Tech

2012 has been a busy year, and road.cc has reviewed more products than ever before. Our team is out riding all year round in all weathers, logging thousand of miles to put the latest products through a thorough test.

There have been some really excellent products this year, and here are the ones that top scored across a wide variety of categories, we've selected our pick of the year to reflect the wide range of cycing we try to cover - so there should be something of interest no matter what type of road riding you do.

If you’re looking to add a dash of personalisation to your bike, here are 10 products that will be sure to make your bike stand out on the club run. And best of all, these are all affordable upgrades.

Coloured headset spacers

Not all that long ago, most road bikes were custom built to order by your local frame builder. Times have changed and today most are produced on a mass scale in the Far East where advances in manufacturing and production processes have seen all types of road bikes become both more affordable and more technologically advanced than ever before.

I'm watching a machine print some dropouts. It's an expensive machine; if you want one for your shed you'll need to front about half a million pounds. It's printing them in super-hard 6Al/4V titanium alloy, and the design is such that they couldn't be produced any other way. They're optimised for the process, hollow, finite-element-analysed on the computer to be stronger and lighter than anything you could produce on a CNC machine.

This coming Sunday (April 8th) the pro peloton will be pounding its way across the infamous pavé in this year’s Paris-Roubaix road race. Last Sunday (April 1st) the amateurs had a chance to sample those same jagged cobblestones, thanks to the Paris-Roubaix Challenge sportive. Given the date, it might have seemed a foolish idea to ride 95 miles across northern France on a zig-zag route with 19 pavé sections, but it turned out to be a surprisingly enjoyable - though unsurprisingly tough - day out on the bike.

Fixed gear is now a recognised part of mainstream cycling, just as it was way back in the ‘40s and ’50s. However, for a long time it was firmly out of favour with the exception of a few hardcore riders who remembered the benefits of riding fixed through the winter. Among those riders was a guy by the name of Will Meister.

This Specialized CruX Elite was tested a while ago and turned out to be a great race-ready bike that was a bit held back by some of the parts fitted to meet its friendly £1,000 target.