Ribble Gravel SL Pro GRX Di2 review: a rapid and forgiving gravel race bike at a tempting price

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The Ribble Gravel SL Pro is unashamedly a gravel race bike, with steep, almost road race bike geometry, a short wheelbase, a low stack and lots of aero-friendly integration.

It takes inspiration from the brand’s Endurance SL road bike, sharing a similar silhouette. The stays are dropped, featuring the signature horizontal junction with the seat tube, and the front end is integrated with a low stack and straight, slender fork.

Ribble offers two builds of the Gravel SL – an Enthusiast model with SRAM Rival AXS and Mavic wheels, and this Pro model with Shimano GRX Di2.

That’s not the whole story, though. Using Ribble’s Bike Builder service, you can tweak the specifications to suit your wants and budget.

Ribble put together this SL Pro with the more affordable Zipp 303S wheels and a cheaper saddle, switching to Fizik’s Aliante with alloy rails. This drops the price from £5,499 to £4,959 – a good saving without compromising what was already a keenly priced bike compared to its rivals.

Ribble Gravel SL Pro frame

The Gravel SL frameset looks like a thoroughbred race design, but thankfully Ribble hasn’t skimped on features or versatility.

With three sets of bottle bosses on the seat tube, under the down tube and a two-position set on top, it’s well-appointed.

The top tube features bento box mounts and the forks have triple ‘anything’ mounts. The fork and rear dropouts have threads for mudguard stays and a removable bridge on the seatstays.

The frame is constructed using a mix of Toray T800 and T1000 carbon. Ribble says the more compliant (and heavier) T800 is used in areas where compliance is the key to comfort (the seat tube, seatstays and top tube), whereas the lighter and stiffer T1000 material is used in the head tube, down tube and bottom bracket shell.

This sets the Gravel SL up well as a year-round gravel ride or bikepacking bike.

Further versatility comes from the Gravel SL having mounts for a front derailleur, hidden by a neat plate on this 1x build. It’s also dual wheel-size compatible, with 45mm clearance for 700c wheels, rising to 47mm if you opt for smaller 650b wheelsets.

The frame and fork come with a claimed combined weight of 1,600g (in a size large) and Ribble provides a three-year warranty.

Ribble Gravel SL Pro geometry

Ribble has smartly stayed with a happy medium when it comes to the Gravel SL’s geometry. The head angle is a slightly slackened 72 degrees, paired with a 73-degree seat tube angle.

The 69mm bottom bracket drop is similarly in the middle ground, although the 1,041mm wheelbase is on the short side.

The 592mm stack height on this large-sized test bike and 389mm reach are more race-oriented than endurance bike fare.

Ribble Gravel SL Pro build

The standard Ribble builds deliver the Lancashire brand's usual value for money. That’s bolstered by the step down to Zipp 303S wheels and a more modest saddle.

The £4,949 price tag undercuts plenty of big-name brands by a significant amount. ENVE’s MOG, with the same GRX Di2 drivetrain, carbon wheels and carbon finishing kit, comes in at more than double the price.

Even Canyon, with its direct-sales driven value, can’t match this Ribble, with the latest Grail CFR Di2 coming in at £1,740 more.

The GRX Di2 drivetrain, with a 40-tooth chainring and 11-42t cassette, is a great spread for all-round gravel riding. You won’t run out of gears on tarmac – with the possible exception of on particularly long, fast descents.

The 40/42t lightest gear will keep you pedalling on seriously steep gravel climbs.

Shimano’s Servo Wave assisted braking and the well-shaped GRX levers offer a great feel from both the hoods and the drops. However, the RT10S rotors can be a little more vocal when hot than Shimano’s higher-grade Ice Tech models.

Shimano’s shifting is slick and accurate, although it’s a fully wired system and 11-speed – 1x GRX Di2 has yet to make the jump to semi-wireless like the Japanese brand's road-going electronic groupsets, or 12-speed like the latest-generation mechanical GRX.

The one-piece carbon Level bar/stem is nicely shaped, with a flat-top section and shallow stem; it offers reasonably good compliance. It comes in one width for gravel (42cm, centre-to-centre), and either a 90mm or 110mm stem length depending on frame size.

Its 42cm width (flaring out to 50cm at the drops) was fine for me, but for smaller or larger riders not having any other choice beyond short or long stem lengths could be an issue for fit.

The bar has a dedicated out-front computer mount, and if you like to run a bar bag, you may need longer straps to wrap around the deep top section.

At the back, a D-shaped carbon post keeps the aero theme of the bike going, and it’s topped with the classic Fizik Antares R5 saddle, which means alloy rails rather than pricier carbon or titanium.

Zipp’s 303S is an excellent wheelset for the price, the 1,530g weight is light for a 45mm-deep aero wheelset and the hookless rim – at 23mm wide internally – is well suited to gravel. It's a great match for the 40mm-wide Goodyear Connector Ultimate tyres.

The Connectors are great tyres for dry, fast conditions and impressively quick on the road. For more changeable conditions, I advise looking to the larger versions because the shoulder tread scales up with the tyre volume.

The Ribble Gravel SL Pro GRX Di2 I tested weighed 8.9kg.

Ribble Gravel SL Pro ride impressions

On ungraded dirt roads, the Gravel SL is in its element – the stiffness through the drivetrain and sporty ride position mean gaining and maintaining speed is easy.

The 50mm fork offset, combined with a relatively steep head angle of 72 degrees, makes for a 63mm trail, which is classic all-round gravel bike stuff.

It means the steering feels steady and stable rather than race-bike snappy or lazy like some of the more ‘extreme’ gravel designs.

The front end, although good at dissipating buzz and vibrations, still feels on the firm side. When you step away from ungraded roads and onto sheep tracks and singletrack, the front end tends to tramline.

I found myself on occasion having to wrestle with the front end to get it through twisty corners, especially when the going got choppy.

The comfort levels at the back are superior to the front, and I also like that the wheelbase is compact enough to make it easy to unweight the back end and flick it into slow, tight turns – it’s a good counterbalance to the front end’s occasional stubbornness.

The drivetrain and braking proved themselves almost flawless, and the Zipp wheels certainly add plenty of pace on tarmac and straight, smooth gravel roads.

The Goodyear Connector tyres are designed to offer stellar performance on tarmac and dirt, urban and rural roads. What that means, ostensibly, is a gravel tyre that’s more semi-slick than knobbled dirt rubber.

Most of my testing was in the dry and the Connector is a great option for these conditions – it is, indeed, a fast tyre on tarmac. It struggles in more inclement conditions, though, as do most dry-conditions gravel tyres.

The tyres would have benefitted from being set up tubeless from the get-go, which would have enabled me to exploit lower tyre pressures, in turn upping the Connectors' compliance and grip in the rough.

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Ribble Gravel SL Pro bottom line

Ribble has hit the gravel middle ground well with the Gravel SL Pro.

It's fast and forgiving on wide-open gravel roads and byways, although it's not as long, low and oh-so-pro as the latest gravel race bikes.

That said, it can come unstuck when covering super-choppy, twisty, changeable technical terrain.

On the road, however, it rides like a great endurance bike. If your gravel riding encompasses a mix of tarmac, ungraded roads and byways, this Ribble lives up to the Lancashire brand's reputation for high performance at a competitive price.

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