NORCO OPTIC C3
Within the last 18 months we’ve seen quite an evolution within the Norco range, and it all kicked off midway through 2019 with a revamp of their XC race dually; the Revolver FS. The new rendition underwent some sizable changes to the geometry with a slacker head angle, longer reach and front-centre as well as a steeper seat angle. In addition to the ‘modernised’ geometry, the new version was offered in both 100mm and 120mm variants.
In its longer travel format, the Revolver FS120 overlapped heavily with the older Optic; in fact the revised Revolver was now half a degree slacker with reach/front centre figures that are on average 20mm longer. So their XC racer was effectively more capable on the descents than its trail-oriented counterpart. The solution was obvious and came to fruition with the launch of the next-gen 2020 Optic.
At the same time Norco also reinvented their Sight all-mountain bike, making it longer in both geometry and travel, so it became far more capable too—with 150-160mm travel and a 64 degree head angle, most would consider the new Sight to be more of an enduro bike. This left plenty of space for the new Optic to fill.
In the stand
On paper the 2020 Optic mightn’t appear that radical; it has 10mm more travel all-round, providing 125mm of rear suspension to accompany the 140mm fork (the older one had 115/130mm), but there’s more going on with the suspension than this metric would suggest.
For starters, the linkage arrangement has been tweaked to make the new rendition more progressive. It may be too early in the review to launch into the technical stuff but the leverage ratio used to start at
