Cube Nuroad Pro FE

If you’re looking for a single bike for road riding, light touring and tackling rougher surfaces and light gravel then the Cube Nuroad Pro FE could well be worth casting your critical gaze over. The ‘FE’ part of the names indicates that it comes fully equipped – and it’s also very well set up. Its 1x Shimano drivetrain is accompanied by excellent hydraulic brakes, and you also get a rack, full-length mudguards, a kickstand (surprisingly handy) and front and rear dynamo lights. It’s versatile – I like versatile – practical, comfortable and reasonably priced too.

Cube says that it took inspiration from its race and cyclocross bikes when it came to creating the Nuroad Pro FE. There’s room for 40mm tyres, which doesn’t seem that wide these days, but that’s with the full-length mudguards fitted. Ditch the fenders and I reckon you could fit 50mm wide tyres or at least a few millimetres more – though at the rear that would also mean losing the rack as well, as it’s integrated into the rear guard.

As established, the Nuroad Pro FE is the ‘fully equipped’ version of the Nuroad Pro, which is yours for £1,199. Cube claims the resulting bike has the ‘full complement of accessories to make it tour- or commute-ready… It’s the complete package for exploring or commuting.’

And Cube isn’t wrong.

I rode this on my old 16-mile commute, largely along the Bristol-Bath bike path, and it romped along pleasingly; not necessarily fast, but it never felt it was slowing me down and all the contact points were good.

The saddle is on the shortish side, and was just about right for me, while I’ve always liked slightly ovalised bar tops, which I feel is the best shape for comfort (for me, anyway). The grippy, rubbery bar tape was also a hit as far as I’m concerned.

I would have liked a little more flare from the bar, though. As a bike supposed to take in light gravel, all-road and touring, I think a few degrees of flare would have been a good call for the extra control. It’s not a game-changer, but in these days of gravel bikes with flared bars declining one is a slightly odd choice.

Take the bike on poorly surfaced country lanes and it’s just as capable as on the bike path. The same was true on the light grit of the Sustrans Two Tunnels route and the Kennet and Avon Canal – like the Bristol-Bath route another of my former commutes.

As specced, I wouldn’t take it over gnarlier gravel, though with different tyres it would be capable.

Frame and fork

There are very few surprises when it comes to the Cube Nuroad Pro FE’s frameset, which pairs a 6061 aluminium frame with a tapered full-carbon fork. Both the frame and fork have thru-axles to complement the power of the hydraulic braking.

As a bike that has touring within its wide-ranging remit, you won’t be surprised to see the frame has three pairs of bottle bosses, while the fork gets low-rider bosses.

There is one small hidden bonus beneath the surface: all the bottle cage threads are greased! Yes, it’s a very minor thing but I think it demonstrates that care and attention has been put into setting this bike up (though I can’t, of course, vouch for the fact that all bikes built for consumers will have this – but I hope so).

I’ve been testing bikes for around 30 years now and only those from Cube (and one other brand that I now can’t remember) have come with greased threads and I’ve tested bikes from around 130 brands in that time. So it’s a definite two thumbs up from me.

The Nuroad is longer than a road bike and on the long side for an all-road machine, putting it nearer touring bike territory – though not quite as stretched out. This is pretty much what you’d expect for a tourer-cum-commuter-cum-gravel bike.

The 588mm stack figure is quite high, so you have a quite upright riding position that puts no pressure on your back. The 1,055mm wheelbase is longer than a road bike’s – typically around a metre in a bike this size – and the 71.4° head angle is more shallow than a road bike’s. These help to deliver a bike with excellent stability.

The Nuroad takes in climbs and descents well too. The 22in bottom gear is low. Not quite as small as a full-on touring bike where you’ll need something near 20in, but noticeably lower than the bottom gear delivered by a 34x34t compact chainset. It’s low enough for you to be able to stay seated in the saddle and spin on pretty much every climb you hit.

The very, very good braking and excellent stability mean that descents are pleasingly stress-free too.

Finishing kit

Shimano Cues is the basis for the Cube’s kit, here in its 1x guise, and I think the gearing is just about spot-on for the sort of riding the Nuroad Pro FE is designed for.

The 40t chainset and 11-speed 11-50 cassette (check out the size of the bottom gear’s sprocket!) combine to deliver a 22-102in gear range.

The 102in top gear is similar to that offered by a 50×14 pairing on a 2x compact chainset. Yes, you might find yourself spinning out while hammering down a steep descent, but riding in this gear at a cadence of 100, you’ll be doing about 38km/h (23.5mph). I don’t know about you, but that’s a good deal faster than I’m usually going on the flat, especially with a couple of bulging panniers.

And you don’t need to worry about the chain unshipping on the single ring, even though the Nuroad lacks any form of chainguard or chainchecker. I tried my very best to get it to jump off with some deliberately ugly and clunky gear changes, back-pedalling, the lot. Nothing I did got it to misbehave. I guess this is down to Shimano’s ‘Dynamic Chain Engagement’ doing its job. This boils down to teeth that are taller and with a hooked leading edge, which are designed for ‘superior chain retention’ and a ‘lower driving sound’.

While the chain retention was indeed very good, there was a little more noise in the lower few gears (the bigger sprockets), though not enough to be annoying.

Braking from the Shimano Cues hydraulic discs is excellent, with the 180mm rotors helping you to make the most of the power. They were pleasingly quiet too, even in the rain.

The wheelset majors on toughness and durability rather than low weight, which is fine by me (I remember being light; it was a while ago). The tubeless-ready rims have a modern 25mm inner rim width, which means you can go with much wider rubber if you choose to.

That said, the entry-level Schwalbe tyres it came with stood up to a month of testing and still looked pretty much perfect. They’re not perhaps the most supple in the world, but with 40mm of rubber they still offered sufficient comfort with the aluminium frame, as well as providing plenty of grip on looser surfaces. If I was going further afield or tackling more challenging surfaces I’d consider upgrading the tyres, but for my type of riding they were ideal.

This bike gets pretty much the full set of extras, and they all proved very welcome. A kickstand may seem like an unnecessary extravagance but when you’re carrying a fair bit of kit, which this bike is designed for, it actually comes in very, very handy. Again, thumbs up.

And while not often seen on British-designed bikes, the Nuroad also comes with dynamo-powered front and rear lights. This system has little in common with the Sanyo Dynapower on my 1980s Raleigh that relied on achieving friction between the dynamo wheel and the rear tyre tread. It is a front hub setup that, yep, works in the rain as well as it does in the dry. Handy, that.

The front light isn’t as powerful as even quite modestly priced rechargeable LED systems, but the nice white beam was sufficient for urban riding under street lights, though I added extra illumination for the unlit Bristol to Bath cycle path.

Both lights stay lit for a while when you stop pedalling, so you don’t suddenly vanish at traffic lights – precisely when you need to be visible.

The full-length mudguards are well integrated into the overall look of the bike, with the rear guard forming part of a tough and solid all-in-one design with the ACID Gravel rear rack.

The rack may look under-supported, as it appears to only be connected to the frame at the bottom of the seatstays, but there’s a solid metal strut under the mudguard that connects to the bridge at the top of the seatstays.

The downside of the design is that the rack doesn’t have a top plate, so it isn’t suitable for a top-mounted bag. It did however prove compatible with the three different panniers I tried it with.

The bike also gets a neat-looking bell, though I do feel it could have been a little louder, as it didn’t match the volume of my go-to Knog Oi Classic.

Overall, I think the real strength of the Cube Nuroad Pro FE is in its versatility. You’re not going to be racing on it or achieving any PBs, nor will you be tackling especially challenging gravel (though with a different bar and tyres you could be more adventurous).

But this bike has pretty much all the points in between covered. Long commutes over poor surfaces; big days out, including on moderate unsurfaced routes; a weekend – or longer – away touring – this’ll have you covered.

It may not be a luxury choice, but if you don’t want a shed full of bikes for very niche requirements, I think this makes a very, very good option.

The competition

We haven’t reviewed that many direct competitors, though a number of our test bikes cover some of the same ground.

The £1,600 Kinesis 4S Tiagra is a tarmac-friendly machine with predictable handling. It comes with mudguards and weighs just 10.4kg but lacks the character of its predecessors.

The Ribble AllRoad AL costs £1,449 with Tiagra and is the successor to the Ribble Endurance we tested a few years ago. It’s a bit more road-based than the Cube but is still pretty versatile.

The steel Cinelli Hobootleg is more of a tourer but is comfortable and well equipped, though the canti brakes look very old school these days.

Perhaps the most direct competitors are from Boardman Bikes and Trek.

At £1,200 the aluminium Boardman ADV 8.9 is a fair bit lighter than the Cube, but as outlined further up, if you were to fit guards, rack and kickstand the difference would be a good deal less.

The Trek Checkpoint ALR 3 Gen 3 costs £1,400, weighs 10.4kg and is a Shimano Cues-equipped adventure bike that comes set up as tubeless.

> Best road bikes under £2,000 — our pick of the best road bikes balancing performance and value

Overall

The Cube Nuroad Pro FE certainly lives up to its ‘fully equipped’ description and if you’re looking for just one bike for commuting, fitness riding, light touring and gravel riding, well, this has you covered.

Its long-distance comfort is very good, the gearing covers nearly all bases and the Shimano drivetrain and braking are excellent. It’s good over poor surfaces and canal towpaths, so makes a good year-round option too, while the rear rack, guards, dynamo and kickstand mean it’s good to go from day one.