Giant Reign 29 Review

Photo: Pinkbike

Overview:

When I first came across the Giant Reign on the internet I was shocked for two reasons: one of the biggest bike companies in the world has completely switched to 29 inch wheels, the other thing that suprised me is thats their enduro bike has just 146mm of travel. It turns out that the reasons for these points haveto do with Giant’s Maestro Suspension linkage. Giant thought that if they put 29ers on the Reign, they wouldn’t be able to fit the 160mm of travel that was on their previous model with smaller wheels. This explains their long delay to embrace bigger wheels. It turns out they really couldn’t fit enough travel on the suspension so they had to reduce it to 146mm. However, the Maestro design made the 160mm Reign somehow feel like a 180mm bike so shouldn’t it do the same thing for the 2020 model?

Climbing:

Turns out that Giant’s suspension experiment was successful which is actually a downside in some areas because now the bike climbs like a 170mm mini downhill bike which isn’t exactly a good thing. It was very hard to maneuver the front of the bike through tight sections, and the rear end had a lot of pedal bob making it painfully clear that much of my energy was going to waste. I’ve actually heard many people say this bike climbs pretty well. So, I’m not sure whether or not I was having a bad day when I took this thing uphill.

Descending:

This is where the seemingly 170mm bike succeeds. I rode this bike in Laguna Beach and last time I was there I rode the previous year’s model of this bike on the same trails, making it perfect to compare the two. Right off the bat I noticed that the 2020 reign was a lot faster; I was flying down trails that I suffered down last year. While the 2019 reign was more plush feeling, it was very hard to jump. The 2020 bike wins once again because despite it seeming a bit harsher over rocks, it was pretty easy to pop off lips. I was hitting gap jumps on it for the first time in six months (I always ride poorly in the winter so this was a breakthrough). I think what I can conclude from this is that no matter how much the bike felt as if it had more travel than it did, it still only had 146mm which made it easy to bottom out, yet gave it the same amount of pop as a trail bike.

Verdict:

The Reign is perfect for an enduro racer who might spend some time in the bike park too. Although in my opinion the bike felt sluggish going uphill, others have argued otherwise and I think I’ll need to spend more time on the Reign before I can come to a full conclusion.