ENVE M7 35mm carbon bar review

ENVE’s M7 35mm carbon fibre handlebar is targeted at gravity riders and is one of the priciest bars on the market.

The brand says “we won’t ever compromise materials, processes, or performance to hit a price point”, handmaking its carbon products in Ogden, Utah.

The firm made its name manufacturing carbon rims and wheels for road and mountain bikes. It claims all of its products represent engineering excellence and therefore have no lower tiers.

The American brand also makes carbon fibre components, such as road and gravel bike forks, seatposts and handlebars.

ENVE M7 35mm carbon bar specifications

ENVE makes several carbon mountain bike handlebars, each with a different construction and carbon laminates (layers) tuned for different applications.

The M7 is a 35mm clamp-diameter bar for aggressive all-mountain and enduro riding. It was designed with the same flex tune and ride characteristic as ENVE's M9 DH bar.

The reason the M7 bar is different is the desired feel in the hands is optimised for a width between 760mm and 800mm. The DH bar sits in the 780mm to 810mm zone.

The M7 is designed to be stiff, but ENVE doesn’t recommend cutting the bar any narrower than 760mm. Doing so, it says, will make the bar feel too stiff, creating a poor ride quality.

Think of your handlebar as a giant lever, fixed in the middle with the stem. The further away from the stem your hands are, the longer the lever and the easier it is to flex it with your weight. Reduce that lever’s length too far, and you won’t be strong enough to flex the bar.

In the case of the M7 bar, this will make it feel stiff and uncompromising.

This is a solid gravity-rated bar for aggressive riders on big bikes and tough terrain. It would likely also be well suited to heavier electric mountain bikes that exert greater forces on components.

On our scales, the M7 35mm, 10mm rise, uncut 800mm bar weighed 226g.

ENVE M7 35mm carbon bar performance

If you’re a heavier rider, who rides more over the front of the bike and needs more control through bigger terrain, there’s plenty of precision here.

ENVE’s M7 feels stiff and solid, to the extent where you can feel every bump and ripple in the terrain and point the tyre exactly where you want it with a reactive, accurate feel.

The flipside to this, though, is the M7 isn’t very comfortable.

Other carbon bars, such as the Hope Carbon Bar and Santa Cruz Riser Carbon Bar, feel equally solid and precise. However, ENVE’s bar also has a more chattery feel that feeds back more trail buzz and vibration than those rivals on broken-up, rock-flecked surfaces.

As a result, I found these bars excessively tiring and fatiguing, resulting in sore hands and forearms faster than other products.

I also had a minor gripe with the bar geometry.

This issue could be a consequence of choosing the flatter 10mm-rise model, which offers less ‘adjustment’ when rolled/tilted in the stem, due to a less curvy profile compared to taller bars. However, I couldn’t quite get my hands in a perfect position.

The M7 has less upsweep than other bars I've tested, though, so this is also likely a factor in my wrists feeling tipped down at the outer edge of my hands.

ENVE M7 35mm carbon bar bottom line

ENVE’s M7 carbon bar means paying a premium for the brand's name and hand-made expertise. However, that doesn’t translate to any benefits in terms of performance.

In fact, the uncomfortable M7 feels harsher than some handlebars that are a third of the price, making it hard to recommend.