Fabric's Semi Ergo grips are contoured to fit the natural shape of your hands. Grips are a highly personal thing, but these are my impressions.
If you look at your palms, ergonomic grips make a lot of sense. Your palms aren't flat, they're dynamic with recesses and contours throughout. Where most ergonomic grips fall short however is by overdoing the shaping so it feels good on a parking lot test, but when riding rowdy or technical terrain, the grip's shaping actually makes it hard to hold onto the bars. Fabric's Semi Ergo grips are properly named, as they're not over done.
Coming from regular single diameter grips, the bulge near the palm of your hand is noticeable at first, then quickly not noticeable at all. They seem pretty natural and easy to not think about, which is about perfect for most cycling touch points.
Typically, if you notice your bike's touch points (saddle, grips or tape, and shoes/pedals) something is wrong. The shaping did an excellent job of guiding my hands back to their optimal positions, right in line for index finger braking, thumb trigger shifting and dropper post activation.
The Semi Ergo grips are made from silicone material for optimal comfort. This silicone used feels much firmer than other straight silicone grips from ESI and others.
The lock-on collar is smooth and held tight, and the rubber bar-end plugs are a nice touch over hard plastic plugs that inevitably scratch skin and whatever they lean against. The diameter of 32mm and the length of 135mm falls nicely in the mid range.
Riding without gloves wasn't as great. The smooth, lightly textured grips were too smooth and the silicone too firm to leave an impression, so when my hands started sweating, hand slipping was noticeable. Aside from that, they did feel quite nice when riding sans gloves, pretending to be Sam Blenkinsop.
It would also be great to see the lock collar doubling as a remote dropper lever mount, as with ODI grips and KS posts, and Specialized's grips and posts.
Fabric Semi Ergo grips pricing and availability
£15.99 / US$29.99 /AU$ unavailable, available late 2016