TRAIL-SMASHING HARDTAILS

Advances in geometry, suspension and component tech have made today’s MTBs more capable than ever. While a lot of the progress has focused on full-suspension bikes, hardtails aren’t excluded from the benefits. Longer and slacker frames, more capable forks and better tyres can potentially give these bikes a whole new level of speed, control, traction and comfort.

As riders have begun to cotton on to the benefits of hardtails with modern geometry and kit, a crop of long, low and slack bikes that can also climb have slowly been infiltrating the line-up of more switched-on brands. Luckily, stretched-out tubes and relaxed angles don’t add much to the cost of a bike. You don’t need to pay nearly two grand to get modern geometry – and it is a lot to blow on a hardtail – but we’ve chosen it as the upper limit for this test because it’s as you approach the £2k mark that you start to get bikes that are both strong, reliable and reasonably light.

At this price, you can expect decent kit, including a dropper post. Name-brand parts start to become more common, although in-house finishing kit may still be used to keep bikes within a price bracket. Wheels should be clad in grippy rubber, too – and good tyres can vastly improve how a hardtail rides. Mid-range brakes, with the stopping power of dearer units, just without the same levels of adjustment, also turn up.

But do these modern hardtails come anywhere close to the performance of a full-suspension bike? And is it worth championing truly progressive geometry or should you prioritise better-performing components for the best ride? We took four of the latest sub-£2k aggro hardtails into the wild, over terrain ranging from trail centre loops to hairy enduro descents, to find out.

THE LINE-UP

RAGLEY PIGLET £1,799.99

This is the only steel bike in the test – a material popular with hardtail fans because it can be formed into thin-walled tubes that flex slightly to ‘absorb’ bumps. Ragley claim the Piglet can tackle any terrain. This latest version gets more progressive geometry and tubing changes. It comes with a 130mm-travel RockShox Revelation fork, SRAM NX Eagle drivetrain and Guide T brakes, SUNringlé Duroc wheels and a Brand-X Ascend dropper seatpost.

SARACEN MANTRA ELITE LSL £ 1,749.99

Mantra LSL in a lower spec and thought the fork limited its potential. The Elite LSL (it stands for ‘low, slack and long’) upgrades to a 140mm-travel RockShox 35 Gold RL, which should address the damper issues on the cheaper bike. Other