【Jeff Kendall-Weed】騎行測評2025款Santa Cruz Hightower 4

Hello everyone. It's that time again. New bike day. That didn't work. Oh, sweet. Fox suspension. Nice. Let's get to the star of the show. OK. I wonder what this thing is going to look like. Let's undo this. Oh, nice. That is gorgeous. I've never seen that color on a bike before. That's cool. Got Maven brakes. I've not ridden Maven yet. It's going to have SRAM transmission. Nice looking bike. Float X. We've moved over to Fox suspension now. Wow. Look at the details here. I hope it rides as good as it looks. I'm sure it will. I got some bike building to do. The Santa Cruz Hightower V4, the dictionary of mountain biking. This is a bike that will define Santa Cruz. While we will all see nomads and Bronsons and V10s doing all sorts of cool stuff on our social media, the Hightower is the bike we'll all actually own ourselves. This bike is the go-to vehicle for anyone that wants, for lack of a better expression, the definitive mountain bike experience. Going cool places, riding all kinds of terrain, the Hightower is built quite simply to be a mountain bike. And before we get started, yes, it has cable routing for a mechanical derailleur. Or should it not? It would be lighter. Let me know your thoughts down in the comments below. I'll take a second to thank the sponsor of this video, my friends over at Jensen USA. Jensen's a top online retailer for our friends at Santa Cruz Bikes. Jensen has Hightowers in stock right now, probably the older model year ones, set up with some cool parts at some great prices. And they will be among the first dealers to receive the newer Hightowers as well. I've got a link over to all the Hightowers available at Jensen USA down in the description below. Anything you purchase from my link over at Jensen that'll help support my channel, and that's a huge component of how we make all these videos happen. If you like my videos and you want to help support, chain lube, a pair of gloves, a whole Santa Cruz Hightower, whatever you end up getting, that'll help support my channel, and that all comes together to make this all possible. It's worth mentioning that when you get a bike from Jensen,it comes in a Jensen box, and all you gotta do to get it rideable is put the handlebars on and maybe the pedals. That's it. Much faster than this whole complete bike build. This is just a media loaner bike, not a bike from Jensen's retail department. Big thanks to Jensen USA for sponsoring this video, and thanks to Santa Cruz for loaning me this Hightower. I'm really excited to try this thing out. As people with more items published than followers tell us,you have to know the past in order to understand the present. So to put this latest update of the Hightower to the test, I actually started by spending a few months aboard the prior generation model, the Hightower 3. To me,the Hightower 3 was a pretty unique bike. It's modernly slack and capable, but has a little shorter wheelbase and somewhat more traditional of a feel than do many other bikes in this trail category. The Hightower 3 still responds well to being pushed right into enduro bike territory, all while encouraging its rider to get those lail Wilcox-style miles in with some really good pedaling mannerisms. The Hightower 3 wasn't as playful and jumpy as the Bronson, but if you wanted to get jibby,you certainly could. On the flip side, I would much,much rather be pedaling a Hightower for a five-hour long Vision Quest epic ride. You know,the sort of ride that starts with the infamous let's go easy,I'm not feeling great today sort of challenge. It's a warm,humid end of summer day, one of the warmer days of the whole summer. And I'm out here on the new Hightower, the new tower. This is the first ride, got the bike set up, double-down tires front and rear,max grip, got my cut-down little handlebars, got a mud puddle,it'll really be humid. I'm optimistic,bike's gonna be a lot of fun. Enter the new tower,the Hightower 4. The industrial design is more consistent with the recently updated Bronson. It's got a wider bit of truss around the shock and a much thicker downtube. And I don't mean a little thicker, I mean a lot more snicker. I mean thick. With bums-atop saddles,gloves-grabbing grips, the most noticeable difference between Hightower 3 and 4 are the geometry and suspension feels. These areas saw the biggest updates, and the personality of the bike went from astute and ready to more planned and feisty. The intended user is the same, but the way in which they prioritize their memories made during the riding experience may have shifted a little bit. The Hightower is now a 160-150 travel bike, meaning it uses a 160 fork and a 150 rear shock. The geometry is now a bit more Mike Tyson, the level of aggression that would have sent the prior generation straight to anger management. The most noticeable things that the Hightower 4 has a much longer front-end feel. Due to a slightly slacker headtube angle and a longer fork, stack height also feels a bit taller. I'm 5 foot 8 inches tall, or 174 centimeters, and rode a size medium for both this new Hightower and the older. The new update to the Hightower has a slightly longer reach of about 6 millimeters longer, a slightly higher stack of about 5 millimeters taller, a slacker head angle at over a half degree more relaxed, a steeper seat tube angle at over a full degree sharper. The whole front end is nearly 20 millimeters longer, and the overall wheelbase is lengthened about the same. The chainstays grew slightly, and the bottom bracket height is marginally higher, though it does feel the opposite of that due to that much longer wheelbase. I like the way this new one corners compared to the old one. Is that just set up, or is it a bike? On the trail, cornering has definitely slowed a little, and the new version needs a good bit of lean angle to really whip through turns. Faster bits of trail can be less tiring for the rider. The bike holds its line more intuitively than did the prior gen. At least until we get to one of my complaints, so hold on for that. The rear end feels longer than the older bike, further muting trail frequencies, and provides some good balance for that new longer front end. The high tower wheelies really well once you do get onto the back tire. I found the back end to feel longer than it measures, something that's a little bit unique here. The rear suspension feels more supple at the beginning of the stroke, and it's also more forgiving deeper down into the stroke. Overall, the back end feels more eager to get into the travel, more like an enduro feel, and a little bit less peppy. The bike keeps a light-footed feel, and it accelerates brilliantly. It now has more cushion on rocks, roots, and on botched landings. And I had many a botched landing while riding this bike. No fault to Santa Cruz there, mea culpa on all of those. So my biggest complaints. Well, I have two. First up, the frame's torsional rigidity isn't as stout as some of the other bikes. Notably, the Pivot Switchblade, the Prior Gen Bronson, the Specialized Stumpy Evo Alloy, the Orbea Occam LT, and even the older Ibis Ritmo V2S were all quite a bit more stout. On those bikes, the rigidity felt a little bit more evenly balanced with the Fox 36 fork. The new tower is a bit softer on those bigger impacts, and while the geometry is great for holding a line, I'd feel the frame flex a little bit at bigger g-force moments, and that would steer me a little bit. It's still stiffer than the aluminum Ibis Ritmo AF, but the torsional rigidity is closer to the Yeti SB140. This is definitely acceptable, but I found the new tower to be a little bit less predictable than the Yeti. That said, I've had more time aboard the Yeti, and the differences may just be me getting more used to the Yeti over the Santa Cruz. Second complaint, pedal clearance feels a bit worse. I really enjoy the older bike's shorter feel. Oh, I'm getting bumped. The bottom bracket's so low. And I rarely ever caught pedals on that bike as the breakover angle was great. Now I have to focus a bit more on where my feet are on the trail. Both bikes came stock with the exact same 170mm cranks. This was more of an issue on backcountry trails than on the flow trails, but it's a significant factor for many who ride more rugged terrain. Now when I bring up these complaints, it's in my crazy context of trying different bikes all the darn time. In reality, you'll get used to the frame stiffness, and you won't even notice it until you ride someone else's bike. But then you'll find some other item on their bike that's definitely not your cup of tea, and the whole process will repeat. This whole lengthening the bike without raising the bottom bracket height thing is a bit of a new school trend. But I'm also an old school dude. I started riding back in the day, back when bikes had head tube badges, and back when Santa Cruz still painted their aluminum frames in their own dusty warehouse in Seabright, where interns spent their summers applying decals and breaking down cardboard boxes. Lots of boxes. I only had this high tower for less than two weeks, and didn't have time to swap over my normal test parts. As always, I did immediately replace the flimsy stock tires with some more trustworthy meats. I went for Maxxis double-down casing tires, specifically an Askeye in front and a Minion DHR2 in back, both in the ultra-tacky Max Grip compound. I did run the exact same wheels as I did with the stock high tower 3, and I will mention that for a stock alloy wheel set, they felt appropriately stiff on that older high tower, so I feel qualified to comment about frame stiffness. Speaking of stiffness, the stock Santa Cruz handlebars are wretchedly stiff, even so after four hours. My hands complained quite quickly about this stiffness, so just like I did with the older version, I threw on a different set of handlebars. In this case, I went for the Renthal Fat Bar with a nice high rise. While in the older high tower, I wanted more stack height, in the new tower, for the first time in a long time, I actually lowered the stem a little bit. That's right, the stock stack height feels lovely. I did run my personal grips of choice lately, the ODI Elite Pro. Between the Renthal bars and the ODI grips, I felt quite a bit more comfy. But that was all the parts changes I had time for, tires, bars, and grips. The SRAM Maven brakes grew on me. The first five or six rides or so, I absolutely did not love them, as they have far less modulation than my usual Shimano XT brakes. But eventually, I did get more used to the Mavens, and you can actually watch my wheelie is getting better over the course of filming this video. Ah, I dropped it early. Now, here's where I mentioned that I'm indeed a Shimano-sponsored athlete, and I do have a personal preference for both Shimano drive trains and brakes. There we go. Oh, manual SRAM brakes. The Mavens on this high tower and the codes on the prior gen, they both worked much better than older and other SRAM units I've tried. Props to SRAM for getting better. The stock 150 dropper post kind of confused me. I thought it was broken. As with the steep seat angle, the seat feels quite a bit higher than it is. There were times where I went to sit down and thought I hadn't yet dropped the seat post, and the remote wasn't working. Turns out it was dropped, just not enough to make as big of a difference as I'd like. The seat angle is over a full degree steeper on the new bike. Right away, factor in the purchase of not just better tires, softer bars, but to really give this bike justice, also get a deeper drop seat post. For my size medium bike, I definitely want to do at least a 180mm drop. Comparisons. The closest bike I can think of to the latest Hightower would be that Yeti SB140. The Hightower has slightly more rear wheel travel, and is slightly more planted to the ground, whereas the SB140 is a little more playful. The Yeti also likes its faster trails, and the Hightower is a bit more of a broad sweet spot. But the flex in the Yeti frame is a little bit more predictable. Both bikes are great, and I'd be happy with either. Each retains a bit of their respective brand's general DNA, the Santa Cruz being a little bit happier in the jumps and the jibs, and the Yeti being a little bit more speed-driven. The Ibis Ritmo V3 is an obvious comparison, but the sizings are quite different, with the Hightower being a full 20mm longer and 5mm taller. This means it's not all as an apples-to-apples comparison. For my size medium, the Ritmo certainly feels smaller. The Ritmo is torsionally a little bit stiffer, and its flex is a little more predictable than on the Santa Cruz. Small bump compliance actually felt a little better on the Hightower, and I did enjoy the tall front end of the Hightower. The Santa Cruz also has a little bit more shock progression, and I preferred the stock valving of Santa Cruz's Float X over what Ibis did. The Hightower is perhaps a little bit more mainstream, whereas the Ibis is a bit more nuanced. Both bikes are excellent, and luckily their sizing is just different enough that they will indeed be preferred by different riders. The Pivot Switchblade is a very different bike from the Hightower. The Switchblade pedals a lot better, but it's also got a much shorter back end, made it to an even longer front end. The Switchblade is a bit more extreme in its geometry, and definitely prefer some more predictable and less steep trails. The Pivot definitely handles better when seated, whereas the Hightower handles better for the new schoolers to stand up quite a bit. If your trails aren't super steep, the Switchblade is better at generating speed, but if you've got some elevation, the Hightower is definitely better at managing that speed. Conclusion. Santa Cruz has absolutely modernized the Hightower. It feels more inclined for bike-specific trails and jump and flow scenarios, but it's also less inclined for the backcountry epic stuff. It almost feels as though it's leaning more toward the old Ritmo, though perhaps slightly less bomber, and that's good. It's fun to have so many different bikes to choose from. I wasn't expecting the new Hightower to feel as different as it does to the old, but I think these changes will continue to solidify the bike's place in the market. I want to congratulate Santa Cruz on making some well-thought-out changes to continue to improve what has always been an excellent and very popular bike. As always, I have a link to all the Hightower models currently available over at Jensen USA down in the description box below, and any purchases from those links will help support my channel. Big thanks to Santa Cruz for loaning me this Hightower, and thanks to Jensen for sponsoring the video. And of course, thanks to all of you for hanging out and chatting bikes. Peace and wheelies, everyone.