Merida Silex 300

The Merida Silex 300 is a relatively low-cost entry into the world of gravel and adventure riding. Equipped with a plethora of mounts for racks and cages, able to take a 44mm 700C tyre, dropper-post-friendly and with handling designed to take on the rough stuff, it's a lot of fun off-road. Hit the tarmac with slick tyres and it fair hoofs along, too. For the money it's a great package.

• Pros: Bombproof drivetrain, lots of load-lugging options, maintenance-friendly, great handling
• Cons: Very upright position won't appeal to all, Spyre cable discs asking for an upgrade, press-fit BB creaking

The Silex 300 sits one up from the bottom of Merida's Silex range and is its cheapest 1x bike, with the options either side both being Shimano 2x drivetrains. You need to spend another £500 to get 1x (still Apex) with hydro brakes – quite a jump. Earlier, Stu really liked the carbon Silex 9000 and Jim gave the alloy-framed Ultegra 700 9/10. Both are discontinued for 2019, replaced by lower-spec models that retain the Silex signature frame, which is really the talking point here. First, though, how does it ride?

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After swapping out the 35mm Maxxis tyres for 38mm Compass Steilacoombs, the bike went from sketchy and unpredictable off tarmac to surefooted, safe at speed and confidence-inspiring through technical stuff.

Shifting was as sure as SRAM Apex 1x always is – up, down, in rough or smooth, under load or easy, it just worked without grumble or hunting for a gear, and needed no adjustment over several months of riding. The roller clutch did its magic, with not a single decibel of chainslap apparent even in the smallest sprocket, bombing gravel roads at maximum speed. The ability to lock the jockey wheel cage open for rear wheel removal makes wheel swaps a faff-free breeze, as it gets the mech totally out of the way from the cassette, meaning you can focus on aligning the rotor with the calliper.

Yes, it's a very upright riding position – I would normally have another 40mm of stem ahead of me, putting the front axle halfway along the stem instead of out beyond the faceplate when looking down. The mildly flared compact bar also affects this, with the point where you attach the hoods being only about 60mm out from the centre of the bar in the stem clamp – about 30mm shorter than my usual bars. After an hour or so of trying to be aero with a bar closer than normal, my triceps gave up the ghost, so I sat back and enjoyed the ride instead.

I could have possibly gone to an XL frame with my 6ft height and stupidly long arms, but the Large did very well. Stack and reach figures (687mm and 498mm as I make them, BB centre to handlebar centre) with stem slammed were both within 10mm of my go-to disc bike, a Merida Ride 5000 Disc also in Large. There's 25mm of spacers to play with should you want a bit more handlebar height.

The slightly steeper 74-degree seat tube angle on the Silex adds 14mm of forwardness compared with my Ride 5000, meaning between the two bikes and notwithstanding the handlebar reach to the hoods, they're pretty much the same. But the two degrees off the head tube definitely makes for a more forgiving, less twitchy ride on the Silex.

I spent most of the review period exploring a new area of forestry, highland estate and windfarm criss-crossed with long gravel roads – with a 30-minute stretch on tarmac and estate roads to get there. Across this varied terrain, including trail-free mossy forest firebreaks, rooty descents and leaf-strewn riverside trails, the Silex 300 never skipped a beat.

Riding several miles of newly made estate road, then a few more of knee-deep heather and deer tracks, I thought that with wider tyres this would be even easier. With a 44T chainring and 11-42 cassette, the lowest 44x42 gear suited the toughest of climbs, an 8% ascent of 500m passing without note except for a few really steep pitches where the long head tube and slammed-backwards saddle warranted leaning forwards out of the saddle to keep the front wheel down.

And with 44x11 at the fast end I never wanted for higher gears – at 90rpm you're doing 47kph and serious wind resistance is piling up, so just tuck in and enjoy.

In twisty singletrack the Silex did well, with the short chainstays getting round tight corners; you could certainly race cyclo-cross on it with no hassle and likely do quite well, limited shoulder room for running with the bike notwithstanding. Yes, the front end isn't as agile as an out-and-out race machine, but there needs to be a balance.

Spending more than a few hours on frost-hardened snow run-through with properly-frozen vehicle tracks, the Silex 300 didn't kill me, not even once. That predictable handling really does make for a fun bike to ride through sketchy stuff.

The frame

When I shared first photos of the Silex 300, comments ranged from 'Is it made of spare tubes left over from other bikes?' to 'Could've just got a mountain bike'. Hardly surprising, as Merida took inspiration from the long top tube/short stem mountain bike world for the Silex range.

I'll spare you the number-word soup that most geometry discussions descend into, suffice to say that it just works. Overall, I was able to get the saddle-nose-to-handlebar distance the same as my other bikes, but the shorter stem made for quicker handling off-road in the filth that the Silex beckons you to take on.

Short, almost cyclo-cross-length chainstays help with nippy handling in amongst trees, and the slacker-than-roadie head tube and commensurate longish wheelbase keep things stable at speed on fast gravel blasts. The sloping top tube meant I had a decent 200mm of exposed seatpost to aid comfort.

That head tube is a standout love it/hate it feature mind – at 220mm on the Large test frame it's a whopper, a good 50mm longer than that on my racy bike. But a gravelly-adventure bike is all about taking in the views, not out-and-out aero speed requiring the flexibility of a cat. You get three spacers – 10, 9 and 6mm – adding up to 25mm-worth of stem adjustment.

You get threaded mudguard mounts in the fork crown and both dropouts, downwards-facing in the case of the fork. There's a threaded rear mudguard boss in the chainstay bridge, and an unthreaded 5mm hole in the seatstay bridge.

The fork has low-rider/cage side bosses, and rounding out storage the frame has three sets of bottle bosses set fairly low to aid framebag clearance and handling. There's a double clamp cut in the seat tube, at either side so as to be out of the way of tyre spray – nice touch.

The seat tube is a dropper-post-friendly 30.9mm, but while you could enter the top tube via the redundant front mech cable port, there's no obvious provision for internally-routing the cable at the BB – a real miss on a 1x bike where a dropper could be connected to a traditional left-hand shifter. Where the cables exit the down tube it looks like there could be a way to route an internal dropper post above the BB once removed, but I didn't try this.

Merida has gone with a BB-86 press-fit bottom bracket, to which I will rail, 'WHY?' Maintenance-wise the Silex is sorted, with its internally routed down tube opening at the BB shell for ease of cabling – the very best of both worlds. But a press-fit BB? Surely threaded external bearings make more sense, especially for affordable bikes designed for a good thrashing in the muck. All was good for a few months, then a persistent creak emerged definitely related to the BB. Were it my bike I'd be reaching for the Loctite 609, or asking the seller to; this sort of thing should not be an issue in 2019.

The BB shell itself is drilled for a front mech cable guide and there's an indent in the seat tube for a front mech, should you wish to go double.

Spec and finishing kit

The original Maxxis Razzo tyres were the first things to go. At 35mm they are clearly well under-rated for what the Silex is capable of when properly shod, and while fine rolling on tarmac, lean into a hard corner and the shoulder tread would start to squirm – beware at speed.

After a few initial blasts to get to grips – or lack thereof off-road – I swapped them out for the Most Excellent Compass Steilacoom 38mm rubber.

The Merida Comp 17mm rims are functional if a bit weighty paired with the VP hubs, and set up tubeless with a single layer of tape and valve. Inflating the Compass tyres was hassle-free, pointing to a well-dimensioned rim bed. And – joy – both wheels are 12mm thru-axles, meaning you can run a spare set of wheels with slicks, and swap them out in seconds. This axle design is one of the best I've seen yet, where you just screw in until tight, then pull the spring-loaded lever out off a splined shaft and position at your preferred angle.

The TRP Spyre mechanical disc brakes are functional enough, and during the review period – including some fairly hairy fast descending at the edge of the Steilacooms' traction – I never felt I needed to go into the drops for more braking power. Use the drops for faster, more aero handling, yes, but two fingers off the hoods was enough to haul me up sharpish.

That said, on longer descents I felt a bit of hand fatigue, so you may want to look at an upgrade to the excellent TRP Hy/Rd callipers at some stage.

The single-run Jagwire cables are sealed with a rubber boot, to give some protection and longevity to the cable outer. Both the brake and shift cables are held under the stays by cable-ties – a perfectly good solution and very home-mechanic-friendly.

The finishing kit is all Merida's own Comp line. Unusually for a gravel/adventure-orientated bike, Merida has specced the very mildly flared bar, measuring 440mm at the drops and 400 at the hoods. It sweeps back ever so slightly and is broad across the tops, to aid grip and wrist comfort when hammering over corrugations. Bar tape is nice and thick, and plenty grippy.

Value and conclusion

Overall, the Silex 300 is a great package. The foibles of lack of dropper post routing and threaded BB are liveable-with, albeit frustrating given how easily they could be added at time of manufacture. The ability to fit fat tyres and swap wheels quickly makes for a jack-of-all-trades approach, and adding racks/bags/cages opens up new horizons.

You need to spend an extra £500 to get the same Apex 1x with hydro brakes on the Silex 600, which shares the same frame, fork and many other components. I find this price odd as the difference at RRP between Apex 1x11 hydro and mechanical is about £100, and there's less than 200g between the bikes even with a nicer-but-still average wheelset on the 600. My move would be to buy the 300, sell the Spyres new, find a pair of TRP Hy/Rds on eBay new for around £100 and enjoy a significantly improved stopping experience, with the ability to replace brake cables easily each year. Or, strip the mechanical levers/callipers at new, bung them on eBay and find someone selling a set of Apex 11-speed hydro levers/brakes – likely around £200 used.

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As for other brands, a logical comparison would be the Whyte Glencoe that Dave really liked, a £1,300 alloy-frame-and-forked adventure bike also packing Apex 1x11, but managing to get TRP Hy/Rd hydraulic callipers into the parts mix, and flat mounts too should you want to go full-Apex hydro in future. The Glencoe comes with 650B wheels and 12mm thru-axles from the outset, and – joy! – a BSA external bottom bracket. At 11.2kg there's a bit more pork in there someplace, 350g in extra 650B rubber for sure, 100g extra in the brakes and the rest probably in the alloy fork. The Glencoe doesn't get fork cage mounts, mind, but it looks a close run thing between the two bikes; everything Dave liked about the Glencoe's handling, I can see in the Silex 300.

They may look odd, and take a bit of getting used to, and suffer a few odd spec decisions, but all in all I welcome our new affordable long top tube/short stem mixed-surface masters.

Verdict

A great bike for fanging about on or off road, with the simplicity and light weight of 1x