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Just in: Merida Ride Disc 5000

£1,900 carbon fibre sportive bike with hydraulic disc brakes and bolt-thru axle fork

Merida’s 2015 catalogue includes two new Ride Disc endurance road bikes, this top-of-the-range 5000 model costing £1,900 and offering a full carbon frame with a thru-axle fork and kitted out with a Shimano Ultegra mechanical groupset and TRP’s Hy/Rd hydraulic disc brakes.

Merida’s Ride range consists of bikes designed for sportives and gran fondos, basically the sort of riding where comfort trumps all other criteria. The Lampre-Merida team use a Ride Pro Team for races like Paris-Roubaix, where bigger tyre clearance and comfort are needed to tackle, or should that be survive, the cobblestones that massively influence bike and tyre choice.

We’ve previously reviewed the regular Ride 5000 non-disc version of this bike and found it to be quick and offering plenty of comfort. The Ride Disc 5000 shares many of the same key features but it’s not identical, two big changes are the redesigned rear stays which have been bulked up, and there’s a completely different fork up front.

There are a number of key things that set this Ride apart from Merida’s other, more racey bikes. First, the geometry is different, the head tube is taller, quite a bit taller in fact, a change that produces a more upright, less extreme, ride position. Less strain on your back and neck essentially if you don’t want to ride with your teeth clamped around the handlebar. Unlike some manufacturers that also shorten the top tube as well, Merida appears to have actually lengthened the top tube on the Ride Disc.

Let's look at the numbers. This 56cm test bike has a 570mm top tube, so it’s quite long, but the head tube is a whopping 20.5cm. That places the handlebars very high, it’s a stretched bike but not slammed low at the front. The angles are 73 degrees for the head and seat tube, the bottom bracket drop is 69mm and the wheelbase is a rangy 100.4cm. Reach is 384mm and stack is 610mm.

- 2015 disc road bikes: Some of the seasons hottest and most interesting disc-equipped road bikes 

Then there are the changes to the frame construction. Merida has carefully shaped the rear stays, it calls them ‘Flex-Stays’ and there’s a 27.2mm seatpost to provide some useful deflection. This top-end Ride 5000 model also has a carbon fibre layup that incorporates flax fibres, claimed to further dampen vibration. Several manufacturers use a similar approach, like Bianchi with its CounterVail layup in its Infinito CV for example.

The Ride 5000 features a fork with a 15mm bolt-thru axle to stiffen up the front-end, while at the back it’s a regular quick release skewer. There's much debate about the future of disc brake road bikes and opinion seems to be divided whether regular quick release or thru-axles are the best approach. At the moment there's no common consensus so we're seeing quite a mix. 

The frame has mounts for mudguards and there’s space for up to 28mm tyres, though it comes fitted with 25mm rubber, ensuring it ticks the versatility box. Merida even produces its own mudguards that fit seamlessly on the frame and fork, but most regular mudguards should fit just fine. 

There’s a full suite of modern details. There's a tapered head tube, internal cable routing and on this model, carbon fibre dropouts. The rear disc caliper is located on the chainstay with post mounts, and there are post mounts on the fork too.

This model is equipped with a largely Shimano Ultegra 11-speed groupset, with a RS500 compact chainset and FSA chain. Wheels are Merida Comp 22 Disc rims on Disc-15 hubs with Maxxis Dolemite 25mm folding tyres. Brakes are TRP’s excellent Hy/Rd hydraulic brakes, operated by the mechanical brake levers, and with 160mm rotors front and rear.

- TRP Hy/Rd mechanical interface hydraulic disc brakes review

FSA provides the Gossamer compact handlebar and there’s a Merida Pro CF stem, carbon fibre seatpost and a Prologo Kappa 2 saddle completes the build. Its quite a lot of bike for not a lot of money.

The complete bike in this size 56cm weighs 8.31kg (18.32lb). That’s about the going weight for a carbon fibre disc-equipped road bike with a Shimano Ultegra groupset and hydraulic disc brakes.

- 2015's hottest disc-equipped road bikes. Disc brake road bike revolution rolls on with Specialized, Trek, Giant, Cannondale, Scott, Genesis, Saracen, Felt and many more brands

We’ve had a flurry of carbon disc-equipped road bikes through the office for review in recent months. It’s a category of road bike that is gaining in popularity, in fact we even awarded the Cannondale Synapse Disc the road.cc Bike of the Year 2014/15. 

Comparable bikes we’ve reviewed include the aforementioned Cannondale Synapse Carbon Ultegra Disc, De Rosa’s Idol Disc, Fuji Sportif 1.1 Ltd, Giant Defy Advanced SL, Orbea Avant and Specialized’s S-Works Tarmac Disc. That's some healthy competition so we'll be keen to see how the Merida stands up in comparison. On paper it certainly offers very good value for money, will it ride as well as it looks? Tune in for the full review soon.

You can read more about the Merida Ride Disc 5000 here www.merida-bikes.com

David worked on the road.cc tech team from 2012-2020. Previously he was editor of Bikemagic.com and before that staff writer at RCUK. He's a seasoned cyclist of all disciplines, from road to mountain biking, touring to cyclo-cross, he only wishes he had time to ride them all. He's mildly competitive, though he'll never admit it, and is a frequent road racer but is too lazy to do really well. He currently resides in the Cotswolds, and you can now find him over on his own YouTube channel David Arthur - Just Ride Bikes

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15 comments

Avatar
wjmarks | 8 years ago
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Any word on the actual review? - its been a good few months since this report was written and would love to know how this bike fared against the competition!

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wjmarks | 8 years ago
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Any word on the actual review? - its been a good few months since this report was written and would love to know how this bike fared against the competition!

Avatar
KiwiMike replied to wjmarks | 8 years ago
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wjmarks wrote:

Any word on the actual review? - its been a good few months since this report was written and would love to know how this bike fared against the competition!

Review imminent!

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antigee | 8 years ago
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long overdue a gravel racer / comfort roadie / adventurer bike
review - lot going on a shake down review would be useful

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Bob's Bikes | 8 years ago
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I wonder how this will compare to the CDX 4400 from rose?

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nadsta | 8 years ago
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Surely better off with complete 105 and shimano hydraulic brakes than gruppo mash up for not much more £

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daccordimark | 8 years ago
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I love the modern definition of a groupset (not). In this case the "Shimano Ultegra mechanical groupset" consists of the front and rear mechs plus the STI levers. In fact the only other thing that is Shimano is the chainset and that's not Ultegra.

Using the term groupset is misleading in this case and many others. Is it that you just repeat the manufacturer's descriptions or plain laziness?

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mike the bike replied to daccordimark | 8 years ago
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daccordimark wrote:

I love the modern definition of a groupset (not).

Using the term groupset is misleading in this case .....

I'm with you sir. My Croix de Fer came with everything Shimano except the gear cables, which were unbranded rubbish that rusted completely through in one winter. But not until they had upset the shifting and driven me mad with frustration.
And how much did they save by this little trick? Maybe a fiver, the cheapskates.

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Kim Chee replied to daccordimark | 8 years ago
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 41 Thanks! And I further endorse Grant Peterson's idea to call Campy groupsets"Grouppo", Shimano groupsets "Group San", and SRAM groupsets "Group Joe". And WTF mix chains with different brand of chainrings. Shimano micro engineers them to work together as perfectly as possible. For mucky MTB, it becomes irrelevant, but road shifting is not optimized.

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Stef Marazzi | 8 years ago
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Interesting when you mention 'this seems to be the going weight' for a carbon fibre disc equipped bike. If it didn't have discs, I would expect it do be around 7 kilos. I'm not convinced in discs for road bikes, it adds well over a kilo to the weight. Surely a 7 kilo bike with Ultegra rim brakes will be just as good, and a damn sight faster going uphill?

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joules1975 replied to Stef Marazzi | 8 years ago
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cyclesteffer wrote:

Interesting when you mention 'this seems to be the going weight' for a carbon fibre disc equipped bike. If it didn't have discs, I would expect it do be around 7 kilos. I'm not convinced in discs for road bikes, it adds well over a kilo to the weight. Surely a 7 kilo bike with Ultegra rim brakes will be just as good, and a damn sight faster going uphill?

You are comparing apples and pairs here:

1. a 7kg non disc bike is likely to cost more than £2k (probably at least £3k+)
2. most disc brake road bikes so far are not race bikes (why would they bother when the UCI don't allow them in racing yet), and are instead aimed at everyday riding and sportives, thus forgoing a little extra weight in favour of comfort and stability.
3. Ultegra rim brakes are not as good as hydraulic discs - as powerful maybe, but the power in the discs is much more usable thanks to the improved modulation.
4. The improvements that disc brakes allow have not yet been fully realised (e.g. lighter rims), so making a decision on whether disc brakes are a good idea or not purely by comparing the current disc brake bikes with the current crop of race bikes is misguided.

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joules1975 | 8 years ago
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Several time you say 'this top end' and then mention a frame feature. The cheaper Ride Disc 3000 has exactly the same frame and fork.

I'm looking forward to your review because I have the Ride Disc 3000 (upgraded to hydraulics and ultegra - didn't like the yellow of the 5000) and really like it. It's a very stable, and great to ride, just lacking a little 'fizz' that some folks might look for but that I'm not that bothered about (lets face it, most of us just get up a a particular speed and then cruise along, which this bike is great at).

Also, 28mm tyres max? I can get 28mm tyres on it with mudguards fitted, and so think you might even go up to 30 or 32mm tyres, which means it could take in the odd forest road too if that's your thing.

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David Arthur @d... replied to joules1975 | 8 years ago
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joules1975 wrote:

Also, 28mm tyres max? I can get 28mm tyres on it with mudguards fitted, and so think you might even go up to 30 or 32mm tyres, which means it could take in the odd forest road too if that's your thing.

28mm tyres is what Merida states. Quite often you can fit wider tyres than a manufacturers recommendation though, but it very much depends on the brand of tyre

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jackseph replied to joules1975 | 8 years ago
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What mudguards can you fit on the rear facing mounts?

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KiwiMike replied to jackseph | 8 years ago
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jackseph wrote:

What mudguards can you fit on the rear facing mounts?

Merida have yet to make their bespoke ones available - so you're down to whatever you want to bend up. Something with decent stays (SKS) should bend no problem.

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