All-New Mondraker Arid [Ride Review]
Just before the global launch of Mondraker's new Arid gravel, we were lucky enough to be able to spend a few hours on this new bike in the area around their headquarters in Elche, Spain. Apparently a gravel bike has been in the works for sometime at Mondraker. It was an effort to appease those in the company who were venturing into the drop bar world. Eventually the project was put on pandemic ice at some point but luckily it has now debuted. As this is their first venture into the drop-bar category (besides the Dusty e-gravel bike), we were excited to see where this bike fell in the wide spectrum of gravel bikes and especially coming from a gravity-centric mountain bike brand.

Mondraker is not the only mountain bike brand to jump into the gravel category. Santa Cruz has the Stigmata, Ibis has the Hakka and so on. When we learned about the new Arid, we had a hunch that it would be a bit more focused on the chunky and adventurous side of gravel rather than leaning toward the more all-road side of bikes, which frequently is a road bike that can fit 40mm tires. Our intuition was based on combining their background of longer-travel mountain bikes with the rocky, gritty terrain found in their backyard near Alicante, Spain.

From a features standpoint, the frameset is very similar to the ENVE Mog or the latest Santa Cruz Stigmata with great frames with ample tire clearance (at least 50mm), slightly taller headtubes, shorter seattubes and slacker geometry. The bikes also all have round 27.2mm seatposts and suspension corrected front ends which help when the rider wants to add a dropper or a front shock. While some might argue that these features all add up to a ride that strays a bit from the competition side, swapping to a more aggressive cockpit would take care of any of those concerns.

I opted to ride the medium mainly knowing the overall reach was probably closer to where I would want to be. With the longer reach of the frame, the small frame with a longer stem would have also worked well but we were short on time and swapping stems these days is not a trivial task. If someone wanted to have a lower front end to achieve a more aerodynamic position, riding down a size and adding 1-2 cm.of stem length would work really well. The reach of the frame is fairly long and is intended to be paired up with shorter stems. A rider looking for an extra long reach would only need to step up to 90mm. stem keeping the proper handling characteristics.

Our ride featured a wide mix of surfaces. I guess that is the idea. We started with some time on the road as we rode away from Mondraker's World HQ. The frame felt more responsive than I expected for a bike with a longer than average front-center and 50mm tires. It was also obvious that the stock cockpit’s bar width and drop style would favor the rougher, more challenging end of the spectrum that this bike was designed for. While lowering the stem would have helped quite a bit, I certainly found myself wanting a narrower bar. This was not totally surprising as my road bike at home has quite narrow bars and I was riding the larger of the two frame sizes that would fit me.

When we were on dirt, we mainly saw firm dirt with a lot of small pebbles and rocks on the surface. The Arid's rear end was very compliant and meshed well with the big tires and the lower air pressure. Despite having a fairly small tread profile, the tires seldom slipped giving the bike a very planted feel. Besides the large capacity tires, the compliance must come from the dropped seatstays (and their unique connection to the seattube) and longer seatpost made possible through the shorter seattube.

Riding a bike with a lot of length built into the front end (both a long reach and a longer than normal front center) made this bike feel incredibly stable. I was glad that I had opted to ride the larger of the two frame sizes that I can fit. When I can get another chance to spend some time on one of these bikes, I will opt for a lower stem and a narrower bar which brings one nice feature of this frame to mind. The internal cabling is fed into the frame through a "scoop" on the bottom of the stem which makes stem swaps easier than a lot of the modern drop bar bikes.

The frameset also had some nice features that would add to the bike's versatility as far as storage. The storage container on the downtube had a clever door that allowed the door to pivot to access the compartment. While the opening was a bit smaller than optimal, having the door always connected to the frame will keep it from jettisoning off with your bottle in tow. The thin, flat top tube offers a nice aesthetic and has bag mounts. Add three sets of bottle eyelets, fender mounts, rack mounts and fork eyelets and this bike is ready for some longer adventures.
The RR build that we rode featured a full SRAM Force AXS groupset with a powermeter combined with Mavic's Allroad carbon wheels. For the price, it seems like a strong value.

On a deeper dive of all of the Arid models specifications we found some likeable characteristics throughout the line. All of the frames are the same layup yielding a 1250 gram frameset and are designed exclusively for 1x drivetrains. All of the bikes are SRAM equipped other than the entry level model with Shimano 1x12 GRX. We are also fans of the use of Zipp and Mavic wheels, much like Mondraker does on their mountain bikes, rather than the use of house brand wheels. Finally, the value offered in the line seems exceptional from the low $2000s for frameset up to the just under $10,000 for top-end Mondraker Arid Carbon RR SL with SRAM XPLR and Zipp wheels.

In the end, the Mondraker Arid lineup of gravel bikes is full of strong contenders. The frames are reasonably light and extremely compliant. Mondraker's famous longer geometry helps create a stable ride quality. We love the aesthetics of the flat top tube and each of the paint schemes lives up to what we would expect from Mondraker. We are particularly excited about the entry level Arid Carbon with GRX 1x12 and the Arid Carbon RR with Sram Force AXS.
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