Pinnacle Dolomite 5

We've been going on about road bike disc brakes here at road.cc for what seems like ages, but the Pinnacle Dolomite 5 still feels like something of a watershed. Hydraulic disc brakes on a road bike at the key £1,000 price point? That's a first among the bikes we've had in for review. It's a pretty likeable machine, too, which could certainly serve as a commuter or winter bike, and rides well enough to be an enjoyable companion for all-day outings.

It ticks the practicality boxes, too, with mudguard and rear rack compatibility, and also has some unexpected modern touches such as internal cable routing.

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Pinnacle is Evans' in-house brand, and it describes the Dolomite as a "road bike that's designed for UK road conditions". It's fairly tall at the front, with a 200mm head tube, and what Pinnacle describes as "a fine-line between a more upright sportive bike and a performance bike". When I think about what characterises UK riding, the things that spring to mind are poor road surfaces, crap weather and inconsiderate drivers. With space for up to 28mm tyres, fittings for proper mudguards and those brakes, you've certainly got a good starting point.

The range starts at £475 with the Pinnacle 1 and goes up to the Pinnacle 6 at £1,300. All share the same frame (except for cable routing), and all bar the cheapest have disc brakes. This, the Pinnacle 5, is arguably the stand-out, coming with Shimano hydraulic disc brakes for £1,000.

Over the last couple of years we've seen a few manufacturers make wholesale shifts to disc brakes across some of their product lines. Disc brake systems are generally more expensive and so most manufacturers have been rolling them out on the more expensive models first. This is particularly true of hydraulic disc brakes, as the hydraulic-compatible shifters are still fairly new products and so the price hasn't yet come down that far.

For this reason cable discs like the Avid BB7 and TRP Spyre are mostly what you find on commuter bikes around the £1k price point. They're really not bad, but believe us, they are not a match for hydraulics.

The Dolomite 5 has the brand new Shimano RS505 shifters paired with BR785 calliper. We're reviewing the RS505 brakes separately, so I won't go into too much detail here, but having ridden this bike, I really can't see myself buying another cable disc-braked bike.

The ride

Hop on the Dolomite 5 and you'll find it a comfortable and enjoyable ride. At 9.7kg for the XL (Evans claim 8.9kg for the medium) it's no lightweight, but I only really noticed this slowing me down on longer hilly rides. On shorter climbs, it responds well to out-of-the-saddle effort, with the 6061T6 aluminium frame proving acceptably stiff in the places that you want it to be. You wouldn't mistake it for a carbon race platform, but I had no complaints when using it for fast club runs or chaingangs.

It's also a comfortable bike. Forget the old cliché about aluminium being harsh, there are plenty of comfortable aluminium bikes nowadays. Here there are several elements that combine effectively to provide isolation from the cracks and scars in the tarmac, including 25mm tyres – not a huge surprise, with more and more bikes moving to wider rubber – and similarly we are seeing a welcome increase in the use of more slender seatposts; here there's an own-brand 27.2mm-diameter aluminium post.

But the comfort goes deeper than that. The fork is rather lovely – its slender carbon blades help to smooth out the ride with no real loss of tracking stiffness. Routing the front brake hose through the fork leg is very neat, and something generally only seen on bikes costing a lot more.

At the back you don't get ultra-thin seatstays, but rather, the chainstays are slim and with a pronounced bend towards the rear (mostly to facilitate the brake calliper mounting). It works well, resulting in a bike that doesn't beat you up, even over long distances.

Handling is biased towards stability rather than rapier-sharp responsiveness, which suits the bike well. Load it up with panniers on the rear and there are no unwelcome surprises either. The smoothly tapered head tube conceals a 1 1/8in to 1 1/2in headset, increasingly the standard way of beefing up frames at the front.

One thing that struck me was how quiet a bike it is to ride. When you're out in the lanes on your own, there is very little noise to distract you from your thoughts – the freehub is almost silent, the chain glides slickly across the cassette, and the frame tubes are of a sufficient gauge that the road's texture doesn't produce any audible resonance.

The frame

The Pinnacle's frame is 6061 aluminium with a T6 heat treatment – a pretty common alloy for bike frames. As is common on all but the cheapest frames, the tubes are butted, meaning they are thinner mid section and thicken up at the ends. Overall, the wall thickness is greater here than in a super-light aluminium frame, as evidenced by the flick test.

Unusually at this price point, the cables are internally routed, at least through the down tube. There are neat entry points at the top, well positioned to avoid any cable rub on the head tube, and the cables (and rear brake hose) exit by the bottom bracket.

I really like internally routed cables as it makes a frame neater and much easier to clean. Opponents point out that maintenance can be more complicated, but that's hardly the case here – it would be no challenge to fish the cable out of the sizeable opening below the cranks. On some frames the cables exit further back but the arrangement on the Dolomite is an excellent compromise, arguably giving the best of both worlds.

Practicality scores highly, with two pairs of eyelets at the rear axle allowing for mudguards and a rack. Unfortunately the threads were full of paint, needing some careful cleaning out to avoid cross-threading. The frame bosses are all riveted rather than brazed, as you'd expect at this price point.

Fitting a rear rack and mudguards for my commute was mostly simple, although complicated by the hole through the fork crown not being threaded, calling for a really long bolt to hold the mudguard in place. Additionally, I found that the front mech interfered with the rear mudguard, which needed some trimming to avoid issues.

The other bits

Pinnacle has specced most of a Shimano 105 groupset, namely the RS505 shifters, front mech, rear mech and cassette (11-28). The chainset is an FSA Gossamer in a 50/34 compact – a common substitution made to meet a price point – sitting in an FSA MegaExo threaded bottom bracket. I've had my fill of creaky press-fit bottom brackets, so this gets a big thumbs up for me.

Given that you can fit a rack to this bike, the use of a compact chainset and wide cassette makes sense – that's enough gears for you to get up most hills even with luggage on the rear. I was also pleased to see the KMC X11 chain, complete with 'missing link', making it much easier to remove for cleaning than a Shimano chain.

Shifting is a bit of a mixed bag with the new RS505s. On the one hand, the longer lever arm on Shimano front mechs (Tiagra and up) makes for a lovely light action, and the rear derailleur does its business quietly and with the very minimum of fuss. On the other, I'd really like some more feedback when shifting to a smaller sprocket at the rear. Do it attentively and you'll notice the subtle click at the lever to tell you the gear has changed, but some more pronounced feedback would be a big improvement. When you're going hard and need to change up it's easy to stab at the lever and be unsure as to whether you've made the change or not.

For winter use, I have a preference for the single paddle system used by SRAM, as I find with thick winter gloves and/or numb fingers it's all too easy to fudge a shift with Shimano – just catching the brake lever is enough to miss an upshift. Pinnacle has stuck with Shimano across the range, though, and getting 105 and hydraulics at this price will keep a lot of people happy.

More than one person commented on the looks of the new Shimano RS505 shifters, and none favourably. They are rather bulbous, and look a lot less sleek than the more expensive RS685 units. I'd favour the RS685 in terms of comfort too, but I didn't really have a complaint about the RS505s fitted here – they're more than adequately comfy.

The brake callipers themselves aren't the new RS505 units, as these are only available in the new flat-mount configuration, so you get the RS685s with 140mm CenterLock rotors. There's plenty of power available and the absence of friction between the lever and the calliper makes for really excellent feel and modulation.

The wheels are nothing fancy – Alex Draw 1.7p disc brake-specific rims laced to unbranded loose-ball hubs. There's a high spoke count (32) and they're well-built, so should prove durable; certainly they stayed true during testing and gave me no problems at all. According to Alex Rims it's a tubeless-ready rim, although Evans makes no mention of this. Internal width is 17mm and the rim is 23mm deep.

It's really good to see decent tyres fitted – 25mm Continental Grand Sport Race – as this is another area where corners can sometimes be cut to meet a price point. Without mudguards, it'll take up to 28mm tyres.

The bar, stem, seatpost and saddle are all Pinnacle own-brand stuff, and undoubtedly all contribute to the overall heft of the bike, but each did its job well. The saddle, in particular, I hadn't really expected to like, but found I didn't give it a thought, even after longer rides. The bar is a 44cm (c-t-c) on the XL bike but, oddly, feels wider, I think on account of the very tight forward bends, meaning that there's a wider than normal straight section up top. It's a shallow drop with a shape that I found pretty comfortable.

In terms of aesthetics, Pinnacle has stuck with its typical approach, which is unfussy and discreet. It looks better in the flesh than in photos, with the paint a deep and slightly metallic red. The more visible welds have been partially smoothed – not to the extent of Boardman's aluminium bikes, just neatened up a bit. I suspect that if you slapped a big brand logo on this and jazzed up the graphics a bit you could sell it at £1,500 quite easily, which makes it something of a bargain.

> How does it compare? Check out 10 of the best £1000-£1500 road bikes here

Stepping up to the Dolomite 6, at £1,300, gets you an upgrade to RS685 shifters and a 105 chainset, plus a city-friendly black-on-black colour scheme. All are worthy upgrades in my book, although maybe not £300 worth – I'd argue that the Dolomite 5 is the pick of the range.

For me, one of the prime competitors for this bike is another Pinnacle – the new Arkose 3. It's a very similar spec on a heavier-duty frame, suitable for a wider range of terrain, and can take up to 40mm tyres. There's a weight penalty, but for my usage it's probably what I'd pick as a commuter. If you'll be staying on the roads, though, the Dolomite is a cracking choice and at a highly competitive price.

Verdict

Thoroughly likeable all-rounder with a killer selling point: hydraulic disc brakes on a £1,000 bike