2015 Cervelo S5 Review

As you may gather from the title of this post, I have a new bit of kit to play with. I picked up a shiny black Cervelo S5 on the weekend from Churchill Cycles to use as my training bike.

Given the new bike, I thought I might take the chance to try something new and write a bike review. Before reading this, keep in mind that I am a triathlete not a bike critic, so I make no apologies for lack of quality. Additionally, I don't have any of the fancy bits of measuring kit that you often see referred to in bike reviews, this is very much a seat of the pants review, what I have seen on my power meter, what I felt etc type review. Lastly, I paid good hard earned money for my bike, which may cause me to succumb to human nature and make it hard to criticise something that I have paid money for. I will try my best to remain objective though.

So with that in mind, here it is:

As you can see, it is the Ultegra model, as demonstrated by the lack of HED wheels. Mine is 56cm and the set up as you see it (bottle cages etc, but no pedals) weighs in at 7.6kg. Not that bad for a aero road bike. With a bit of upgrading I don't think it would be hard to push the UCI limit with this bike (not exactly lightweight cages etc on there at the moment). To be honest I am not sure if I will bother since it is suits my purposes as is.

So far I have only done a bit over 100km on this bike, and so I will admit that it is early days. What I say below is based on that 100ish km.

Now, moving on to some of the features that most people would have read about, starting with that handlebar.

Yep it really is pretty broad. You can get some perspective from the top photo where you can see the standard Garmin quarter turn mount on the stem. I have read some people who have criticised the broad top of this bar for being uncomfortable etc. For me, I rarely ever ride on the tops of the bars anyway, mainly sticking to the hoods, so the broad bar doesn't really bother me at all. I don't mount a garmin there, but I think at a push you could. I have been able to mount my front light with no problems, but I could see that some lights would struggle. I have included the bottom picture to show the back of the bar which has a small Kammtail. Nothing really to say about it, just thought it was interesting.

Moving on to other features. As you can imagine, given its aero nature, it is a very narrow bike. It sort of disappears when viewed from the front and especially the back. Quite reminiscent of the P5.

Also not surprising is the bottom bracket, which has the appearance of being carved from a massive lump of carbon.

My bike is entirely standard, which means it came with Rotor cranks, 52/36 chainrings on it. 56cm bikes come with 172.5mm cranks, so fairly conventional there.

Cervelo has stayed with conventional brake locations too, making maintenance a bit easier. The aero benefit has been gained by sheltering the rear brake with the frame, and streamlining the front brake with the forks. Seems about right.

Other aero touches include the usual aerodynamically shaped tubes. The biggest difference in terms of tube shapes that I could see between this and the old S5 (and P5) is a much more significantly truncated aerofoil on the down tube. Which I have tried to capture in the photo below (and failed I suspect).

The bike comes standard with a fizik Antares saddle. I was going to change it out to my normal saddle, but I usually ride fizik saddles anyway, so I thought I would stick with this one and give it a go. So far so good.

What else...

Aesthetically I (and I think everybody else) think this is a big step forward from the old S5. The bike just looks better proportionally and the paint scheme is a massive improvement. As most people probably know the paint job is a mixture of matt and gloss black paint. The transition of the two is part way along the top tube, which can sort of be seen in the above photo. The down tube is all matt, the seat tube, chain stays, seat stays etc are all gloss. Whilst most of the front triangle is matt black, it feels a bit smoother than the paint used on the P5 and I am hoping it will be easier to clean (fingers crossed). There are a couple of other nice little subtle touches like the two tone forks etc, which make this a fine looking bike in my opinion.

So that is some of its main feature and how it looks etc, which to be honest a lot of people would already be familiar with. So moving on to the main question, how does it ride?

So keeping mind that I have only done a bit over 100km and that I don't review bikes for a living and so have a limited data set to compare it with, I think it is pretty good. Understatement?? Well okay I think it is really good.

Stiff, yes, but where you want it. The bottom bracket feels like a rock. Uncomfortable? Well that is entirely subjective, but I didn't think so. I was in the saddle for a few hours on the ride yesterday, over some fairly average back roads and I had no complaints. Others might be different, but I would have no objects to being on the bike all day.

Handling? Once again no complaints. My test of handling uses the entirely scientific method of seeing how fast I can go through certain corners. I know what I can hold on a bike which I am confident in. So far I haven't found myself braking any more than normal on the S5. It hasn't got squirrely or uncertain at speed or anything, although I am yet to get it over 65km/h. It filled me with enough confidence that I was happy to let it have its head coming down some unfamiliar 60km/h hills yesterday. So once again no complaints.

How about speed, after all that is kind of the point of an aero bike. My main ride so far, which was yesterday, was unfortunately not the best test for this aspect, being hilly and windy and on unfamiliar roads. Really to get a good feel for this I need to spend a bit of time doing my usual routes and see if I am getting higher speeds for the same power/heart rate. That will certainly happen in the coming weeks. However, my gut feel after the ride yesterday is that yes it is a quick bike. The best way I can describe it is this:

When you ride you get to know where the pinch point is. Whether you are going up a hill, or bombing along going flat out, you get to know when it is going to start to hurt. With this bike that point happens just a bit later. I was rolling over a hill yesterday, I was about three quarters of the way up and I realised that mentally I was preparing myself to push that little bit to the top, but the body never asked the question. I rolled over the top of the hill without really having to increase my effort. That is what this bike does. When there is less drag holding you back, everything, going fast, going uphill, everything, becomes easier. Or faster. And that is really what this bike is all about.

In a couple of weeks I should be in a position to say that in my opinion the bike is X km/h quicker, or X watts faster. But for now I will leave it with my seat of the pants impression. So to the question, is this bike quick. The answer is yes, yes it is.

Update: Well I have had the bike for a couple of weeks now and I can say it definitely is quicker than a standard round tube bike. Compared to my old bike I would say the S5 easily holds another 1 to 1.5km/h for the same effort. If you were to compare the speeds of a normal road bike and a TT bike, I would see the S5 sitting about a third of the way between the two. I also have a better feel on handling now too. Unfortuantely I went down in the wet about a week ago and so my I am still regaining my confidence. But prior to that I would say handling wise this bike doens't give up anything to other bikes I have ridden.

So that is about it. I am unfortantely not in a position to say, this bike is better that X or Y, although if anyone wants to lend me X or Y I would be happy to try. I can say that it is a very good bike. Is it the best aero road bike? I can't answer that either, but based on what I have felt and what I know about Cervelo and their history, I would be confident in saying it would have to be close.