Whyte 129s

This approximate rather than accurate attitude to line holding gets more obvious the bigger the trouble and the more you try to fight it… relax into the bars and trust the handling, however, and the Whyte almost always wriggles its way out of the problem and gallops off down the trail — blatantly looking for the next bit of flat-out fun.

Whyte T S review. Latest deals. Our review Noticeable flex, but brilliant handling and top value kit mean the T S is still a standout fast trail flyer. Skip to view product specifications. I had a dream a few years back; it was of a fantastical 29er that rolled over terrain like only a big wheeler can, and yet was as solid and playful as a 26er.

My dream went like this; a bike with more travel than the average 29er, an impossibly short rear end, an unthinkably slack head angle, cranks that all but skimmed the ground, and a frame long enough to let even Mr Fantastic stretch out.

I knew that, no matter what the outcome, my fantasy would never be the same again. For my cm height the large, with its mm top tube, is just what the doctor prescribed. The total weight of The frame is particularly stout, with essentially zero detectable flex anywhere from the stumpy, tapered head tube to the x12mm Maxle rear end.

Although the cross-sections vary along their length, the tubes are basically straight. The silhouette is remarkably traditional and you can even fit a water bottle within the main triangle. The finishing kit is all totally trail-worthy.

Cockpit components are all Whyte-branded, and despite initial misgivings that the 80mm stem would be too long for the rangey top tube and mm handlebar, the fit was actually very good. The good folks at Whyte clearly want you to be able to stop; the stock rotors are mm front and mm rear.

A bike with the hooligan intentions of the TS demands a dropper seatpost, so props to Whyte for not only including one, but a top quality RockShox Reverb to boot. The only negative traits worth noting are the relatively forward axle path, which negates some of the square edge rollover-ability of the large wheels, and the fairly low level of anti-squat, so the rear shock has to take a higher degree of responsibility for pedalling efficiency than on some other Horst Link bikes.

But Whyte have different priorities here, principally concerned with packaging big wheels into a compact, chuckable frame. With the T, Whyte tweak the nose of conventional wisdom and run away laughing, having managed to pull the back axle in to just mm from the bottom bracket. Whyte have even eschewed a currently fashionable BB30 or press-fit bottom bracket on the grounds that a traditional threaded shell has a smaller outside diameter, winning back vital millimetres.

Up front you find a degree head angle, which is unusally slack for a 29er. A longer fork offset how far the axle is ahead of the steering axis compensates for the bigger front wheel, although with a lengthy top tube and steep seat angle, the T ends up with a particularly long front-centre.

Thanks to those short hindquarters, though, the wheelbase remains notably compact. Topping off the frame are a selection of neat details.

Like the T S, the T packs an impressive specification for the asking price. So, you still get a RockShox Reba fork and Monarch shock — though the shock only has a lockout, and lacks the three-position compression damping of the S — and the same high-quality wheels.