is the medium bike. To me, it feels like this is the bike they designed, and then the sizing kind of just stretches. Yeah, and we didn't ride any other sizes, so we don't know. All we know is this bike is sweet. Yeah, we'll avoid the sizing discussion too much, but it matters a bit that many of the other bikes now have size-specific everything, and this is less so that way. Yeah, there's not as many adjustments on this bike either, but what we got, it worked really well. The last question, we're getting close to the end of the questions, I guess. Is it overboard for a trail bike? We've had some debates on this field test about what's an all-mountain bike, what's a trail bike. Does this feel like did they go too far? Is it what you want a trail bike to be? And also, we should think about that not everybody riding a trail bike is going to be on super aggressive trails. We rode some pretty rowdy stuff here, but we rode some mellower stuff too, just to kind of see how it feels. I would take this one home and ride my daily driver trails on it. I think it's really, really well-rounded. It climbs as well as it descends. It offers damping that controls terrain in a way that I really liked on mellower trails, but also allows it to ride harder trails. Yeah, I think even if you're somewhere where it's a little bit more undulating terrain, kind of little punchy ups, steep downs, that kind of thing, even a little bit flatter overall, you could still have a good time on this bike. It's not just made for the super steep, rowdy, gnarly trails. But if you get on those, you're going to have fun too, especially considering how there's not a lot of travel, but it handles it really well. Yeah, and it jumps really nicely. We didn't really talk about that too much, but it's intuitive and has good pop. It just feels like an easy bike to ride and that sort of stuff. Yeah, did a great job with it. We should talk about what this bike is like to live with. So now we're going to head to the garage and see what Matt has to say about that. Here we've got the Canyon Spectral CF, and we're going to talk about what it's like living with this one. I mean, again, this is a very clean cut looking bike. Everything's very accessible. It was noted that the water bottle was a little bit lower to kind of reach down and get to. Behind that, we do have this very convoluted and small opening in the storage compartment. Although it does have one, you're not going to get big things like a pump. And I would say a jacket's going to be pretty hard to fit in there. So very small little storage box in here. Kind of has this like double hinged door. Snaps in place. It has been quiet, which is good. And then moving along the back of the bike, there is this sort of double flap mud guard that kept all the debris out. Although it did start to squeak a little bit. So I have noted putting some silicone spray on there does keep that quieter. Just up above, we do have a flip chip, a high low that works for both the 29 or the 27.5 flip chip back here. So that's a cool option. You can kind of set up both of those to work with two geometry settings. Along the back of the bike, there's also this lever that pops out of the axle. So that's a tool free removal for the rear wheel. OK, the last thing we have to talk about is the KISS system. Now Canyon's been on this sort of spring loaded steering system for a few of their bikes. And this one does have it built into the frame. It is very clean looking. You'd hardly know it's even there. But if you're not mechanically savvy, you're not going to want to take this apart yourself. And although it is something you're going to remove, you might have to go to the bike shop to do so. We've got a size medium Canyon Spectral. But the reach is about the same as all the other bikes here on test, even though those are larges. One cool thing about the spec on the Spectral with this size medium is that this has a 200 mil post and it's easily adjustable down to a 180 if you need to do so. That kind of wraps up the Spectral. We're going to throw it back to the guys in the house and see what their final thoughts on that bike are. That was Matt giving you a rundown on what this bike is like to live with. But now let's dig into the pros and cons and figure out who this bike is for. Start with the pros. It's really fun. I like driving this bike a lot. I think my first impression was like, wow, I'm looking forward to riding this more. And then as I rode it more, I continued to feel that way. Yeah, I think they did a good job with that. And also, it's fun, but it's also a good value. Assuming you can get it in your country. We'll talk about that a little bit. But overall, parts spec versus price, the fun to price ratio is very good. There isn't really anything I'd change on the bike from stock. Other pros? It's balanced. It's like climbing to descending. Geometry wise, it's balanced. I think it's well considered. It's super versatile. I think that versatility is going to be a pro. You could potentially ride it and race a little local enduro if you wanted. But then you can also go on a nice cruisy trail ride and be very happy. As far as cons go, I think for me, I do wish there was a little bit more water bottle clearance or a little more room. You can fit a normal size water bottle, at least on the size medium that we have. But there's not a ton of room. And if I want to go on a long ride, it's nice not to have to have a pack. So that's a small con. Otherwise... You can't get it in the US. That's a con, yeah. You can't have it. It is available in Canada and other countries. But at the moment, they haven't decided to bring this particular model into the US. There's a couple other models, but not this one. And I think this one poses a fairly good value for a high-end bike at a price that's not exorbitant. And again, that is just the build kit that we have. You can get other build kits that probably ride similarly. But specifically the one that we have, you can't get in the States. I just thought of the final con. The KISS system. But Canyon's come up with a system. It's interesting. We've tested it in the past. But I don't think that it's necessary at all for this bike. And if you did buy this bike, it becomes a Consumer Direct model. So the bike comes to your house in a box, and you need to remove it. It's kind of time-consuming, especially if you're not that mechanically minded. It might take a little bit. They do have a handy video you can watch that explains it. But overall, I think that Canyon could scrap the KISS system. Nobody would mind. And then it'd be one less hassle when the bike arrives. And because it's an internal thing, it was making some noise on your bike. Yeah, it did rattle. Which is why we initially took it off. Yeah, exactly. I'd add sizing maybe is a con on this. Just because it's Consumer Direct, you won't be able to test ride like many of the other bikes. So it's worth doing your research and figuring out exactly what size bike you're going to want to ride. Because if you looked at just the t-shirt size, you might get a little misled. Yeah, so pay attention. What Canyon recommends I think works pretty well for this, typically. Final thoughts. Who this bike is for. Who's the ideal person for the Canyon Spectral? Anyone who wants just a good little ripper. I think it's capable. A little bit beyond its numbers. It's not like some overzealous bike. It just works well on a lot of different terrain. Yeah, it kind of fits what I would want my trail bike to be like. I've said it before, like an aggressive trail bike. You can kind of push it a little further than you might normally think you could with a trail bike. But then if you're just cruising, it doesn't feel out of its element. So yeah, great all-rounder. Good price. Canyon Spectral lives up to those initial three words. Bright, happy, and fun. Don't forget to subscribe so you can keep up to date on all the latest Field Test videos. And you can also go to the homepage to check out the full review article of this bike.