Orbea Rallon M10 MYO review

The Rallon is marketed as a no-compromise, full-gas enduro bike, with Enduro World Series credentials to prove it, but it’s equally at home playing in the woods or lapping a trail centre at speed.

As well as coming with fantastic parts for the cash, the Rallon also boasts a full-carbon frame. Orbea has made the rear pivot concentric with the wheel axle, which reduces the effect of braking on the suspension, in a similar way to the chainstay pivot on a Horst-link bike. I measured 155mm of travel with the Fox Float X2 shock used here. The asymmetric shock strut not only looks trick, but allows you to fit or remove volume spacers without unbolting the shock.

Order through Orbea’s website and you can customise several key components, as well as pick the colour scheme. Starting with the cheapest complete bike offered (the M10, at £4,100 / $4,999 / AU$7,499) I upgraded the fork, shock, brakes and seatpost.

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Orbea Rallon M10 MYO ride impressions

While the X2 shock takes time to set up, and there’s scope to get it wrong, if you know what you’re doing it can help bring out a bike’s potential.

I added two volume spacers (four in total), kept the compression damping fairly light and set the rebound just slow enough to stop it feeling unsettled. I regularly used full travel, but the large bottom-out bumper makes this less of an issue.

The Rallon pedals particularly well, with the suspension staying high in its travel, barely bobbing when pedalling seated, and feeling firm and efficient when sprinting. This makes climbing all but the steepest pitches relatively rapid, without the need to use the lockout, unless you’re powering up tarmac.

The 76.5-degree effective seat angle (low setting) is steep enough for most situations, putting the hips nicely over the bottom bracket for better power transfer and weight distribution when climbing.

The downside of that pedalling efficiency is pedal kickback when landing at slow speeds or cranking over bumps, but this was rarely noticeable, though there is more feedback through the front foot on rough runs.

On descents, the Rallon is lively and responsive. It’s dead easy to manual and chuck about, and corners predictably, thanks to its low (340mm) bottom bracket and balanced suspension, once set up correctly. The 170mm dropper helps too.

With my shock set-up, the rear suspension wasn’t the most bump-isolating through fast rough sections, but the bike pattered through rocks without hanging up and losing too much speed. Up front, the Fox 36 fork with its GRIP2 damper performed well and the Rallon felt comfortable riding over fast technical terrain.

I couldn’t get the stock bar high enough though, because the stack height is short for an XL bike and the steerer came with only 20mm of spacers. This meant that on steep, twisty trails my weight was forced forwards.

Swapping to a 40mm-rise bar remedied the problem to some extent, but on steep, technical downs the front-centre still felt a little short, so my weight wasn’t far enough back to really commit. At least the short seat tube (480mm) means smaller riders than me, at 6ft 3in, could easily size up for a longer and more stable ride.

Orbea Rallon M10 MYO geometry (XL)

• Seat angle: 76.5 degrees
• Head angle: 64.7 degrees
• Chainstay: 17.13in / 43.5cm
• Seat tube: 19.29in / 49cm
• Top tube: 25.35in / 64.4cm
• Head tube: 4.92in / 12.5cm
• Bottom bracket height: 13.39in / 34cm
• Wheelbase: 49.41in / 1,255mm
• Stack: 24.69in / 62.7cm
• Reach: 18.9in / 48cm

• Cheapest option: £4,100 / $4,999 / AU$7,499