Easton EC90 SLX Di2 Handlebar

The Easton EC90 SLX Di2 handlebar is conventionally shaped and weighs very little. As you might have guessed from the name, it's compatible with Shimano's Di2 internal junction box but works equally well with non-electronic groupsets. It's not for you if you want internally routed cabling, though.

The SLX is one of Easton's non-aero offerings. We tested the aero version last year, the (surprise surprise) EC90 Aero, and there's also the AX range (with 16 degrees of flare compared with the 4 degrees here, for gravel bikes).

Made from Easton's EC90 carbon, the construction quality and finish of this bar is excellent. Even inside the bar ends, as far as I could reach with a finger, everything was clean and tidy.

The EC90 SLX seems plainly styled, but when you look closely it's not that simple: the bar tapers very subtly from clamp area towards the bends. The cable routing is smoothly sculpted around the front of the bar for the brake cables and from the rear to the underside for the gear routing, as required.

The drops are very 'compact' as far as the hooks, below the lever position guides, where they become much shallower to curve out to a well-extended bar end. Easton calls this bar shape 'MCD' – 'Maximum Compact Drop' – which it says extends the drop and gives a short reach for a more comfortable wrist position.

The Di2 bit of the name simply refers to Easton's solution as to where to put the junction box on Shimano's electronic shifting system. It's a low-tech answer to this high-tech issue: stick the box into the end of the bar and run the cable out of the hole on the side. I watched a guy on YouTube modify his bar to achieve the same effect; I cannot imagine any manufacturer looking kindly on any warranty claim.

If you don't need this feature, you can still use this bar – the hole is covered up by the bar tape and all your cabling goes by the conventional route. I found it easy to create a smooth transition around the bar to the frame stops.

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The clamp area is roughly textured, which I took to mean you could do without carbon grip paste, but the instructions warned me always to use this with Easton's carbon bars, so I did. Once torqued correctly, there was no movement and no creaks or cracks in use.

Easton also warns you not to clamp anything on any part of the bar that is tapered. The excellent reason for this is that a clamp attached where the bar is not parallel could cut into the carbon and weaken it, which could lead to failure. The long taper on the EC90 SLX means only a small area remains for clamping attachments. There was just enough room for a Garmin mount on one side of the stem and a light on the other, but if you need more than that you'll need to look elsewhere.

Once set up, this bar felt entirely natural to me in every position. Looking at the old Cannondale bar it replaced, the profiles are quite similar so it's no wonder I felt at home. Everything is within easy reach wherever you rest and there's a good long lead-out on the bottoms, so no danger of being bounced off the ends by a pothole.

I'm no powerhouse rider and only found out I had any kind of sprint when a driver came accelerating towards me side-on as I crossed a roundabout (I escaped, by the skin of my back tyre). However, I have plenty of nasty little climbs locally, and I wrenched and twisted this bar as I dragged myself, out of the saddle, up some of these. There was no discernible flex.

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Easton says the EC90 SLX is its lightest-ever road bar, and it immediately knocked 120g off my Cannondale CAAD10 compared with the stock alloy bar supplied. It's a fair saving but probably cheaper to achieve the same effect by cutting out the beer for a month.

The bar comes in five widths from 38cm to 46cm; the 42cm size on test was perfect for me, as I would have expected.

Traditionally shaped (ie, non-aero) bars are getting harder to find outside of the gravel genre, so the SLX is a good addition to the market. Enve's Traditional Drop Handlebar comes in at around 200g for this width, so is very much in the same area as the Easton in both style and weight. It retails at £360.

Prime's X-Light Carbon handlebar also sticks to a traditional non-aero shape and is even lighter at 185g and cheaper at under £150, but in our test the compromise was a flexy feel.

Conclusion

Overall, I was very pleased with this bar: light, stiff, comfortable and reassuringly expensive.

Verdict

Light, stiff, expensive – choose all three