Scott Genius 910 TR review: adaptable with plenty of potential, but stock spec limits performance

Scott Genius 910 TR climbing performance

Before I swapped the Genius’s tyres and wheels for the WTB wheel/Continental tyre combination used on the Atherton A.150, the bike felt raw and pingy – regardless of whether I was cruising or hammering along rumbly climbs.

The necessary high tyre pressures (to avoid punctures on the downhills) put a lot of tension into the thin, un-malleable tyre carcasses.

This makes the bike bounce and deflect over roots, rocks and general imperfections, transferring a disproportionate amount of buzz to the rider.

A wheel and tyre swap

After fitting the wheels and tyres from the Atherton (Stan’s Flow MK4 wheels, wrapped in Continental Kryptotal Enduro soft tyres front and rear), not only did that harshness disappear, but it made digging down into the Genius’s performance potential much easier.

When the seatpost is fully extended, the tall front end feels as though it’s matched evenly with the rear of the bike. Neither your hands nor backside bear the entirety of your body weight, giving the Genius a neutral stance.

This favours a reduction in fatigue on longer rides and makes working the bike easier.

Intentional weight shifts have a positive effect on rear-wheel drive and front-end steering precision, while the less desirable effects of unwanted movements are masked by the bike’s inherent balance.

Increase the gradient from mellow to extreme and the taller front end can work against you. Hoicking the front or rear wheels up rock or root steps while tackling steep gradients requires larger hip thrusts compared to lower bikes. These compounding issues mean you quickly run out of arm and leg articulation, and are the cause of feet-down moments that interrupt flow.

Thrumming along less technical terrain and mellower gradients is less of an issue. The steep-feeling seat tube angle, which centralises your weight on the bike, reduces hand and backside fatigue, and provides an efficient pedalling position.

While seated, the rear suspension remains inert to pedal inputs; there’s virtually no suspension bob, regardless of your cadence.

Suspension suppleness remains unaffected too; the rear end moves in and out of its travel well.

There are decent amounts of comfort and grip when charging along rubbly fire roads or pounding over small- to mid-sized square-edged embedded roots and rocks.

Pedalling over this sort of terrain reveals no noticeable feedback through the cranks; the chain doesn’t go tight during suspension compression, boosting the silky ride feel.

However, stand up to pedal with the TwinLoc lever set to open and there’s no masking the suspension’s eagerness to fall and rise with each stroke.

The three-position suspension control is designed to prevent this; Traction Control and Lockout modes firm up the suspension in steps.

I certainly appreciated Traction Control’s boosted low-speed damping, helping to maintain the bike’s geometry on steep ascents and all but eliminating pedal bob. I found the threshold for suspension actuation was too high.

Bumps weren’t absorbed efficiently enough to justify using it on terrain other than the smoothest paved or fire roads.

The Lockout mode ups the harshness further, in my experience rendering it usable on tarmac only, unless grip or comfort aren’t high up your priority list.

Despite the bob in the open mode and the harshness in the closed mode, the Genius has a sprightly feel.

It feels more like a lighter bike, defying its travel figures by taking its performance closer to a 130mm rig.

Pedal inputs are converted efficiently into forward movement; there’s a rewarding relationship between pedalling harder and going faster.

While the stock fast-rolling Ardent tyres boost speed, the tackier rubber I preferred barely blunts its pace.

Scott Genius 910 TR descending performance

As on the climbs, the stock wheels and tyres limit the Genius’s performance to lightweight trail riding, not befitting of its travel, geometry and overall performance potential.

They give the bike a skittish, unstable feel, where trail buzz is transmitted abundantly through the bars.

The wheels skip and bounce over bumps, rather than tracking them smoothly. Highly tensioned, thin tyre casings – that require lofty pressures to keep them inflated – ping and deflect down the trail.

When pushed hard in high-load turns, or on steeper sections, the wheels flex, blurring steering control. Worse yet, they rebound to their original shape in an undamped and unpredictable way, doubling down on the vague steering.

Performance with the upgraded wheels and tyres

Unless you’re into doubletrack or gentle trail-centre riding, swapping out the tyres is something I couldn’t recommend enough because you’ll unlock so much more performance.

Now rolling on the more appropriate Continental Kryptotal Enduro tyres, the Genius’s feel is delightfully calm and composed.

While the tyres do some of the work to create smoothness, it’s clear the rear end takes care of most of the heavy lifting. It tracks the ground impeccably; small- to medium-sized bumps are gobbled up to create a controlled, balanced, and most importantly, predictable ride.

Here, you can push the bike into the ground to generate grip, regardless of the terrain beneath your wheels, knowing it’ll take out the ground’s sting without flinching.

The Genius has a robust calmness; high-force, successive compressions, such as wheel-deep holes, don’t eat into its travel reserves excessively. Instead, they’re dispatched smoothly without unwanted bottom-outs – you feel impeccably insulated from the trail’s rawness.

Riding hard and fast feels rewarding rather than petrifying.

There’s loads of low-speed support from the damper. Rail a turn or pump a compression and the bike resists diving too deep into its travel when you don’t want it to.

This maintains its geometry and creates a stable, calm platform to plan your next line in technical terrain.

Even in deep-travel moments, there’s no pedal kickback or tension through the chain. It feels smooth, helping keep your feet on the pedals; you don’t have to claw your toes for extra grip.

On-the-brake performance is also great. Remaining supple and active, the rear wheel tracks chatter well.

There are limitations though; banging into large, square-edged hits causes the rear wheel to emit noise in protest at its punishment.

While braking suspension performance is good – especially compared to a single-pivot design – the Horst-link system doesn’t offer a cure-all panacea for heavy-handed riding.

The tall front end – that’s both a blessing and a curse on the ascents – feels good on the descents. There’s plenty of height to push against to drive grip, even in the steepest chutes, without feeling as though you’re going to overwhelm the front of the bike.

The Genius comes alive on this type of terrain, where it can be pushed beyond its trail-riding roots.

Fox’s FIT4 damper is a surprise performer, neither spiking on high-speed hits nor diving too quickly though its travel once some low-speed compression damping was dialled in. It doesn’t feel as supple as the GRIP, GRIPX, GRIP2 and GRIPX2 variants, but it won’t need an immediate upgrade.

The one-piece handlebar and stem is certainly divisive. While I wasn’t a fan of its looks, I had no issues with its shape or comfort. Adjusting stem height is a pain, requiring Scott’s official spacers because standard round ones won’t fit.

How we tested

We’ve picked four bikes of this type with the most iconic suspension designs currently on the market.

Starting with Starling’s beautiful Murmur steel single-pivot, this traditional two-bar design forgoes any linkages or complications.

Scott’s Genius – while sporting a futuristic-looking hidden shock, shrouding the suspension design in mystery – uses the common four-bar Horst-link system.

Also commonplace is the twin-link, four-bar virtual-pivot design, first popularised by Santa Cruz’s VPP. It seems fitting, then, to have Santa Cruz’s all-new Bronson fly the flag for this system.

Finally, Atherton Bikes’ A.150 is one of few designs to use a true six-bar linkage with the DW6, building on the twin-link layout. As an extra bit of technological spice, the Atherton uses additive manufacturing for its frame’s lugs and carbon for the tubes.

While it’s impossible to standardise a bike test such as this – each design needs specific shock tunes, along with the suspension layout and frame geometry forming a part of each bike’s identity – we’ve ridden them all back-to-back on well-worn test loops to capture how each one rides, stating where it excels and where it doesn’t.

Bikes on test

• Atherton Bikes A.150.1
• Santa Cruz Bronson CC X0 AXS RSV
• Scott Genius 910 TR
• Starling Murmur