Adventure & Gravel

Boardman ADV 9.0 - Best Value Bike of the Year I’ve ridden some brilliant cheap gravel bikes but nothing comes close to the considerable chops of the Boardman ADV 9.0. For that reason, it is the winner of our 2021 Best Value Bike of the Year category. Read Article

Boardman was an early adopter of the gravel genre. The original ADV was a triple-butted aluminium machine with mountain bike-derived 650b wheels and an attitude that was all about getting rough and ready in the dirt.

This new ADV 9.0 is a rather more refined affair that is, we are happy to report, still very much up for getting down and dirty.

The ADV’s charms far outweigh its relatively modest price. The chassis is tightly stiff and highly responsive, and the 38c Panaracer GravelKing SK tyres are impressive: compliant and grippy off-road, fast-rolling (for gravel treads) on tarmac, and also tubeless-ready (the wheels are tubeless compatible too).

VERDICT

"A great package, ride and weight for the money make this Boardman ADV 9.0 our Best Value Bike of the Year" / 5/5

Read the full review here Boardman ADV 9.0 - Cycling Plus/Bikeradar
Boardman ADV 8.6 - Cycling Plus I would have liked better brakes because it’s about the only criticism I can level at the ADV 8.6, which would make a great commuter-cum-fitness-cum-gravel-riding all-rounder. Tough, comfortable, with great control, Boardman’s ADV 8.6 covers a lot of bases. It’s bags of fun too. Read Article

The ADV 8.6 is the less expensive sibling of our budget Bike of the Year, the Boardman ADV 8.9, with Boardman describing the 8.6 as its ‘entry-level adventure bike’.

The Boardman really is great fun and a very enjoyable ride.

A slightly shallow 71.5-degree seat angle slows the steering down and the ADV’s longish wheelbase and dropped bottom bracket also help keep the handling stable, but don’t do anything to lessen the enjoyment of the Boardman’s character.

The 8.6 is nearly the equal of the 8.9 when it comes to enjoyment, though. The tyres are a good compromise for the needs of road and off-road riding, and it’s also comfortable. While the absence of thru-axles means you can induce a tiny amount of brake rub if you try, this isn’t really an issue.

VERDICT

"Good comfort and great fun over a variety of riding surfaces" 4/5

Read the full review here
Boardman ADV 8.6 - Cycling Plus/Bikeradar
Boardman ADV 8.9 - Cycling Plus All in all, the ADV 8.9 is another excellent bike from the seemingly all-conquering Boardman stable. It's the usual great value that we'd expect from Boardman. Read Article

Over the last few years, Boardman's bikes have garnered numerous glowing reviews and its £1000 SLR 8.9 has long been one of my favourite road bikes, so the ADV 8.9 has a lot to live up to.

Well, at first glance, there's very little to fault when it comes to the ADV 8.9's components. Boardman has gone for a largely GRX setup with the groupset's excellent hydraulic disc brakes. The only deviations are the Tiagra front derailleur and FSA's Omega chainset and bottom bracket.

The mountain bike-inspired geometry, notably the slacker head angle, works in tandem with the flared bar for excellent control off-road. The wide grips also help with control when you're descending, and the confidence-inspiring brakes mean you can hit the descents harder.
VERDICT

"Supremely versatile and comfortable with great kit for the cash" 4.5/5

Cycling Plus Magazine June 2021
Boardman ADV 8.9 - Road.cc "With its £1,100 price tag it's easy to look at the Boardman and see this as an entry-level model, and if you are a seasoned roadie with good bike handling skills it would be very easy to overlook it for something more advanced (or expensive) when making the transition to gravel. But unless you are racing or are a really fast rider looking for precision handling as your ride passes by in a blur, you really won't be let down by the way the Boardman handles, or rides." Read Article

Time and time again Boardman has proved that it can deliver a lot of bike for the money, and it's no different here with the ADV 8.9. For an entry-level gravel/adventure bike, its well-mannered handling will look after you should you be new to riding on a surface that moves beneath your tyres, and if you are likely to spend a fair amount of time on the road then you'll soon see that it is also a very capable tourer.

If the Boardman ADV 8.9 was a movie it'd be rated 'U', suitable for all, and I mean that with the utmost respect.

Off-road it's a very capable machine, just taking everything in its stride. On all but the most technical or roughest of descents, it just gets on with the job, unlike some big money, speed-orientated gravel bikes.

It's one of those bikes that you can just get on and ignore, really. Just line the handlebar up in the direction you want to go and spin the pedals, it'll take care of the rest. You can just cruise along looking at the view. This might make the ADV sound sedate and boring, but it really isn't.
OVERALL

The Boardman ADV 8.9 is a classy bike. It balances everything well, like comfort and stiffness, and the neutral handling still provides enough fun for the bike to be a laugh to ride. It's a really versatile package too, when you consider the way the geometry lends itself well to both riding on the road and off.
VERDICT

An excellent entry point to gravel riding thanks to sorted geometry and great ride quality from the Boardman's frameset. 8/10

Read the full review here Boardman ADV 8.9 Road.cc
Boardman ADV 8.9E - Ebike Tips "If you’re looking for a multi-purpose bike for a bit of everything, but you want something a bit lighter than a full-fat mid-motor bike, then the ADV8.9E makes a lot of sense" Read Article

Boardman’s new range of Fazua-powered e-bikes offer really good value for money, and my experience aboard the ADV8.9E has been very positive. You’re getting a lot of the performance of more expensive e-road bikes at a much lower price point. The Fazua system is good for mixed riding, and offers useful assistance and good range. It’s built into a bike that’s solid and enjoyable to ride.

Pros: Good quality Fazua motor with sensible 1x11 spec and a well-balanced ride.

Cons: You need the key to turn the bike on & on the heavy side for a Fazua bike.

“We've designed the ADV 8.9e to offer maximum versatility for UK riding adventures”, says Boardman. “Blending the speed of a road bike with a more relaxed position and off-road focussed geometry means this bike can turn its hand to almost anything”. That’s pretty consistent with my riding experience over the last week riding this bike on a range of surfaces.

The bike’s geometry is easy to get on with. The head tube is slackened and the chainstays lengthened compared to Boardman’s more road-focused bikes, and the bottom bracket is dropped slightly. Those tweaks combine to give the bike a slightly more stable ride on more mixed surfaces. When you’re on the tarmac, though, the bike doesn’t feel compromised: the position is aggressive enough to make a reasonably aerodynamic position a possibility if you’re riding above the assistance limit, or trying to stay with a group. The overall geometry is very similar to the Pinarello Nytro, and a bit more relaxed than the Ribble SLe. That fits with the sort of riding the bike is aimed at.

With its 38mm Schwalbe G-One Speed tyres, the ADV8.9E is easily capable of taking on some rougher surfaces right out of the box. I’ve thrown it at some of the less technical off-road routes around here – farm tracks and fire roads, predominantly – and it’s coped absolutely fine. The frame is quite stiff but there’s enough give in the tyres to smooth out some fairly uneven surfaces, and more room in the frame for bigger rubber if you want to go a bit further from the beaten track. A swap to some better-padded bar tape is one of the first upgrades you’ll want to consider if you’re spending much time off-road, because the stock tape is pretty ordinary.

If you find yourself looking at a steep climb, either on the tarmac or off it, then you can rely on the Boardman’s sensible gearing and useful motor. The Fazua Evation system is, along with ebikemotion’s X35 hub motor, one of two systems that make up the majority of the e-road market right now. It’s a mid-motor with a 250Wh battery, a stated torque of 60Nm and peak power of 400W. In reality it doesn’t feel as powerful as other motors with similar numbers – the Bosch Performance Line motor is the closest – but in Rocket mode (the highest of the three available) there’s plenty of power to tackle even loose off-road climbs. The G-One tyres don’t look aggressive but they’re surprisingly capable off-road, especially if it’s dry.

The ADV8.9E runs a SRAM Apex 1x11 drivetrain. It’s SRAM’s lowest-spec 11-speed road kit, but it works brilliantly. It’s not as light as the more expensive groupsets, and the shift isn’t quite as refined, but functionally it’s fine and is solidly built to take a bit of mixed-surface abuse. The 42T single chainring is paired with an 11-42T cassette; that means you don’t quite get the high gears you’d find on a road bike but you do get a 1:1 bottom gear for winching your way up the steep stuff. If you’re planning to spend more time off-road than on then you’d probably benefit from switching out the chainring for something a little bit smaller.

If you’re on tarmac then the Boardman is easy to wind up to well above the 25km/h assistance limit on the flat. It’s not the lightest e-road bike out there at 16kg (the lightest Ribble SLe is under 12kg), so it’s not quite as much fun when you’re trying to keep your pace up on rolling terrain, but it’s still easy enough to roll round without troubling the battery too much. The motor decouples from the pedals quite effectively when you’re not using it, and the assistance fades in a pretty natural manner as you approach 25km/h.

If you’re convinced you’re not going to need the motor for a ride with few steep bits then you can drop the motor/battery unit out and just leave the bottom bracket gearbox in place, which will save you about 3.5kg. I didn’t do that, though, and I’m not convinced that many people do. It doesn’t make enough difference to the handling of the bike, and you never know when the motor will come in handy. The extra weight in the middle of the frame, low down, makes the Boardman a confident descender. With masses of grip from the tyres, and assured braking from the hydraulic discs, you can really pin the descents.

The longest ride I completed on the ADV8.9e was a 50km loop with about 800m of climbing, mostly on road but with a few rough sections added in for good measure. That used six bars out of ten on the bike’s battery, which is a bit more than similar rides on lighter Fazua-powered bikes, but not hugely different. A reasonably hilly 100km is still within range if you’re careful, which is about what Boardman suggests it’ll manage in Breeze mode (the lowest assistance). The battery state is visible on Fazua’s bar-mounted remote, as is the assistance mode. The remote isn’t the best thing about the Fazua system but it works okay. You can connect the bike to Fazua’s smartphone app to get more detailed bike information, as well as routing and social functionality.

One thing to note with the Boardman is that the Fazua motor/battery unit locks in place. If the bike goes to sleep you need to turn it on from the battery, and you need to release the battery to do that; so if you don’t have the key with you and the bike goes into sleep mode, then you’re a bit stuck. Not that I’d be that daft of course, but even so the Fazua system stays on for a long time, meaning it’s not going to die on you at a café stop or anything.

For £2,700, you’re getting a lot of bike here. Okay it’s not cheap, but if you want an e-road bike with one of the two most commonly-specced motor systems then it’s a lot nearer the bottom than the top price-wise. I’d probably consider the middle of the market to be around the £4,000 mark, with some bikes well above that. Ribble’s SLe range starts at £2,499 for a 10-speed Shimano Tiagra model, and you’re getting a lighter bike with a carbon frame there, but it’s a more road-oriented machine.

If you’re looking for a multi-purpose bike for a bit of everything, but you want something a bit lighter than a full-fat mid-motor bike, then the ADV8.9E makes a lot of sense. It’s very versatile with full rack and mudguard mounts and it can take a big tyre, but it’s still nimble enough to ride as a road bike with your roadie mates - it really has a lot going for it.
BUY IF

You’re looking for a well-specced e-road bike for mixed-use

eBike Tips July 2019 - Full Review Here
Boardman ADV 9.0 - Cyclist Magazine "Pick a spot, ride there without seeing anyone else, ride home. Beaming smile guaranteed, from the jointly restorative power of exercise and exploration. This is a bike that’s straining at the leash for a weekend away, but for now it’ll simply make your day." Read Article

Hooning around trail centres or local field paths, tyres weighed down by mud, clogging the front mech and what remaining clearance there is between tyres and frame is all well and good, but it’s at the extreme of what gravel/adventure bikes are capable of, or designed for.

The Boardman ADV 9.0 strikes a very respectable balance between expectation and reality, being suited not only to an awful lot of road riding, but also to an equal amount of time spent exploring the nation’s bridleways and fire roads, preferably as far away from any other human as possible…
VERDICT

British brand’s newest all-roader is high on versatility and fairly easy on the pocket / 4.5/5

Read the full review here Boardman ADV 9.0 Cyclist Magazine
Boardman ADV 9.0 - Best Value Bike of the Year I’ve ridden some brilliant cheap gravel bikes but nothing comes close to the considerable chops of the Boardman ADV 9.0. For that reason, it is the winner of our 2021 Best Value Bike of the Year category. Read Article

Boardman was an early adopter of the gravel genre. The original ADV was a triple-butted aluminium machine with mountain bike-derived 650b wheels and an attitude that was all about getting rough and ready in the dirt.

This new ADV 9.0 is a rather more refined affair that is, we are happy to report, still very much up for getting down and dirty.

The ADV’s charms far outweigh its relatively modest price. The chassis is tightly stiff and highly responsive, and the 38c Panaracer GravelKing SK tyres are impressive: compliant and grippy off-road, fast-rolling (for gravel treads) on tarmac, and also tubeless-ready (the wheels are tubeless compatible too).

VERDICT

"A great package, ride and weight for the money make this Boardman ADV 9.0 our Best Value Bike of the Year" / 5/5

Read the full review here Boardman ADV 9.0 - Cycling Plus/Bikeradar
Boardman ADV 8.6 - Cycling Plus I would have liked better brakes because it’s about the only criticism I can level at the ADV 8.6, which would make a great commuter-cum-fitness-cum-gravel-riding all-rounder. Tough, comfortable, with great control, Boardman’s ADV 8.6 covers a lot of bases. It’s bags of fun too. Read Article

The ADV 8.6 is the less expensive sibling of our budget Bike of the Year, the Boardman ADV 8.9, with Boardman describing the 8.6 as its ‘entry-level adventure bike’.

The Boardman really is great fun and a very enjoyable ride.

A slightly shallow 71.5-degree seat angle slows the steering down and the ADV’s longish wheelbase and dropped bottom bracket also help keep the handling stable, but don’t do anything to lessen the enjoyment of the Boardman’s character.

The 8.6 is nearly the equal of the 8.9 when it comes to enjoyment, though. The tyres are a good compromise for the needs of road and off-road riding, and it’s also comfortable. While the absence of thru-axles means you can induce a tiny amount of brake rub if you try, this isn’t really an issue.

VERDICT

"Good comfort and great fun over a variety of riding surfaces" 4/5

Read the full review here
Boardman ADV 8.6 - Cycling Plus/Bikeradar

ADV 8.6 £825.00

The ADV 8.6 has been designed with maximum versatility in mind. Exploring beyond paved roads, the rigours of commuting, or a more comfortable ride on broken tarmac. Explore

ADV 8.6 Women's £825.00

The ADV 8.6 has been designed with maximum versatility in mind. Exploring beyond paved roads, the rigours of commuting, or a more comfortable ride on broken tarmac. Explore

ADV 8.9 £1,200.00

Go anywhere, anytime on any surface. The ADV 8.9 provides the perfect platform for your cycling adventures. Explore

ADV 8.9 Orange £1,200.00

Go anywhere, anytime on any surface. The ADV 8.9 provides the perfect platform for your cycling adventures. Explore

ADV 8.9e £2,799.00

Whether you want to ride further or faster, or just want a bit of help up the hills, the Boardman ADV 8.9e Adventure Electric Bike is a great option. Explore

ADV 9.0 £1,875.00

With so much versatile performance on offer, the Boardman ADV 9.0 might be the only bike you’ll ever need. Explore

ADV 9.0 ROAD £2,000.00

A true N+1 killer - equipped for fast road riding but capable of so much more with a simple tyre swap! Explore

ADV 9.2 £2,300.00

The ADV 9.2 makes our award winning C10 Carbon frame and wireless shifting even more affordable Explore

ADV 9.4 £2,650.00

Our award winning C10 Carbon Adventure frame with SRAM's elegant and simple Rival XPLR wireless shifting - a perfect combination? Explore

Adventure & Gravel

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