Since your grips are what you are holding on to when riding your bike it makes sense that you would want a pair that are comfortable, grippy and provide you with some cushioning or support when riding on the rough stuff. Of course there are other factors that affect your ride like your handlebars and suspension, so you need to take all of that into account. But since grips are easy to swap out and usually pretty inexpensive, it's a good place to start when you want to improve the comfort of your ride. |
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There are many (and I mean many) grips out there to choose from and they vary from your basic cheaper yet still very effective ODI Rouge to the more high tech RevGrips and its hard to pick one based on how it looks or how great the manufacturer says their grips are.
Ergon has been making bike grips for some time and have put a lot of research into their products and have many grip styles to choose from. If you like fatter grips or have larger hands then you might want to check out their GA2 Fat Grips that have a larger circumference and claim to offer more damping than your average grip. But from what we have found, you don't need to have large hands to be able to take advantage of what these grips have to offer.
Ergon also has the regular GA2 grips if you want some grips that are not as "fat" and as you can see from the image below from their website that there is a bit of difference between the two. You can even use their grip selector\calculator to see what grips they recommend for you.
The GA2 Fat Grips are also tapered and clamp on your bars only at the inside position rather than both ends. They have replaceable end caps as well so if you scrape your bars on something like a tree or the ground and want to make things look like new again then its easy to do so.
When installing the grips you can rotate them into different positions to see what seems the most comfortable to you. There are degree markers on the end of the grip that you can use to make sure that both grips are at the same position on your handlebars.
As for how they perform, they are fairly comfortable and do provide some damping but its one of those things where one person might notice a difference while another might not just like with many mountain bike components or adjustments. Since they are advertised as fat you would think they would be very thick, but I think they should be a little thicker to earn the name Fat so if you like super squishy grips then they might not be thick enough for your liking. For the price you can't beat the ODI Rouge for a thick and sticky grip.
They are definitely a high quality product and are even made in Germany so that should give them some credit in that regard. As for the price they are not cheap but not a bank breaker as well. You can get them for around $25-30 depending on where you get them and what color you order. You can get them in black, red or blue. You can check them out on their website as well as all the other grips that they offer.
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