Giant’s Revolt 0 is a £1,499 bike aimed at gravel and adventure riding with an aluminium frame, carbon fork, 38mm wide tyres and a Shimano 105 groupset with hydraulic disc brakes.
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Revolt is Giant’s name for its wide tyred road bikes aimed at gravel riding, adventure bikepacking or just daily commuting if you want something a bit more rugged and versatile. The Aluxx 6061 aluminium frame looks to be very nicely made and packs three water bottle cage mounts, eyelets for mudguards and clearance for up to 45mm tyres. An Advanced Composite fork with the company’s OverDrive tapered steerer tube helps absorb vibrations up front.
Talking of vibrations, a key feature of the bike is also borrowed from the company’s endurance road bikes: D-Fuse technology. It amounts to a D-shaped alloy seatpost that offers up to 12mm of flex to provide more seated comfort when pounding over rough roads and tracks.
The Contact XF D-Fuse handlebar works with the post in also using D-shaped profile tubing to provide a bit more compliance to absorb shocks. It’s also flared and swept back to bring the hoods closer for easier reach.
To ensure the bike handles nicely when switching from road to gravel, Giant has used an endurance bike as a starting point, so slacker angles and longer wheelbase, but it has kept the chainstays short for balanced agility. The result according to Giant is “ precise handling, agility and control in all situations, from out-of-the-saddle road climbs to fast and rugged dirt road descents.”
This £1,499 model is equipped with Shimano 105 mechanical shifters and derailleurs and hydraulic disc brakes, and coupled to a Praxis Alba 2D 32/48t chainset – the reason for the Praxis chainset is because until Shimano launched GRX it didn’t offer a suitable chainset for gravel riding with smaller chainrings. The cassette is an 11/34t item so getting up steep hills should be doable with this gear range.
Everywhere else is a Giant logo, from the aforementioned Contact XR D-Fuse flared drop handlebar to the alloy seatpost and Contact saddle to the S-R2 Disc wheels with Crosscut AT 1 38mm tyres. Both wheels and tyres are tubeless ready so don’t forget to add in the price of tubeless valves and sealant to ditch the inner tubes. It would be my first task after buying the bike.
One nice detail we appreciate is the external threaded bottom bracket. Cables and hoses are internally routed inside the front triangle but pop out of an opening at the bottom bracket to continue to their respective destinations externally. We have concerns about mud and water entering the frame and also the exposed cabling, but we’ll see how we get on.
If you’re feeling a bit flush and want to spend a little more, then you might be interested in the Giant Revolt Advanced 2 because that bike has an identical specification but swaps the frame from aluminium to carbon for £500. Is the carbon frame worth the extra money or not? That’s something we look to find out when we review both these bikes, so stay tuned for our verdicts.
