Element Carbon Frameset

quick nimble and light.... great climber!!

Pros of this bike for me: One of the best builds for the price range in today's crazy bike prices.

Pretty light weight for an all aluminum build!

Really good modern geo numbers.

"Carbon" stem spacers are a nice bonus.

Ride 4 is a nice feature allowing for adjustability.

Tires seemed like a good choice for who will be buying this model of the bike. They are not too lightweight and XC for the aggressive customers. But they are not too slow and damped for the weight weenie customers. A good middle ground for what this bike is marketed as.

The brakes were a welcome surprise. They were not undergunned when using stock or XC tires. The tires would lose traction under braking before I reached maximum braking power. And that's with organic pads!

The bike is nice and quiet when riding - no creaks or cable slap noises.

This is the first WTB saddle that has agreed with my booty, and I am surprised I wont be replacing it.

Cons of my bike: Dropper cable routing is right in the way of where I like to put a spare tube.

Front hub does not match the SLX in the rear.

The 10mm Headset spacer is kinda ugly to me…

I couldn't get along with the handle bar.

Water Bottle mounts on aluminum models Medium and smaller can't really hold two water bottles…

Rear brake exit port in the chainstay needs a better fitting rubber/plastic grommet.

Rims are probably swiss cheese and are the OEM version, so no real same-same replacement.

I'll mostly write this review about the frame since I stripped the bike down to the bearings for a custom build. I will say about the stock build, it's very nice and capable but 2 pot brakes shouldn't be anywhere near this bike...the fact they're on every build is crazy. This bike outperforms it's brakes by a large margin.

So the frame itself, the geometry is fantastic. It handles features you could only dream about hitting on an XC bike 5 years ago. It's super comfortable for all day pedaling and the kinematics are spot on...zero pedal bob. Bike absolutely comes alive on flat/slightly downhill trails. Only lost a star for me because of pressfit BB. What a pain in the ass that is...get with the times Rocky, threaded please.

I absolutely love this bike when it works. Rides amazing. The issue is I have now gone through 2 rear hubs and a front hub in 3 months (it spent 3 weeks in the shop for the first rear hub). I understand that Rocky Mountain does not make the rear hub but when I talked to them they openly admitted that they knew there was an issue with that hub. It seems outrageous to me that this is being specked on a $7000 bike.

I love Rocky and like I said, it rides great. But this will likely be my last and I would discourage anyone else from buying this bike.

I demoed this bike at Outerbike Moab alongside the Revel Ranger, ibis Ripley, Fezzari Signal Peak, Canyon Spectral 125, among others. This was far and away my favorite as well as my gf's favorite. It had the speed and efficiency of all the other bikes but with significantly more stable and fun downhill capabilities. The slack head angle was only noticeable when riding the steepest of rocks but wasn't a major issue as I just needed to shift my weight more forward to keep it in control.

I would take this bike over any of it's competitors, except that it uses a PF bottom bracket. The BB on both my and my gf's bike was creaking the entire ride and drove me crazy. The Revel Ranger and ibis Ripley both use sensible threaded bottom bracket and were close enough in performance that I'd much rather take those and not deal with the headache of pressfit.