Review: Giant Trance X Advanced – Not Your Parents’ Volvo – Pinkbike

The Trance has two things at its core – balance and consistency. Everything about this bike is well-measured, and it’s a bike happily bereft of any quirky geometry features or strange sizing dimensions.

It’s seen Giant climb down from the larger reach of the previous version and also knows which key dimensions have worked in the past. At 439mm, the stays are slightly longer than many of its competitors and combine well with the 628mm stack, which is also slightly higher than what one might expect from a trail bike from even a year or two ago. This doesn’t seem like much, but placing emphasis on balance for these dimensions (the previous Trance X, in its shortest slackest setting, had a reach of 486mm). This gives a bike that is very composed and able to build on the concept of modern geometry instead of trying to reinvent it. All this, and you still get the headset cups to add or subtract a further 5mm of reach. For the record, I’d personally be more likely to go for 475mm than 485, and I found this bike rode best with the stem in the 50mm setting.

Whether plumbing along seated traverses, turning on a dime, or pointing and shooting through rough and committing chop, the Trance is well executed and composed. Again, the predictable nature of the suspension plays into this. There is no ramp severe ramp-up to fettle and tune or a fear of falling through the midstroke when really pushing. Everything about the platform is consistent, easy and settled.

Nothing is perfect, though, and it could sometimes hang up on square edges that took the bike deeper into its travel. That said, it didn’t seem to provide any particularly adverse pedal feedback. On faster chatter, whether the bike was taking small yet high-frequency hits, you could get initial feedback through your feet as the bike broke into its stroke. That said, it was largely quite calm, and it didn’t come to the fore on the singletrack trails that it was designed for. All around, I’m a big fan of the Maestro 3 system for shorter travel bikes. Packing as much as possible into 140mm is no easy task, and I think Giant has chosen their features well – it’s consistent, efficient and blends great support with very adequate small bump sensitivity.

In regards to stiffness, the bike feels direct and stiff, all while being comfortable. This stiffness, coupled with the carbon wheels, which do an excellent job of keeping the bead of the tire locked in place, can mean the tires really take the brunt of any lateral flex. During testing, I often rubbed the tire on the stay. While burping a tire is no good thing, I do wonder if there could have been a better compromise of rim flex or give on the bead to stop the tire from leaning over so much. Better yet, you would just make the frame with more tire clearance.

And what about the handlebars that look like a prop from Stargate SG1? Well, retrieve your sick from out of your cornflakes because they’re actually okay. They have a very middle-of-the-road feel and have enough adjustment to make their weight benefits well worth it, to my mind. That said, I think my curiosity for carbon bars has long since died a death, and I am always happy with alloy. The stem does come with neat integrations, though, be it for Garmin or action cameras. In some ways, the bar represents the entire bike – light, adjustable, well proportioned, and far more suitable for your average rider than you might initially think.