In the never ending quest for the smoothest ride possible it only makes sense that your handlebars will play a big part in how smooth your ride is since that is what you are holding on to with your hands. Of course you are technically holding on to your grips (hopefully) but it's the bars underneath that are responsible for vibration damping and steering response. Yes of course your suspension and other factors make a huge difference in how your ride feels but your handlebars really do play a large part when it comes to comfort and control.
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With everything being made out of carbon fiber these days, you most likely have carbon handlebars on your bike to go along with your carbon everything else. The latest trend which has been around for some time is to use 35mm bar size rather than the old standard 31.8mm size. This allows for stiffer handlebars that compliment our stiffer frames, wheels and other components to give us more control on the trail.
OneUp has been making mountain biking parts for some time now and offer a lot of products such as their fantastic dropper seatpost, pedals, stems and so on. Now they have a great 35mm handlebar that you can add to your bike to increase your rough trail performance.
This new handlebar features their own unique oval design which is meant to offer the benefits that each of the 35mm and 31.8mm bars offer in one strong yet lightweight package. OneUp claims a 21% increase in vertical compliance (comfort) and a 28% increase in steering stiffness (responsiveness) thanks to their unique design.
The OneUp handlebar measures in at 800mm which might be a little wide for some riders, but you can always cut it down. Just be sure to do it properly to avoid damaging the bars or leaving any rough edges. As for the rise they offer 2 different configurations. You can get them with a 20mm Rise (weighing in at 220g) or a 35mm Rise (weighing in at 225g) and both come with an 8 degree back sweep and 5 degree up sweep.
I am not one to notice subtle changes when trying out new parts unless it's something more drastic like replacing the fork or shock, but I did notice a difference right away after clamping on these handlebars. I left them at 800mm which is up from my usual 780mm and they do seem a little too wide so I will probably cut them down eventually. When hitting some rocky trails at high speed they did feel better than the Box Components handlebars that I replaced them with. I made sure to use the same grips to get the most accurate comparison possible even though I had a new set of Ergon grips waiting to be installed.
The one thing I didn't like about the bars is that the alignment markings are very faint and there is no centerline marker so its hard to get the bars perfectly centered in the stem. So there was a lot of eyeballing and trial and error to get them setup properly. As for the way they look, they are pretty sleek and don't have any markings indicating what they are unless you opt for one of the colored sticker kits that you can order with the handlebars. You can get the bars right from their site or from other sites or even better yet, your local bike shop. You can check out the OneUp site for more details.
