When you think short-travel, you probably think lightweight, über-efficient bikes with steep head angles and rear suspension that doesn’t work all that well. That pretty well describes the last Norco Optic we tested, at the 2017 Bible in Bentonville, Arkansas. We called that bike “unapologetically XC-biased,” “not exactly playful” and an “XC-race refugee.” We were, in short, a little underwhelmed and a lot confused as to whom the Optic was for. It was efficient, obviously, but also long and stable and yet over- damped in a way that prioritized climbing.
The new, 29-inch-wheeled Optic is a different animal entirely—in a good way—but perhaps no less difficult to categorize. Its rear wheel gets 125 millimeters of travel, which is paired with a 140-millimeter-travel fork and a 65-degree head angle. Let’s stop and think about that for a moment: A 65-degree head angle on a 125-millimeter-travel bike. Those numbers place the Optic right on the edge of an emerging category of very capable bikes boasting paltry travel and what just a couple years ago would have been considered all-mountain or enduro geometry. Its next of kin in Park City was the Santa Cruz Tallboy, which is similarly slack in its low setting, and has 5 millimeters less rear travel.
Both bikes are quick uphill, but the Tallboy feels fast where the Optic just feels efficient. The Norco was as comfortable to sit on as every other steep-seat-angled bike at this year’s Bible—which thankfully was almost every other bike—and wasted seldom few watts as long as testers’ butts were on the saddle. We were mixed on how much monkey motion there was when standing, or at least divided on the extent to which it bothered us. One tester felt it was too bobby for a 125-millimeter bike, and couldn’t hold a candle to the Santa Cruz, while the other two agreed that it wasn’t especially supportive of standing efforts, but they also didn’t feel discouraged from putting the power down. There was unity behind the argument that the longer-travel Orbea Occam climbed faster than the Optic, but that really says more about how remarkable the Occam is than it does anything about the Optic. Plus, our Occam was 2 pounds lighter and almost two times the price of our Optic.
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