Kona is one of the few companies that has chosen to persevere with awkward to work with scandium alloys and gain real low weight benefits without sacrificing strength or stiffness.
The low-slung, trail-ready frame includes a tapered head tube, normal bottle cage mount and an easy to reach lockout lever on the Fox shock for when pedal bob starts to get annoying on the smoother trail sections.
There’s a remote lockout lever on the forks too, though the simpler Turn Key damped fork is poor considering the bike’s price and it struggles on more demanding terrain.
The Hei Hei’s mixed Shimano transmission, Avid brake and Mavic wheel spec is fine for the money and the Maxxis Aspen tyres inject some serious speed.
It’s the wide bar, stiff framed, plush traction ride of the Kona that make it a really engaging and properly enthusiastic singletracker though, consistently delivering more grins on test rides than more expensive, better equipped and longer travel bikes.
