Manitou Mattoc

The Fox 36 and RockShox Pike are the long-standing gatekeepers of the 160mm club. There have been attempted insurgencies from the like of Marzocchi, DVO and Suntour but very few have stuck. However, with value on its side, the Mattoc could well be the fork for those who don’t want to spend a small fortune on two tubes and some oil.

The big question will always be, does the Manitou Mattoc hold its ground over other 160mm forks? With no overrated external travel adjust and no volume reducing spacers to worry about it the Mattoc scores from the outset. Good progression, accurate steering and a realistic flex/stiffness balance result in an impressive overall performance. This is a lot of fork for that money.

PRICE: £619.99 (Pro)

manitoumtb.com, hotlines-uk.com

Read the full review here

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Ohlins RXF 36

The Swedish suspension legends have a new fork in their line up – the RFX 36. It’s a bigger bodied fork that offers more travel, Boost spacing and larger legs than their first fork, the RFX 34.

There are  120,140 and 160mm travel models available, and a no Boost hub spacing option (although don’t expect this one to be around much longer the way things are going). The RFX 36 was originally only available for a 29” wheel (although this has now changed), a strange move some said especially as the 650B/27.5” market was very much flourishing and the default choice for many riders. But hey, we love the big wheels and it seems the rest of the world is starting to catch up.

For shorter travel bikes we’d be happy with the RFX 34, but on a longer stroke fork the 36 is very much the way to go.

PRICE: £995

ohlins.com

Read the full review here

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The best mountain bike shocks

EXT Storia

The EXT Storia is quite unlike any other damper, not massively but certainly enough to make us take notice when we visited the company three years ago on the outskirts of Vicenza near Verona. What we experienced was a truly hand made Italian damper, its designer Franco Fratton working into the dark hours to put together a custom shock absorber for our test bikes. These are relatively low number products.

Now we are not saying its massively better than other dampers, just different, and we like this. What we like most of all is the grip, the incredible sensitivity that the Storia allows when tracking through root and off camber. In those situations it rates very, very highly. In some ways it’s pretty unnerving to ride the Storia, as muscle memory insists damping should have a certain feel. The Storia feels closer to the RE:Aktiv damping featured on Trek bikes. We like that too, particularly in the wet.

Price: From £599

extremshox.com

Read the Full Review here

Ohlins TTX22

There is an unpolluted difference with the Ohlins TTX rear shock. We’re not just talking hygiene here, although Ohlins are unashamedly obsessed with cleanliness, something that was hammered home when we visited the Stockholm R&D facility recently. For a company that deals primarily in oil and washers, there’s not much of the former to be seen.

It’s very difficult to characterise Ohlins damping simply because much of the time it actually feels like nothing much is happening. But there’s business going on here that puts it in a higher place than any other damper. Not massively but enough for there to be a difference when charging into beaten up terrain, a shock that has that edge in body and balance, a very fine edge.

Price: From £599.99 (Without spring)

ohlins.com

Read the full review here