ENVE Fray first ride review

Things are unclear these days when it comes to drop-bar bike classifications and the new ENVE Fray – an endurance/all-road bike with a performance personality – is representative of that.

Sure, there is the full-throttle road race bike at one end of the drop-bar spectrum and the monster gravel bike at the other, but everything in between can be tough to define. 

While I don’t think every bike needs to be narrowly classified, the newest offering from ENVE, the Fray, lies somewhere in that in-between area.

Some may label it as an endurance road bike, with a geometry optimised for 31-35mm tyres (maximum clearance is 40mm with a 1x drivetrain and 38mm for 2x). However, I found the ENVE Fray to be more responsive and aggressive than is typical for the category.

The performance characteristics reminded me of the Melee, ENVE’s race bike, launched in 2022, albeit with a slightly less aggressive front end. (Editor’s note: incidentally, the ENVE Melee was our Race Bike of the Year in 2023).

All told, with its generous tyre clearance and a mild endurance flavour to the geometry, the ENVE Fray is a bike pitched at riders who want to go fast, in comfort, and who want to venture occasionally into the unknown.

Endurance or all-road?

The endurance category has evolved significantly over the past year, with the latest crop of bikes – including big names such as the Giant Defy, Trek Domane and Specialized Roubaix – treading on the toes of what we used to call all-road bikes, with 38mm tyre clearance for the Defy and Domane, and 40mm for the Roubaix. Just this week, BMC has upped the new Roadmachine’s clearance to 40mm.

The Fray goes big on clearance, too, and the versatility that comes with it. ENVE’s new bike joins the Roubaix and Roadmachine in accommodating up to a 40mm tyre, hinting at its potential to venture into the all-road category.

Elsewhere in the ENVE line-up, the Melee race bike can take a 35mm tyre (it’s optimised for 27-32mm, according to ENVE), while the MOG gravel bike can accommodate a massive 50mm tyre.

Despite the Fray’s gravel-like clearance, it still maintains its essence as a performance road bike, with the larger tyre capacity serving somewhat as a bonus feature.

For both of my test rides at the Fray’s launch event in California, I was rolling on a 35mm slick tyre. 

Two rides on a new bike and unfamiliar roads are insufficient for a full review. However, both rides were challenging and had plenty of road-surface variety, which gave me a good understanding of the Fray. They had everything I could have asked for to form some first impressions about the bike.

Big tyres and ENVE DNA

I only had to roll a few feet to feel that the ENVE Fray was going to be a bike best suited to a confident and more experienced rider. 

The bike's responsiveness to even the slightest input offers an immediate reaction. For me, this is fun and playful, but for a less experienced rider, it might be overwhelming. 

Having the geometry tuned for big tyres, and that plush rubber beneath you, not only offers incredible compliance, but the added traction makes rough roads a lot of fun. 

Even with tight corners and rough roads, maintaining speed was easy. Diving into high-speed corners, sometimes on wet roads, was rewarding, because the stability was predictable.

ENVE Fray geometry

Venturing off-road

One of the routes put together by ENVE for the launch included a few unpaved roads. I wouldn’t say it was gravel riding, but it was far from paved perfection.

The Fray didn’t skip a beat as we climbed and descended on the dirt. It handled the surface imperfections with ease – but, that said, I’m not sure it would be my first choice if I were going to be riding a lot of unpaved roads.

The bike and its components are stiff and responsive. Long days in the saddle would be fine, but long days on rough roads would take a toll on the rider.

This is a road bike that gives the rider options, not a dedicated gravel bike. ENVE says of the Fray: “This apple falls much closer to the Melee's tree. If you're a rider planning to run 40mm tyres most or all of the time, look to the MOG.”

For me, the ENVE Fray seems like the ideal bike for someone who might do a few road races and gran fondo events between regular road miles, riding mostly paved roads but with the occasional detour onto rough stuff.

The ability to run up to a 40mm tyre on a 1x drivetrain or up to 38mm on a 2x build is great, but the real benefit is that the 35mm sweetspot has plenty of room to clear debris that might get stuck to a tyre when conditions are not ideal.

Integrated options 

One of the other standout parts of the ENVE Fray is its compatibility with so many components. 

While we are in an era of fully integrated proprietary parts, ENVE has designed the Fray to work with a wide array of bars and stems. 

Sure, the brand wants you to use one of its cockpits, but it’s not mandatory. The Fray is also well suited to running a wide array of wheel depths, so whether you want to go deep-profile or shallow, the bike seems to fit the style.

This might be silly, but my biggest complaint is that ENVE only offers three colour options – with colour being an overstatement. 

The 'Venom' colorway is the only one with any real character. The other two, 'Ash' and 'Salt', are nice but don’t inspire me much – though that’s just my opinion. This is the ENVE way, and if you want to have a standout colorway, you just have to go with a custom option.

Being ENVE, this is no doubt an ultra-premium option, too, with the Fray chassis retailing for $5,500 / £5,500 / €5,995 / AU$9,999, for the frame (claimed weight 900g), fork, headset, stem, handlebar and seatpost.

ENVE Fray early verdict

Sitting between the Melee race bike and MOG gravel bike in ENVE’s line-up, the Fray is the kind of bike that will appeal to riders who rarely pin on a number and race, but who still like to go fast on a performance road bike. 

I’d put myself in that camp – I explore unknown roads and routes as often as I can.

Having the versatility to ride so many different tyre sizes, while maintaining balanced performance characteristics, makes the ENVE Fray an enticing new entry in the realm of ultra-premium endurance bikes.