Vitus Energie CRX

The Vitus Energie CRX cyclo-cross bike is an absolute blast to ride thanks to sharp, fun handling along the trails or around tight, technical muddy circuits. It's great for a day out on the gravel, and you can chuck mudguards on it too if you fancy a high-speed, year-round commuter.

• Pros: Highly versatile frameset, great handling off-road
• Cons: Cheap alloy seatpost is a bit at odds with the overall price

The Ride

If you want to ride fast off-road without the benefits of suspension then this Vitus is one of the best bikes to have a play on. The racy geometry and low-slung position mean you can really get down and drop that centre of gravity to benefit the handling when the terrain is tough, and the way it responds to the slightest shift in body weight is very impressive.

If you are riding in the woods or on rough, rutted gravel tracks, the Vitus hops and glides over tree roots and potholes with grace and as long as you keep looking ahead at what details are coming up you can keep the speed up as you flick the front end and bunny hop the rear. It's a full overload of the senses as you jump/pedal/brake your way through the onslaught of obstacles.

If racing around fields is your thing (it is a cyclo-cross bike after all!) then you won't be disappointed here either. The light weight means you can repetitively accelerate hard out of the bends lap after lap, and the climbs can become a joy.

The frame is very stiff, too, so when you are stamping on the pedals with your lungs burning and muscles screaming you are getting everything back from what you are putting in.

The head angle is 72 degrees, which gives quick handling when on loose terrain, and I really enjoyed chucking the bike down some technical sections of woodland trail. You get a lot of feedback through the fork so you know what the tyres are up to, and when you have to really haul on those 160mm rotors there is no feeling of flex or twisting under load.

For a top-end off-road racer, the Vitus is surprising versatile with plenty of tyre clearance around the outside of the standard 35mm knobbly tyres, and it'll take mudguards too.

With some slick tyres on, the Vitus will make a handy commuter. Its geometry, although quite aggressive for off-road, is pretty sedate on the tarmac making it perfect for carving through traffic or dealing with wet and greasy surfaces during the winter months.

On the road the 1x groupset can be a little gappy but that is the only real criticism I'd have with it really. Again, its weight makes it a formidable speed machine and with the wider volume tyres comfort is pretty good, too, for such a stiff frame.

Frame and fork

This is Vitus's top end cyclo-cross frame and it's gone for Toray grade high modulus carbon fibre. Basically it mean the fibres are more refined to get a more uniform size, allowing you to pack more of them in for a given space; this results in a stiffer but lighter frame than if you are using a lower quality grade.

As I mentioned above, the Vitus offers a lot of stiffness, not just from the material and layup but from the actual tube shapes.

Up front you get a tapered head tube and corresponding full carbon fork steerer. No real surprise there, but rather than going for 1 1/8in expanding to 1 1/4in, like most, the bottom bearing section is 1 1/2in for extra stiffness to deal with steering and braking loads.

The down tube is a large square/oval affair which meets the flared seat tube at the pretty expansive bottom bracket junction. Continuing the theme of 'chunky', the chainstays are also massive to deliver all of that drive from your legs.

Promoting some comfort, the top half of the frame is a little bit more slender, with the top tube having quite a contrast in size with the down tube. The seatstays are more svelte, too, to promote some flex.

Vitus has gone for 12mm thru-axles front and rear for wheel retention, which is good to see as that is the most common standard that wheel manufacturers are settling on. You get flat mounts for the disc callipers too.

To keep things clean and out of the mud, Vitus has routed all of the cables and hoses internally, which should also keep things more comfortable when shouldering the bike over obstacles and the like.

There are ports should you want to switch to a 2x crankset setup and the frame is drilled to accept a front mech.

Finishing kit

All four models in the Energie range come with SRAM 1x setups, with this CRX model using a full Force groupset for £1,899.99.

The Xsync chainset gives you a 40-tooth chainring paired to an 11-32, 11-speed SRAM cassette. For the fast racing style of cyclo-cross I found that a good spread of gears, although a little lacking top end when it comes to the road or fast, flowing gravel tracks.

The closer ratio sprockets of the 11-32 cassette do offer fewer big steps between gears than some options seen on gravel bikes, so I was happy with that. We are all different, though, and changing of cassettes and chainrings isn't a massive hassle to get what you are after.

We've reviewed the Force 1X groupset before so I won't go into huge amounts of detail about it, but it's fair to say that I found it a very nice setup to use. Even covered in mud and grit the shifting remained positive, and the clutch rear mech made sure the chain never unshipped on even the roughest of terrain.

Like I said up top, the Vitus uses 160mm rotors front and rear which is ample stopping power for a bike of this kind. You get a lot of control from the levers so you can play about with the amount of power you are putting through them to avoid locking up.

The levers aren't my favourites – I prefer the shape of Shimano's Ultegra hydraulic levers – but the SRAMs aren't uncomfortable and there is plenty of hood to grab onto when the going gets a bit rough.

The rest of the kit is Vitus' own-branded stuff which takes care of the handlebar, stem and seatpost. It's all alloy and does a decent enough job, especially the stem and bar which are perfectly stiff enough for the challenge, but for this money I'd expect to see a carbon seatpost or at least a very good aluminium one. Going carbon would also bring a little bit of flex to offset the stiffness of the frame.

I got on okay with the Vitus saddle. It's not my favourite shape but even after some quite long rides I never really suffered with any major discomfort.

Wheels and tyres

For the wheels Vitus has specced WTB STPi23 rims with Novatec disc-specific hubs. It's a pretty solid wheelset and they took some hard knocks over the course of testing; I suffered no issues with them whatsoever. Their weight isn't bad, and the freewheel engagement was definitely fast enough for racing out of corners and hard accelerations from a standing start.

The tyres are WTB CrossBoss in a 35mm width and they are tubeless ready – the carcass is still porous like a standard tyre, but with sealant they will seal themselves. Well, eventually... The rear tyre leaked like a sieve until I'd pumped it up a few times, and you could see the sealant closing up all of the gaps in the sidewall.

Performance-wise, though, I was very happy with them. Their knobbled tread could deal with most situations, even the mud, unless it was really wet and chewed up. On gravel they offered a decent bite and they flew along on the tarmac pretty well, too. They show no sign of cuts or anything, so puncture resistance looks to be good as well.

Value

When it comes to value, the Vitus doesn't disappoint either.

Yes, £1,900 is a big outlay but it costs £400 less than the Boardman CXR 9.4 for the same level of kit. I really liked that bike too, so for the Vitus to offer a better ride and come with such a saving shows what sort of package we are looking at here.

> Buyer's Guide: 12 of the best cyclo-cross bikes

Canyon's highly regarded, quirky looking Inflite CF SLX 8.0 Pro Race is also heavier, plus you only get a SRAM Rival groupset for the £2,499 outlay.

Overall, the Vitus Energie CRX is one hell of a package for the money, and it is a great bike to ride too, whether you're racing or just playing around off the beaten track.

Verdict

A great value for money package that is an absolute hoot to ride pretty much anywhere