Weight: 7.75kg (56cm)
Use: Road

We’ve long been fans of Trek’s Domane line of endurance race bikes; previous versions have won our Editors’ Choice awards and received unanimous approval from our otherwise argumentative panel of passionate judges. The SL 6 is the line’s budget-friendly version and packs all the road-smoothing, lightweight carbon magic of higher-end models at a great price. Our testers raved about the bike’s ability to glide over washboard ruts and eat up road bumps, thanks to the front and rear IsoSpeed decouplers that make up Trek’s built-in road suspension. With comfortable, all-day geometry and unbeatably smooth power, the SL 6 proved itself to be a true winner for not just ride quality but also value.

The Domane SL family starts with the SL 5 (in unisex and women’s versions), with rim brakes and a full Shimano 105 groupset, and tops out at the SLR 9 Disc, a R150K bike with full Shimano Dura-Ace, Di2, hydraulic disc brakes, and Aeolus 3 D3 Disc carbon wheels. The SLR models offer additional clearance for up to 32mm tyres; all the bikes have front and rear IsoSpeed, which offers the patented road-damping technology that we love so much about this series. The SLR 6 comes in a disc-brake model and a disc-brake gravel version with wider, burlier tires. The SL 6 is a more budget-friendly version in the line, but it still brings the comfortable ride geometry and road suspension these bikes are known for. And, with a full Shimano Ultegra groupset, it has the distinct component advantage over the SL 5.

The Secret to Those IsoSpeed Decouplers

The SL 6 has a lightweight carbon frame and a front and rear suspension system, called IsoSpeed, that allows it to effectively soak up road noise. Here’s how it works: The front IsoSpeed decoupler on the bike makes it so the steerer tube can flex independently from the head tube, which allows the bike to reduce road vibration. The rear IsoSpeed decoupler has a slider that lets you adjust the compliance level for terrain and personal preference by up to 14 percent. You might not even need to adjust the rear slider to experience the road-smoothing effects of the two decouplers working together – we found that the all-over effect of the bike was fast and smooth performance equally suited to asphalt and cobbles.

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Other Component Highlights

The full Ultegra drivetrain, with an 11-28 cassette and 50/34 compact crankset, gives you seamless mechanical shifting and plenty of gears to tackle any climb. The SL 6 also comes with Bontrager Paradigm tubeless-ready rims and tough Bontrager R2 700x28mm tyres, so you’ve got a solid set of wheels for when you want to test out that suspension system.

Ride Impressions

Bringing the Domane SL 6 to a spring group ride feels a bit like cheating—the bike is so fast, smooth, and versatile that it can make you feel stronger than you actually deserve to feel after a long winter of Netflix-enabled sloth. I’ve test-ridden some of the higher-end Domanes in the past (up one of the hardest climbs I’ve ever experienced, Mount Figueroa, in Solvang, California) and had a similarly impressed response, but I reasoned some of my “wow” reaction had to have been tied to how far out of my price range that bike was. To my delight, the Domane SL 6 brings a lot of that same lightweight, road-smoothing magic and X factor to a more affordable price range.

From the moment I hit the first loose-gravel climb on one of my usual lunch routes, I was sold on the bike’s seamless Ultegra shifting and talent for soaking up road chatter with IsoSpeed suspension. Big bumps in the road still jarred me, but the washboard ruts didn’t throw off my handling or rattle my shoulders too much. The endurance geometry helped with that, too—long rides were as comfortable from beginning to start as you can expect, without any sacrifice in speed. And the Bontrager R2 28mm tyres were great on both smooth asphalt and rough gravel.

This article originally appeared on bicycling.com.

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