The new Canyon Aeroad hit the ground running – or more accurately sprinting. Three stages of the Tour de France with Jasper Philipsen in its debut Grand Tour and Kaden Groves won three at the Vuelta. Canyon says it’s the fastest bike in the peloton – a claimed 2.5 watts faster than the Cervélo S5 and on average somewhere between 1.5-2 watts faster than the previous Aeroad. It’s also fractionally lighter than the Aeroad ridden previously by the sponsored pro teams. Tyre clearance has increased to 32mm. And importantly for both team mechanics and Canyon’s paying customers, it’s infinitely more user friendly with the clever but complex ‘solutions’ of the previous model scrapped – the truncated seatpost that flexed within the frame and the adjustable cockpit that needed a proprietary tool for tightening the headset, for example, have gone.
But the Aeroad still has little tricks up its sleeve that its rivals don’t have: for example, if you want to save a claimed 14 watts, you can swap the vertical/straight (classic) drops for the flared (aero) drops without disconnecting the hydraulic hoses. The difference is that now there's practicality alongside cleverness. The Aeroad’s new PACE (Performance Adaptive Cockpit Ecosystem) Bar includes Canyon’s Gear Groove, which makes it simpler to fit computer mounts and lights. And it comes with a rear light that mounts directly to the rear of the seatpost.
Possibly the focus on practicality is best embodied in Canyon’s switch to Torx T25 bolts for all adjustments to the frameset, cockpit and seatpost. When I spoke to Canyon’s lead engineer Lukas Birr before the launch, he told me that developing these with a German bolt manufacturer – “going back to the beginning and asking, what do you want from a bolt?” – was one of things about the new bike he was proudest of. And get this for cleverness: the thru-axle lever has an integrated T25 bit so that you can use it for any emergency adjustments on the road without rummaging through a saddle pack or tool keg. Most of the time you have to choose either clever or practical but with the Aeroad you get an unprecedented level of both at the same time, and that’s impressive.
Frame
Perhaps one of the most revealing things that Birr told me about the new Aeroad was the extent to which it was developed for Mathieu van der Poel. This shouldn’t really come as a surprise – after all, the more races he wins the more Aeroads Canyon sells. But the demands of even the keen amateur racer are quite different from those of a top pro, especially a powerful Classics specialist like MVDP. “The first iteration of the current Aeroad was too comfortable for him,” said Birr. “He’s such a precise rider that he needs the feedback from the rear. But we realised that it could have been quite a harsh ride. We know that comfort nowadays is mostly generated by the tyres, but nonetheless we wanted to strike a good compromise between some sort of comfort and the directness of feedback from the rear triangle.”
So to offset the stiffness of the rear triangle, the seatpost has a shallower profile than before for a little extra deflection, and now it’s clamped using a standard wedge, replacing the innovative, but initially problematic seatpost, with a cutaway section that was clamped at the seatstays – it caused accelerated wear before Canyon rolled out a fix. Now no chances are being taken.
At the front, the fork crown was redesigned for improved aerodynamics, the head tube is hourglass shaped head tube and the down tube is narrower. A broader, reinforced top tube with a strengthened layup compensates for the slimming down of the head tube
On the subject of the layup, Birr said the other thing he was proudest of (along with the German bolts) was working on a new process with a new type of mandrel that the pre-preg is wrapped around. He said this enabled Canyon to manufacture the bike with “an incredible increase in production stability and quality… what we claim is it’s cobble ready, tough, robust and this is the result of that process.”
Canyon didn’t change the geometry – the gen-four Aeroad comes in the same seven sizes as before with a stack/reach ratio of 1.42 for the size M, which is standard for a race bike and not overly aggressive (plus it comes with 20mm of spacers and the ability to adjust bar height by that amount without disconnecting the hoses).
Build
The CFR is the top Aeroad and is made with a higher-modulus carbon than the SLX, so is therefore slightly lighter. For £9,299 the CFR comes built with Dura-Ace Di2 including a power meter and DT Swiss ARC 1100 Dicut DB wheels. Or there’s a flagship Sram model with Red AXS and Zipp 454 NSW wheels for £9,749. The top-specced Aeroad CF SLX has a SRAM Force AXS groupset and Zipp 404 wheels and is priced at £6,499.
I’m not here for a Shimano v SRAM debate, but I am going to point out one small advantage of the Dura-Ace build: thanks to the relatively narrow 20mm internal rim width of the hooked DT Swiss rims, the Shimano Aeroad CFR comes with a 25mm Conti GP5000 S TR on the front and a 28mm on the rear. The Zipps are hookless and designed for a minimum 28mm tyre, so the Sram build comes with 28mm tyres front and rear. Canyon found that using a narrower 25mm front tyre with the DT wheels is more aerodynamic, so for me this build has the edge with its differential tyres.
The Shimano build is also claimed to be slightly lighter on Canyon’s website (7.07kg v 7.15kg). My size M test bike weighed 7.3kg but Canyon doesn’t specify the size of the bikes it weighed.
As ever, the one gripe is that customers can’t choose the integrated cockpit stem length when they place their order – you have to order a replacement and buy it at a discounted price. Canyon has a new PACE T-bar available soon, which is the bar minus the drops, and I heard a rumour that at some point in the near future it will be possible to specify stem length at purchase… That said, although the 100mm stem length made the bike a bit short for me on paper, the PACE bar with the flared aero drops option has a longish reach that made it almost exactly right when in the aero position, fingers wrapped around the ends of the hoods.
Ride impressions
When I reviewed the previous Aeroad, I found it matched the other aero bikes I rode in 2023 for speed (the Cervélo S5, Trek Madone and Giant Propel) but I wasn’t so taken with the ride quality, especially at the front. I described it as “chattery” and had an unnerving feeling that the adjustable cockpit bolts would work loose eventually (unfounded I’m sure). The bar itself seemed flexible but not comfortable and I wondered whether the narrower 25mm front tyre was contributing to the general impression of roughness.
This new Aeroad is a completely different animal. For me the front end is one of the highlights – pin-sharp steering yet a damped, stable feel that gave me the confidence to ride in the aero position with my fingers wrapped around the ends of the hoods in front of the levers at higher speeds over bad roads. The centre-to-centre measurement between the hoods in this position is 30cm, which means a very aero position. I’m happy with the 25mm tyre since I know it supplies that slight aero advantage and there’s no ride-quality penalty.
The rest of the Aeroad I found equally balanced and responsive. In the past I’ve found that some pro bikes can feel a little dead due to the much lower wattage that I – and amateur riders in general – produce. Obviously pro-level frames need to withstand high pedalling forces, which means non-pros can’t get that fast, whippy feel out of them so easily. It’s not that they feel harsh in terms of vertical compliance – the pros certainly don’t weigh more than us amateurs – but they can feel rigid rather than springy. When Lukas Birr told me that the new Aeroad was developed so closely with Van der Poel and that the Dutchman found the first prototype too comfortable, alarm bells started ringing. But they were soon silenced when I found that on my local ‘Thursday Night Thrash’ group ride, which is obviously the closest thing to the Classics in Surrey. Of course it’s super stiff – it has to be if Mathieu van der Poel and Jasper Philipsen are to win WorldTour races on it – but I felt as though the Aeroad was working 100% with me too. The low weight makes it fly up the hills; doing a turn on the flat on the aero hoods it feels super efficient and powering away from the bunch on the final drag up to the entrance to the park, I could have been MVDP on the Via Santa Caterina (in my dreams).
That brings me to my next point: although it’s designated an ‘aero’ bike since Canyon still has the Ultimate in its lineup, the Aeroad really is good for everything. It’s not harsh and it’s not heavy or unwieldy in any way – like aero bikes used to be. I would happily have it as my best bike for all-round riding, even a trip to the Alps, where it would climb as well as any, and descend better than most. The Aeroad really can do everything.
Verdict
Canyon has really sweated the details to make this easily the best Aeroad so far by a long chalk. Not only have the niggles with the previous generation gone, but the new bike has a new precision about it. Every tiny part of it has been thought about in detail right down to the German-made Torx T25 bolts. And still the Aeroad overall is greater than the sum of its parts – it’s a real accomplishment.
Nobody is going to say £9,299 is cheap, but this year the Van Rysel RCR Pro got itself an unprecedented amount of attention for being the lowest-priced bike in the WorldTour at £9,000. It’s fair to say the Canyon offers equally good value at £299 more.
For more information and the full specs go to Canyon’s website.
