We can almost hear the keyboard trolls warming up their fingers in anticipation of the Fasst Flexx handlebar review. Yes it costs nearly €500, yes it puts pivots on your bars, and yes…it straight up rips.
As a product reviewer, this is a review that nobody wants to write. Many people will not read any further into this review than the header image, instead, they will take one look at the Fasst Flexx bar and instantly make their judgement. Indeed, we have never had so many discussions with random riders in shuttle queues. Then there’s the price, nearly €500 for a handlebar will alienate a lot of riders straight away. We have to admit that we felt the same at first. But we were wrong. Putting preconceptions to one side, and assessing the bars on their merit, they may well be one of the best performance upgrades you can buy for your bike.
What is the Fasst Flexx bar?
Avoiding any marketing speak, the Flexx bar ‘suspends’ the grip sections of the bars, placing a pair of shock absorbing elastomers in between your hands and the bars contact point to the bike. This drastically reduces the amount of vibration transmitted to your hands from the stem and gives a tunable amount of vertical flex at the grips (upto about 5°). The pivot points are exceptionally stiff in the horizontal (think steering) plane and we could detect no observable flex. Yes it looks alarming, but the Fasst Flexx bar concept is already in popular use on ATVs and Motocross bikes, so mountain biking forces are well within their capabilities.
The bars are made in the USA from UD carbon, with 7075 aluminium pivots and titanium hardware. The ‘enduro‘ bar is available in one 25 mm rise, 800 mm wide with a 5° upsweep and 8 and 12° backsweep, with a 31.8 mm clamp diameter and a 461g weight on our scales. There is also a DH model that runs a little wider to accommodate triple clamp forks in the centre section. The bars ship with 4 elastomers for the pivots, soft (blue), medium (yellow), hard (red), and extra hard (black) to fine tune the level of flex. Compared to other good handlebars with ‘great’ compliance the Fasst Flexx takes it a lot further, and also allows you to fine tune it to your weight and preferred feeling.
The Fasst Flexx Bar Review
Sometimes you don’t know what you have until it’s gone. After 5 months of testing, we have finally removed the Fasst Flexx bar from our test bike, replacing it with a high-end standard carbon bar. In doing so the bike now feels… worse. Sometimes going backwards is the only way to spot the small performance improvements that we find with modern bike technology. It’s easier to detect where things are worse than where they are better.
We have ridden the Fasst Flexx bar now on everything from trail rides, to full-gas shuttle weekends. After a single day of swapping the elastomers, our 80kg tester chose to run the Medium flex elastomers. You have to be careful when choosing the correct elastomer, the soft elastomers felt far too soft, and the ride started to feel wallowy and vague. In contrast the hard elastomers felt great, but had lost some of the shock absorbing properties and felt more like a ‘sensitive’ carbon bar with great compliance like the One-Up, negating the high price point. Like Goldilocks choosing her bed, the medium elastomers felt just right, with no detectable unwanted flex, but with an observable shock absorbing feel. We found to get the best from the bars, just like setting your low-speed-compression on your forks, you need to choose the softest elastomers you can before you feel any unwanted dive under hard braking.
When you first ride a FOX 38 hard, you are impressed with the feel and damping, but it’s only when you go back to the FOX 36 you realise that the FOX 38 lets you push harder than you could with a 36. It’s the same with the Fasst Flexx bar
We were not sure what to expect, and to be honest, we expected that this would be a negative review. However, when running the correct elastomer, the Fasst Flexx bars gave an observable performance advantage. Steering hard in compressions, even with a stiff FOX 38 on the front, you don’t feel the bar flexing laterally at all. The tightly engineered pivot points are very stiff in the horizontal direction, and you can pinpoint your line precisely, just like with any high end carbon (or alloy) bar. However, it’s a different case in the vertical direction, while you don’t feel unwanted flex, you also don’t feel every root and rock pulling at your grips. We tested the bar with factory fresh forks like the FOX 38, Rockshox ZEB and Marzocchi Z1 coils and in all cases it felt like we had a further 4 clicks of low-speed-compression damping we could open up, without any negatives, the trail simply feels smoother. As we all know, smooth means fast, and once we had got over the aesthetic, we were charging harder in rough terrain, using roots for landings and making the most of the extra control.
It was especially noticeable in those moments when braking hard over thumb-thick roots, those times where your hands instinctively tighten in expectation of the sharp stuttering vibrations that you know will be coming, but with the Fasst bar they are muted considerably, giving you more confidence and control. On long shuttle days, our hands and forearms were fresher, and long 4-5 minute ‘race runs’ were less fatiguing. The only slight issues we encountered are that we grew so confident with the bars we totally forgot they were a moving part and forgot to check the torque of the elastomer bolt periodically and one had worked loose. However this did not result in any loss of function as the elastomer is captive in the downward direction, and cannot fall out. Once you have the right elastomer fitted a little Loctite 243 on the bolts is probably a good idea. Also, if your stem relies on sliding the bar in, rather than using a 4-bolt faceplate, then the bar will not fit.
Yes, of course the Fasst Flexx bars will be a good purchase for someone with an injury, or who suffers from arm pump (here you find all you need to know about arm pump and tipps to avoid it). However, it would be a shame for these bars to be confined to a ‘niche’ category as they do provide an observable and measurable performance benefit if you focus on the stopwatch. There will be detractors, and that’s understandable, it’s a product that pushes the cost of what’s normally an affordable component sky-high. However, once fitted and with an open mind, we found we could ride faster, for longer, more comfortably and in more control than when using any other bar and stem combo, that is the hard fact. It’s never easy handing over almost €500, so it’s good to see that Fasst offers a 30 Day “Ride it, Believe it” Money Back Guarantee! Giving you 30 days to ride the bar and if they don’t work for you they will offer a full refund. There is also a more affordable aluminium model which will bring the concept to a much wider audience.
Conclusion
The Fasst Flexx bar is a real surprise product. It’s a shame that many will not be able to look beyond the price, weight or unfamiliar concept, as if you do, no other bar offers as much control, comfort and ultimately speed as the Fasst Flexx. It really does smooth the trail and improve the performance of your bike.
For more information head to fasstmtb.com
Tops
- Tunable Flex/Compliance
- Less fatigue/arm pump
- Allows you to charge harder
Flops
- Only works with 4-Screw Stem-Caps
- Expensive
- Heavy - if you worry about that sort of thing
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Words: Photos: Finlay Anderson
