Skip to content
ChainringClub

Tarmac

Road

Being seen, knowing your numbers, and sitting comfortably for four hours. Everything else on a road bike is negotiable.

A road cyclist riding on wet tarmac in low sun.

What you’re actually deciding

Road cycling gear divides cleanly into three problems: being seen, knowing your numbers, and sitting comfortably for four hours. Everything else on a road bike is preference, and most of it is preference the industry has successfully sold you as necessity.

Being seen is the one that matters most and gets the least honest coverage. The lumen count on a light’s box is close to useless as a measure of whether a driver will notice you — beam pattern, flash mode and mounting position all matter more, and a 200-lumen light aimed properly beats an 800-lumen one pointed at the sky. The most effective safety product on this hub isn’t a light at all: it’s the radar taillight that tells you a car is approaching before you hear it.

The bit where we save you money

Bike computers run from about the price of a decent lunch to the price of a decent wheel, and the honest truth is that most riders buy several tiers more than they use. If you want to know your speed, distance and time, a wireless computer with no GPS at all does that perfectly. If you want maps and structured training, you need the expensive one. The middle is where money goes to die.

And if you’re not sure? Your phone already does most of it, and we’ll say so out loud in bike computer vs phoneeven though there’s no commission in that answer.

The other place money leaks is consumables bought in the wrong shape. A disc brake pad is chosen by your caliper before anything else, and Shimano publishes a 40% durability gap between two of its own pads that fit the same brake — which pad fits, and which one lasts.

Pedals are the same trap in a different shape. What you are buying is not a pedal but a cleat standard, and the cleat is what sets your float, whether you can walk in the shoes, and what it costs to change your mind — eight road pedals ranked on published float, with the three systems’ own figures side by side.

The contact point everyone buys on color

Bar tape is the cheapest thing on a road bike that changes how the bike feels, and the category sells it on one number: a thickness in millimeters. That number is less solid than it looks. SILCA publishes a conversion factor between its millimeters and everyone else’s; Wolf Tooth says its 2.5 mm tape becomes 5 mm depending on how much you overlap it; Cinelli and Arundel publish no thickness at all. And fizik’s own figures show its 2 mm tape weighing more than its 3 mm one, because thickness is a question about density, not volume.

So we ranked ten tapes on the whole spec sheet instead — what each maker actually publishes about its own bar tape — and found that exactly two of the seven brands publish both a width and a length, which is the only way to know how much tape is in the box.

Three jobs those roundups assume you can already do now have pages of their own, each built on a published procedure rather than on convention: how to wrap bar tape, which follows Park Tool’s own instructions including the overlap figure it actually prints; how to use clipless pedals, built on Shimano’s published 13-degree clip-out angle; and how to set saddle height, which draws on a 2022 systematic review of 41 studies and the finding that changes under 4% of leg length have no measured effect on efficiency.

Getting to the ride, and riding when you can’t

Two purchases sit either side of the ride itself, and both are decided by a number the category mostly refuses to print. Car bike racksare sorted by mount type — platform, hanging, trunk, roof — because that decides whether a rack fits your car and whether it clamps your frame; three of ten listings publish a weight capacity, and the two per-bike figures differ by a factor of 2.3, which is the whole e-bike question. Indoor trainers are sorted by how the bike connects, and the audit there is worse: one of ten listings publishes a power accuracy figure, and it is not one of the two most expensive trainers.

The one thing we can’t help with

Saddles. A saddle is the one component where the only relevant data is the shape of your pelvis, and no reviewer — not us, not anyone with a lab — can tell you what fits. Any site confidently ranking saddles is ranking their own anatomy. We explain the mechanism (sit-bone width, cutouts, why pressure isn’t padding) and then get out of the way: how to choose a bike saddle.

Two brand arguments, settled on what each maker prints

The pedal and phone-mount roundups above answer which product; they do not answer which system, which is the question people actually type. LOOK Keo versus Shimano SPD-SLfinds the two makers publishing complementary halves of one spec sheet — LOOK prints stack height, contact area and weight and will not say which float angle is in the box; Shimano prints the cleat by part number and publishes no stack height at all. Quad Lock versus Peak Design versus Rokform finds four of eight published specifications blank across all three brands, and only the cheapest of the three publishing a handlebar diameter range. And because five pages here tell you to lock the bike properly and none explained how, how to lock a bike covers the rear triangle, the empty space inside a shackle, and what to do when there is nothing to lock to.

Heads up: we earn a commission if you buy through the links on this page, at no extra cost to you. It never decides what makes the list — here’s how that works.

What to buy

Our picks, with the live price on the card. No need to click through unless you want the reasoning — and you should want the reasoning.

A bicycle locked to a city bike rack against a wet concrete wall.Best bike lock

The Best Bike Locks

Two locks compared on what they publish rather than what they claim. Three security scales pulled apart, the DOJ's theft research, and the registration paperwork that decides whether a theft guarantee is worth anything.

Our top pick

Kryptonite Evolution Mini-7 U-Lock

Kryptonite Evolution Mini-7 U-Lock

$95.58 · View on Amazon

$109.95 −13%

A road bike drop handlebar wrapped in red bar tape, with a brake lever and cable, at dusk.Best bar tape

The Best Bar Tape

Ten drop-bar tapes ranked on published thickness, width, length and weight. Only two of the seven brands publish enough to work out how much tape you are buying, and one brand's thinnest tape is also its heaviest.

Our top pick

Wolf Tooth Supple Lite Bar Tape

Wolf Tooth Supple Lite Bar Tape

$31.95 · View on Amazon

The number that matters

Lumens are a bad proxy for being seen.A lumen figure measures total light output in every direction. What keeps you alive is how that light is shaped, where it’s aimed, and whether it’s flashing during daylight. A well-aimed 200-lumen light with a proper beam cutoff outperforms a badly-aimed 800-lumen blob, and it doesn’t blind the oncoming driver who then can’t see you.

Manufacturers publish lumens because it’s a single big number that goes on a box. Here’s what to read instead.

Lights are only half of riding in traffic. The other half is knowing what is behind you, and the two ways to do that — a mirror or rear-facing radar — are compared in the bike mirror roundup, which sorts mirrors by mount because that is what decides whether one fits a drop bar at all. If the thing on your bars is a phone rather than a computer, the phone mount roundup ranks mounts on what actually holds it.

Straight answers

The comparisons people actually search for, settled as far as they can honestly be settled.

A cyclist riding a road bike in clipless cycling shoes, photographed from the side.

SPD vs SPD-SL

Shimano's two clipless standards compared on published float, clip-out angle and whether you can walk in the shoe. Four pedals, live prices, and the one question that settles it.

Our top pick

Shimano 105 PD-R7000 Pedals

Shimano 105 PD-R7000 Pedals

$125.00 · View on Amazon

$175.00 −29%

A road cycling shoe clipped into a pedal, with the drivetrain in view.

LOOK Keo vs Shimano SPD-SL

Keo publishes geometry and not which float angle ships; SPD-SL publishes the cleat and not the geometry. Five pedals across both systems, and what changing your mind later costs.

Our top pick

Shimano 105 PD-R7000 Pedals

Shimano 105 PD-R7000 Pedals

$125.00 · View on Amazon

$175.00 −29%

Understand it properly

The mechanisms behind the choices, so the next decision is yours rather than ours.

The drop handlebars of a road bike with fresh handlebar tape.

How to Wrap Bar Tape

Park Tool's published procedure: bar end upwards, right clockwise and left counter-clockwise, about half the tape on bare bar, direction reversed above the levers, cut square and finish at the bottom.

Read the full guide →

Common questions

How many lumens do I need for a bike light?

Fewer than the marketing implies, and it’s the wrong question. For being seen in traffic, a couple of hundred lumens flashing is plenty. For lighting an unlit road at speed you need real output, but beam shape matters more than the headline figure — lumens explained.

Do I need a bike computer, or is my phone fine?

For most riders, honestly, a phone is fine. A dedicated computer wins on battery life, screen visibility in sun, and not destroying your phone in the rain. That’s the real list — compared properly here.

What tire pressure should I run?

Lower than the number molded on your tire’s sidewall, which is a maximum and not a recommendation. The right pressure depends on your weight, tire width and surface — inputs only you have. The mechanism is here.

Are disc brakes actually better than rim brakes?

In the wet, unambiguously. Otherwise it’s a trade against weight, cost and simplicity — and the market has already decided, so a new road bike is a disc bike whatever you conclude. The comparison.

Which saddle should I buy?

We can’t tell you, and neither can anyone else — it depends on the width of your sit bones and the shape of your pelvis. What we can do is explain what to measure and what the features actually do: how to choose a bike saddle.

We haven’t tested any of the products in this hub, and we don’t pretend otherwise. Read how we research — it explains what we do instead, and why we think it’s more useful than a score.