Interbike 2018: Showroom Floor, Pt. 1

Interbike 2018: Showroom Floor, Pt. 1
Vision Metron aerobar

 Vision's high-end bars have always been called Metron. The new Metron aerobar is a lovely bit of design work from designer Ron Correa. The bar features adjustable stack, and a nice tilt mechanism, the company's first bar to do so. It also has a small storage compartment for electronic junction boxes. I'm never a fan of downward-swooping base bars, but that's a minor gripe for an otherwise excellent aerobar.

Interbike is a whole new animal this year. The trade show has found its new home in Reno, Nevada, after its final outing in Las Vegas  And although the overall participation seems a bit higher than last year, MANY major brands were completely absent, especially as it relates to triathlon. Trek, Specialized, Cervelo, Felt, SRAM, 3T, and many others all sat this one out.

This year's show has a much more casual-consumer vibe to it, with a plethora of e-bikes, lower-end rigs, gravel bikes, and just a generally non-race focus. It was a struggle to find much that was new and innovative as it relates to aero road in general, much less the triathlon market specifically. We may bite the bullet and head to Frankfurt in order to cover Eurobike next year, rather than continuing to cover the much more local, but increasingly irrelevant (to TriRig) domestic show.

That being said, there were still some interesting things to see on the showroom floor, and we always do our best to take a unique perspective on the show. We will have one more gallery tomorrow, so check back for the last bits from Reno.

  • Vision Metron aerobar
  • Storage cavity for electronic junctions.
  • The cable cover for the Vision Metron bar doubles as the stem's top cap
  • An amply-sized port on the bottom of the bar makes room for brake cable routing.
  • FSA's WE (Wireless Electronic) group is definitely a puzzle to me. It combines the headache of full Di2 wiring with the headache of multiple battery replacements, with no apparent advantage at all. The ONLY wire you save is the one connecting the rear parts with the front parts. That's ONE wire. And now you have multiple batteries, potential dropout issues, etc to deal with. I can't quite see the draw of this group, but maybe I'm missing something.
  • One redeeming feature about the otherwise troubling WE drivetrain is that the brake lever shifters are very neatly incorporated into the lever itself, adding no frontal area.
  • The WE aerobar shifters look nice, very minimal.
  • FSA recently bought Power2Max, and has rebranded it as the FSA PowerBox. It's a solid dual-sided power meter.
  • Vision's other bars have also adopted a pad-spacer setup, though only the Metron bar gets tilt.