Boardman SLR 8.6

The Boardman SLR 8.6 is one of the very best entry-level bikes around. It's light for the price, has a very good range of gearing – and a lively and comfortable ride. The components are well chosen, mudguard and rear rack fittings add real-world practicality, and it's one of the least expensive bikes out there I'd wholeheartedly recommend.

Others you might want to consider are listed in our guide to the best road bikes under £1,000.

Ride

If you're expecting a super-sedate ride from the Boardman, think again, it's actually a surprisingly snappy little number. The weight is pretty good for the price. Okay, at around 10kg you're not going to be flying up hills (well, I'm not anyway) but it's not going to hold you back on the flat when you've got up to speed.

Even with 25mm tyres the Boardman offers enough comfort on poor roads (though I'd still go for full-fat 28mm tyres given the chance) and it even tackled a few miles through woods and on canal towpaths. The tyres aren't really designed for this, but along with the bike they can cope with short forays on moderate unsurfaced routes.

The skinny stays really do their job of keeping things comfortable through the rear end, and I like the Boardman SLR saddle, which is a lot more comfortable than is often the case on bikes at this sort of price.

The handlebar is 40cm wide, which is a couple of centimetres narrower than you'll find on most bikes of this size, which adds to the Boardman's lively feel. It offers good control, with 75mm of reach and 120mm of drop, and it's a shape that suits my quite small hands very well.

There is a little bit of flex from the wheels – they only have 28 spokes each – but not enough to be disconcerting.

I found the Boardman ideal for long, steady-state rides, and it proved an excellent partner on my former 16-mile commute largely along the Bristol-Bath bike path, but once you've got it up to speed you can cruise comfortably on this all day. Yes, you will feel the biggest road bumps and potholes through the aluminium frame and those quite narrow tyres, but you won't feel beaten up as the miles tick along.

There's no sense that the frameset lacks efficiency – put the hammer down and you'll notice some flex from the wheels, but there's none evident from the Boardman's chunky aluminium frame, even with its skinny bottom bracket spindle. The result is an enjoyable and very rewarding ride, and with the bike's ability to take mudguards, it would make a handy year-round trainer too.

If there's anything that's holding back the Boardman it's the brakes, which just don't offer the immediate bite that you want, though replacing the brake blocks will improve this (my own bike has the same callipers but better cartridge blocks – they make a difference). They will stop you, but you'll be braking a little earlier and with more effort than you would if you were using hydraulic discs.

Frame and fork

It's pretty much what you'd expect for a bike at this price – an aluminium frame with a carbon fork – but both are at the upper end of what you usually see at £650. The frame is made from triple-butted 6061 aluminium, while the fork is full carbon.

Triple butting means the frame tubes are constructed from aluminium that has walls of three different thicknesses – thinner in the middle where less strength is needed, thickest at the ends where they're welded and where the greatest strength is required. It keeps the weight low and the strength high, which frankly is the way round you want it!

A full-carbon fork is lighter than a carbon fork with an aluminium steerer, which is another win that contributes to keeping the weight down to a reasonable amount.

Both the frame and fork are well finished too, with very smooth 'hidden' welds around the head tube/top tube/down tube junction and the seat tube/top tube area.

Only the chunky welds around the bottom bracket show that there is an aluminium frame underneath what I think is a good-looking-in-an-understated-way sort of paint job.

There's no fancy internal cable routing, which for me on a budget bike is a bit of a win – though your mileage may vary. Yes, the cables are open to the elements and may need replacing sooner than internally routed cabling, but even with my so-so spannering skills I can do most of the fixing and fettling without recourse to a professional mechanic.

Another very big plus for me is that both the frame and fork have mudguard fittings. After all, this is a bike that could very well be brought in to year-round commuting duties or serve as a winter trainer, keeping your best bike out of the worst of the elements.

They're standard mudguard fittings too, so there'll be no messing around trying to get the stays to fit. Both the frame and fork have clearance for 28mm tyres beneath the deep-drop brakes, though I reckon you might be able to squeeze in a millimetre or two more.

A final further bonus is that the seatstays have fittings for a rear rack, so you can carry panniers or a beam bag on your commute, or load up with a bit of shopping. Yep, it's a practical bike, and I like practicality.

The frame is available in just four sizes, which is fewer than offered by some of its main competitors. And while Boardman's size guide suggests small is the correct frame size for me, I find the medium is the better fit (the same is also true for Canyon bikes), so do check the geometry tables carefully.

The geometry is actually a little more aggressive than you might expect – it's not race-bike aggressive, but with a 72.5-degree head angle and 73.5-degree seat angle it's not in laid-back endurance bike territory either.

If you take the Trek Domane AL Rim frame with the same size head tube – 160mm – the Boardman's head tube angle is higher, the 384mm reach a centimetre longer, the 568mm stack a little lower. Comparisons are made harder by the Trek coming in eight sizes, but it does show that the Boardman has quite lively riding ambitions.

Finishing kit

This Boardman is a 650-quid bike so don't expect miracles when it comes to the finishing kit. But with that important proviso in mind, I think that Boardman has done a very decent job of decking out what is very much an entry-level bike.

First off, you get componentry based around Shimano's 8-speed Claris groupset. There are a few deviations here and there, but no dramatic or unwarranted shortcuts.

And while you only get eight ratios, you do get vastly different – and very much improved – gearing compared with a road bike from a dozen years ago, let alone that of the Raleigh Clubman I grew up with, which featured a 42x24 bottom gear. Tens of thousands of miles riding that might just be the reason my knees aren't what they were... The Boardman has a near 1:1 ratio bottom gear that the younger me could only dream of.

The drivetrain consists of a 50/34-tooth FSA chainset and an 11-32 8-speed Shimano cassette to go with the Shimano Claris levers and and mechs. The result is a very impressive 28-120in gear range (my old Raleigh? 46-106in! My poor knees!), which should be sufficient at both ends of the spectrum unless you're riding daily in the Alps or perhaps the Pennines.

Okay, there's an inevitable trade-off when you have a wide range of gears and only eight ratios to play with, and that's some biggish gaps at the lower end of things, gaps of four teeth between the sixth and seventh gears and the seventh and eighth.

Is this a trade-off worth making? Absolutely, yes, if you value your knees. Frankly, I'd have gone the whole hog and specced the 11-34 cassette for a full-on 1:1 ratio bottom gear (the resulting bottom gear would be 26in rather than 28in, which isn't a huge advantage but it is around 7% lower, and where would be without marginal gains?), but this is the next best thing.

You can forget any form of disc brakes on most bikes at this price, let alone hydraulic; the excellent £1,200 Boardman ADV 8.9 is about the cheapest drop bar bike with a hydraulic setup.

The SLR 8.6 has super-simple calliper brakes in the form of Tektro R315s, a deep-drop design to cope with having to work with mudguards. They're okay stoppers without being inspiring, but the design has worked for decades and, once again, they are very easy even for the modestly competent home mechanic to adjust.

They are a basic non-cartridge design, though, so to make the most of your braking I'd recommend upgrading to a cartridge design for better power and control. Upgrading to Shimano 105 brake pads will cost you about £20 and SwissStop brake pads come in at a similar amount. It's a quick, simple and reasonably inexpensive upgrade, and one worth doing. They'll give a difference you'll notice.

The same is probably true of the tyres, though I'd wait until the quite basic Vittorias fitted needed replacing. I'd go up to 28mm rubber, too, perhaps something like the Pirelli P Zero Race 4s.

Boardman mentions the SLR 8.6's maximum 28mm tyre width, so it surprises me that it's still speccing 25mm tyres while pretty much everybody else is going up to 28mm for the extra comfort with no loss in performance. I've gone wider on my own Boardman, which has the same wheelset, and I feel it's a change worth making.

The Pirelli tyres might also help with one of the issues I found with the Boardman – the tyre and rim combo made fitting tyres very hard indeed. I suffered one puncture during testing (thanks to the weed-clearing crew on the Bristol-Bath bike path throwing ballast all over the surface) and needed help from a fellow puncture-sufferer to get the Vittoria back on the rim, as the tyre proved a very tight fit.

Value

At £650, the Boardman SLR 8.6 is right up there when it comes to value.

The aluminium Trek Domane AL2 Rim also has mudguard fittings and 8-speed Shimano Claris gearing with an 11-32 range, but it will cost you £750 – though it does come with 28mm tyres and in an impressive eight sizes from 47-62cm.

The Claris and FSA-equipped Giant Contend 2 – the cheapest in the Contend line-up – is more still at £849. But you do get a wider-ranging 11-34 cassette (the Trek has 11-32) and its 28mm tyres actually measure 30mm.

Ash really liked the Triban RC 520 Disc but it's now £899.99 compared with the £729 it was when he tested it in 2020, and it's also lost its Shimano 105 in favour of MicroShift. That said, its TRP hybrid mechanical-hydraulic brakes still mean you are getting a hell of a lot of bang for your buck.

Closer in price is the Vitus Razor VR Road Bike that comes in at £699.99, with MicroShift gearing and Tektro R317 dual pivot brakes (Stu rated the Razor Disc Claris highly when he tested it in 2022), but as a Wiggle brand it's presently not available. This situation may change of course. Just carry on reading the runes...

Conclusion

Looking for a road bike but don't want to spend a fortune? The Boardman SLR 8.6 might be exactly what you're looking for. The ride is rewarding, lively and comfortable – helped by a good saddle and quality bar tape; I got on very well with both – and rack and mudguard fittings boost its day-to-day practicality. The gearing range is excellent and the components generally well chosen, though the brakes could be better and the tyres are a very tight fit.

Verdict

Comfortable, lively ride, an excellent gear range and well-chosen components – one of the best entry-level bikes you can buy