Reviewed: Specialized’s New Chisel Blends Price and Performance
Starting at R49k, Specialized's new aluminium full suspension mountain bike borrows geometry and suspension from the brand's pricier carbon platforms.
Specialized is on a roll with aluminium bikes lately. Last week, it launched an aluminium version of its Crux gravel bike, and this week, the California-based brand releases a new Chisel mountain bike.
The new Specialized Chisel full-suspension aluminium mountain bike shares its name with the Chisel aluminium hardtail. Though it might confuse some buyers, Specialized could have named this bike whatever it wanted because the new full-suspension Chisel totally rips.
Trevor Raab
At first glance, the Chisel looks like an Epic, Specialized’s carbon full-suspension XC race bike. And your eyes are not deceiving you—the similarities between the new Chisel and the Epic are striking. Specialized even claims that the two bikes share kinematics and geometry. They also share all their small parts like bottle cage bolts, seat binder, and linkage hardware.
However, the new Chisel is perhaps a closer cousin to the previous generation Epic Evo. The two bikes share the same amount of suspension travel, with 120mm in the front and 110mm out back. (With 120mm of suspension travel both front and rear, the latest Epic is slightly more capable.)
The major difference between the Chisel and the Epics is the materials employed for the frame. The Chisel is made from aluminium, specifically Specialized’s M5 Alloy, with hydroformed tubes that are then joined using their patented D’Alusio Smartweld process. Specialized debuted Smartweld in 2013 on the S-Works Allez and then popularised it with the 2015 Allez Sprint. Instead of traditionally cutting and mitring aluminium tubes, Smartweld uses hydroformed joints. The process requires less material without loss of structural integrity at the weld.
Trevor Raab
While previous Smartweld efforts were impressive—particularly how Specialized formed the downtube of the Allez Sprint as one piece with the bottom bracket—the new Chisel pushes the technique up another notch with its single-piece seat tube. Which is certainly the most complicated single-piece alloy bicycle tube I have seen.
Specialized didn’t only form the bottom bracket as part of the seat tube, it also formed in the suspension pivots. Most brands weld these parts to the seat tube. The main advantage of forming the parts together is weight saving, but it’s also an impressive bit of aluminium trickery that looks exceptionally clean.
Trevor Raab
Another big difference between the Epic 8 and the Chisel is price. When we reviewed the S-Works Epic 8 in March, it was the most expensive (non-electric) mountain bike we had ever tested at R295,000. The Chisel Comp is priced at R59,000. This means for the price of one S-Works Epic 8, you could buy Chisel Comps for yourself and three friends—and still have some money left over.
Specialized Chisel Details
If you hate proprietary standards or integration, there is much to love about the new Specialized Chisel. Unlike the new Epic, there are, thankfully, no cables running through any headset. The frame uses a standard English threaded BSA bottom bracket, and the seat tube is compatible with round 30.9mm seat posts and is secured by an external seat binder.
The bike has internal routing for the rear brake, derailleur, and dropper post. The new Chisel lacks an internal storage compartment. While the feature hasn’t grown on me, many riders prefer the clean look of storing their spares and tools internally.
Trevor Raab
None of the frame standards on the new Chisel are proprietary or annoying. Overall, it’s a delightfully easy bike to work on, customize, and upgrade.
Geometry
While Specialized claims that the Chisel shares geometry with the Epic 8, that’s not exactly the case. Both bikes share the same 75.5º seat tube angle and are within 2mm of wheelbase length. But the headtube on the Chisel is 0.6º steeper at 66.5º compared to the Epic’s 65.9º.
In terms of stack and reach, the Chisel is about 5 mm shorter across its size range. Stack figures are a bit more mixed bag, depending on sizes. An XL Chisel is just 1 mm taller than the Epic, while a Large is 10mm taller.
The Epic 8 saw some dimensional changes to its build kit, which carry over to the Chisel as well. All sizes now use a 60mm stem, plus 170mm cranks on the medium (instead of the 175s used on the Epic 7 of the same size).
The Chisel’s geometry does not stray from where Specialized and other brands have taken the current crop of slightly longer-travel cross-country bikes. This makes perfect sense, given how well these bikes meet the demands of everyday riders and racers alike.
Ride Impressions
We’re currently in the golden age of the cross-country mountain bike. It feels a little silly saying that in a review of a relatively affordable aluminium mountain bike but it’s true.
A few years ago, cross-country bikes were dedicated race machines and weren’t all that fun to ride. They were twitchy, stiff, and sometimes downright sketchy. But with XC race courses becoming more demanding (with bigger and more technical features), XC racers needed bikes with more capability but without giving up speed and power transfer.
Trevor Raab
To be perfectly fair to the Chisel, I did not expect a 13-kg bike to ride the same way a 10-kg bicycle does. The lack of those three kilos gives bikes like the Epic 8 their lethal efficiency on climbs. But after riding the Chisel, it is clear that Specialized used the right geometry, suspension kinematics, and amount of travel to capture the essence of what makes modern XC bikes so good and so versatile.
Trevor Raab
Climbing on the Chisel is certainly the bike’s weak point, but truth be told, you don’t feel it all that much on the trail. Particularly when climbing seated up a rough bit of singletrack, the rear of the bike feels perfectly planted on the trail. A stiff frame with lots of rear wheel traction makes the Chisel feel much lighter and snappier than its weight might initially suggest. Climbing on smoother trails or fire roads is where I would expect to feel the bike’s weight the most, but even there, I was left thoroughly impressed and delighted by the Chisel’s pep.
Trevor Raab
Point the Chisel back downhill, and you’re instantly rewarded. It’s a bike that feels incredibly poppy, easy to flick in and out of corners, and it’s a total hoot to bump-jump off small lips, rocks, and roots. The stiff aluminium frame shines with how accurate it feels when pinging your way through a rock garden or down a succession of small drops.
Modern mountain bike geometry makes shorter travel bikes much more capable than before. So, if you want to chase an enduro bud down a rowdy downhill, the Chisel will keep up, providing you have the skill (and guts) to do it. In its stock form, you’re more likely to run out of brakes and tyres before reaching the limit of the suspension and geometry.
Though it does its job admirably well, the Chisel only has 120mm (front) and 110mm (rear) wheel travel. The bike has impressive traction, and while I never felt like I was blowing through the travel, it’s still fundamentally a cross-country bike with a single pivot/flex stay rear suspension layout. This system trades weight for the small bump sensitivity and refinement you can get from heavier and more complicated rear suspension designs. This means the Chisel feels harsh on particularly chunky trails, where you constantly hit rocks and roots.
Trevor Raab
Trevor Raab
A highlight of the Chisel build kit for me was the Shimano drivetrain parts. The SLX parts on the Chisel performed flawlessly. The shifting is precise and has wonderful tactile feedback. I did not feel that changing gears using a cable held the bike (or me) back one bit.
Is the Chisel Worth It?
The value proposition of a bike is always a tricky subject because it is highly subjective. For some riders, a R59k or a R49k bike is cheap. For others, it could be the most money they ever spend on a bike.
What struck me the most was how absent aluminium full-suspension cross-country(-ish) bikes are from the lineups of other large brands. Cannondale, Giant, and Canyon do not offer aluminium variants of the Scalpel, Anthem, or Lux.
Trevor Raab
But for all these bikes, the closer they get to R70,000 in price, the more the aluminium bikes start to overlap with lower-end carbon models. This is especially true if riders look past current-year models and consider bikes from a previous model year that are often on sale.
This is likely the main reason higher-end aluminium bikes have largely disappeared from the mid-tier of many brand lineups. Consumers overwhelmingly prefer and buy carbon fibre bikes. They would rather look for a carbon bike to fit their budget than consider an aluminium alternative. But in this price range, the aluminium models often feature better parts and are not much heavier.
Trevor Raab
Plus, there are some genuinely good reasons to consider an aluminium bike besides price. For one, aluminium makes for a durable frame that can brush off scrapes, rock strikes, and small impacts that might necessitate a more thorough damage inspection on a carbon frame. It’s also worth considering that aluminium bikes are significantly less energy-intensive to produce. Plus, aluminium is an easier material to recycle. Sure, those last two reasons might not enhance the bike’s performance, but they’re a nice bonus. Still, if you are a rider who’s tough on frames, the durability aspect of going aluminium is hard to overstate.
Final Thoughts
While it’s unlikely that most riders will view aluminium frames as having the same cache as carbon fibre, plenty of folks appreciate what aluminium offers. The cult status of road bikes like the Specialized Allez Sprint and Cannondale’s long-running CAAD series certainly come to mind in this context. The original Chisel hardtail showed glimmers of a similar following, but for the most part, aluminium mountain bikes have yet to gain equal fandom.
Is the new Chisel good enough to change that? I certainly think so.
Trevor Raab
I don’t think the Chisel will tempt many riders with bigger budgets to overlook carbon models in its favour. But riders who opt for the Chisel are not “settling” for aluminium by any stretch of the imagination. Riding the Chisel made me just as giddy and happy as riding mountain bikes that cost five times as much. So while there’s nothing wrong with aspiring to a carbon bike, the aluminium Chisel has no real downside.
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