How we tested Bike of the Year 2020 | The inside story from our test team

Since it was first launched in 2009, our annual Bike of the Year test has become the road and mountain biker's go-to guide to the latest and greatest bikes on the market.

This year is no different – once again we've put together our most comprehensive test of the year, with more than 60 bikes put through their paces to bring you our winners.

Bike of the Year is a six-month project for the teams behind BikeRadar, Cycling Plus and MBUK. Our expert team of testers have put in countless miles – and countless hours – to cast aside manufacturer claims and tell you exactly what bikes are worth your hard-earned cash.

Now we've revealed the road, trail and enduro winners for the 2020 Bike of the Year awards, we can also bring you the inside story behind the 2020 test.

Otherwise, head to our Bike of the Year hub for the full list of categories, contenders and the latest reviews.

Road Bike of the Year | From Salisbury Plain to Gran Canaria

Over the many years that we’ve been putting together Bike of the Year, the machines we've featured have consistently improved. Back in the beginning, the idea of disc brakes and big tyres on a road bike would have been considered madness, never mind inner-tube-free tyres and gravel bikes!

What are we looking forward to in 2020 and beyond? Well, the maturing of aerodynamics is the main focus, and not just on aero bikes. We’ve seen aerodynamics influence everything from race to endurance – even gravel bikes are getting glossed with the aerodynamic brush.

Then it’s tyres and tyre width: 28mm is fast becoming the norm across the board on performance race machines; endurance bikes are going even bigger, with Trek’s brilliant Domane gaining huge 32c rubber. Bigger tyres equal more comfort and modern technology means they’re light so they roll fast, too.

After several rounds of lively meetings between BikeRadar and Cycling Plus staff, we decided to concentrate our efforts for 2020 on four main categories: endurance, aero, performance and gravel.

We'll be naming an individual winner in each sub-category and, of course, one overall winner – the one machine that above all others makes riding heaps more fun.

When we started Bike of the Year there were race bikes and road bikes, and little else. More recently the divisions have grown wider, with endurance, race, and aero road being very distinct from one another, before gravel bikes broadened the spectrum even further.

In recent years, however, we’ve seen those margins close up, with the latest road bikes as aerodynamic (or more so) than the original aero road bikes, and endurance bikes becoming more racy and more versatile.

That’s not forgetting bikes that approach the one-bike-for-all philosophy personified by last year’s winner, the Rondo HVRT CF0 – an aggressive race bike, relaxed endurance machine and gravel bike all in one.

This year’s Bike of the Year contenders are priced between £2,500 and £4,000 – a price range that our reader survey and industry research tells us hits the sweetspot for most of you.

However, for cyclists just starting out on their journey, or for riders with a more generous budget, we also have separate £1,000 and superbike categories.

Riding each bike on a multitude of surfaces and terrain means we can better judge how a machine works in all conditions, and what it will be like to live with as your next bike

Testing for Bike of the Year started in October 2019 on our home testing roads in the west of England, on three routes between 50 miles (80km) and 75 miles (120km). Each took in over 1,000m/3,300ft of elevation on a range of surfaces, from fresh smooth black top, to rough scarred surfaces and even a smattering of light gravel, though the gravel bikes were ridden mostly on the gravel roads and singletrack of Salisbury Plain (highly recommended as a destination).

Riding each bike on a multitude of surfaces and terrain means we can better judge how a machine works in all conditions, and what it will be like to live with as your next bike.

The other challenge for riders – us included – is weather. Our Bike of the Year testing always takes place through the winter months, so the reviews are ready for you for when the weather starts to get better. That means these bikes have been put through their paces in truly filthy conditions (it’s been the wettest UK winter on record).

After the first rounds of testing were completed, we assembled a team of trusted riders and headed to Gran Canaria for the final week shootout between the five best bikes on test. You can read about the shootout week exclusively in the latest issue of Cycling Plus magazine, on sale now.

Here we swapped the wet UK winter for amazing climbs, daredevil descents and warm sun to decide on the best of the best for 2020.

So what bikes can you expect to see? We’ve got debuts, such as Cannondale’s radical reinvention of the legendary SuperSix EVO, along with the company’s Topstone gravel machine. Meanwhile, Cube has reinvented the Litening as an aerodynamic speedster, Cervélo’s S3 hits the aero high notes too, and don’t forget Bianchi’s new endurance machine, the Infinito XE.

There are also updates of old favourites, such as Giant’s Defy (our Endurance Bike of the Year in 2019), Specialized’s Roubaix (2017 Bike of the Year winner) and Canyon’s value-loaded Ultimate and Endurace.

What unifies all of the bikes is they are getting quicker thanks to aerodynamics, smoother due to improved carbon design, better controlled as a result of superior handling and grip, and more comfortable because of wider tyres and clever frame features.

Whatever you’re looking for with your next bike, we think you’ll find it in our 2020 Bike of the Year test.

Trail and Enduro Bikes of the Year | Forest of Dean, Bike Park Wales and a ferry to Spain

This year we’ve been busier than ever, putting together our most comprehensive test to date (which explains why Rob and Tom look so knackered!).

We’ve spent months researching, planning, riding, deliberating, riding again, writing and – in the case of a few hard-to-pin-down bikes – doing yet more riding, all in a bid to establish not one, but two winners.

Why two? Well, this year, we’ve split our mountain bike test into two categories, so we can cover what we think are the most exciting and potentially popular bikes currently on the market.

For 2020, we’ve focused on trail and enduro bikes, with a different price bracket for each – £3,000 to £3,500 for trail (although currency fluctuations did nudge the price of one bike over that limit after testing had begun) and £3,500 to £4,500 for enduro.

Yes, we realise that’s a lot of money, but we really wanted to ensure that we could include the most relevant bikes.

As a result, this test has been our closest-fought, toughest-to-judge yet, which goes to show just how good bikes are right now. Seriously, no bike included is bad by any means and working out a winner has caused no end of sleepless nights and headaches.

We’ve spent months researching, planning, riding, deliberating, riding again and writing, all in a bid to establish not one, but two winners

What this means for you, though, is that there are loads of great bikes to choose from, and we hope this test offers plenty of useful insight into what to spend your money on.

If the pricing is a sticking point, don’t fret, because many of the brands featured here sell cheaper models of the same bike, which are also well worth considering.

Defining the categories wasn’t exactly easy because bikes are so capable these days. While we were able to be a little more prescriptive when it came to enduro bikes (we looked for machines boasting 145mm or more of rear bounce, designed for winching up and bombing back down), trail bikes come in a wide variety of flavours.

We ended up with everything from bikes capable of tackling epic all-dayers, through to machines that can take on the odd enduro event here and there, all with between 120mm and 140mm of rear wheel travel.

The 2020 test brings together the industry's big-hitters and is our opportunity to sort the wheat from the chaff.

On the trail side, we've got bikes from Trek, GT, Cannondale, Scott, YT, Bird, Propain and more; for enduro riders, Canyon, Santa Cruz, Giant, Nukeproof, Specialized, Whyte and Cube are among the names represented.

Testing this number of bikes was never going to be easy. Thankfully, we’d already ridden most of them (albeit in different builds) at some point over the past six months, so we already had a decent idea of what to expect.

We then rode them back-to-back with one another, day after day, on terrain that we think is typical for the bikes’ intended uses. This varied from off-piste laps around the Forest of Dean to high-speed runs at BikePark Wales, with various other trail centre and natural singletrack loops thrown in for good measure whenever possible.

And testing wasn’t solely down to one person either. By swapping bikes between our trusted test team, we were able to get second and, in some cases, third opinions on them to ensure that we were on the right track with our findings.

Finally, we headed south on the ferry to Spain, with the top six bikes in each category and rode some of the incredible trails that sit just 45 minutes’ drive outside Madrid, courtesy of the guys at BlackTown Trails.

The riding here was a great contrast to the wet and wild conditions we’d endured in the UK. We’re talking loose, dusty surfaces and the kind of super-high-speed boulder sections that we don’t exactly have much of on our regular loops.

The diversity of trails meant that we got to see just how each bike behaved in a wide variety of scenarios, which helped us to properly paint a picture of what they were (or weren’t) so great at.

Slowly but surely we whittled the contenders down until we had our final three in each category, before settling on two truly worthy winners.