Ridley Kanzo A GRX 400 review

Ridley has positioned its Kanzo A as a bike designed for all sorts of riding, from day-to-day commuting to gravel escapades, and it certainly looks the part.

While you can go for more road-flavoured bikes such as the Cube Attain SLX and Cannondale Synapse 1 if you want to fit mudguards or fenders, the Kanzo has bags of clearance. This enables you to run even wider tyres with mudguards, backed up by Shimano's solid gravel-specific GRX 400 groupset.

The Kanzo A's price was £1,799 when we started testing, but dropped to £1,499.99 during testing, which is both welcome and surprising during these inflationary times.

Ridley Kanzo A GRX 400 frame details

The frame is made from triple-butted aluminium, with hydroformed tubes.

The carbon-bladed fork is paired with an aluminium steerer, which contributes a little to the 10.74kg overall weight.

It has triple bosses on each blade for carrying luggage or water bottles, and this is a theme that's continued on the frame, with the usual down tube and seat tube bosses joined by a pair beneath the down tube.

There are no bento box top tube bosses, though, which you might expect on the best gravel bikes.

The Kanzo A frame does have some very neat-looking and distinctive features.

There's an arch-shaped plate where the seatstays join the seat tube and top tube, and the fronts of the chainstays have chunky plates that help to achieve a clearance of 42mm for 700c tyres (or 55mm if you're running 650b wheels).

However, both of those features, along with a generally burly-looking frame and the fact the seatstays aren't dropped (for clearance), suggest the toughness that's required for off-road riding blended with stiffness.

There's plenty of clearance for gravel mudguards. Ridley makes its own Kanzo A-specific mudguards, weighing a claimed 393g.

You can't order them directly from Ridley, but if you're buying your bike from a Ridley dealer you should be able to get them there.

There isn't a seatstay bridge and the bridge between the chainstays is not drilled for a mudguard, which will restrict the use of some third-party options. Ridley's own one screws into the rear of the seat tube.

You could use options such as the SKS Speedrocker, which offer near full-length coverage and are designed for up to 42mm-wide tyres. They clip to the bottom and top of the seatstays, and the seat tube, so should prove pretty stable too.

SKS's adaptable Veloflexx mudguards are also designed to work on bikes without a seatstay bridge, and would be another possibility that should offer very extensive coverage and protection.

Ridley Kanzo A GRX 400 geometry

It'll be no surprise that the Ridley's geometry is a bit more laid back than that of the Cube and Cannondale road bikes I tested alongside it.

The head tube angle is 71 degrees in my size 56cm frame, but the 73-degree seat angle is road-bike steep.

The biggest difference is the wheelbase, which at 1,034mm should provide enough stability for off-road and distance riding.

A lot of that is down to chainstays that are 430mm long (rather than around 415mm).

The reach is only a fraction longer than the Cannondale's and the stack 14mm higher, so it's not that extreme. While the handling will be slower, this should translate to more predictable behaviour off-road.

Ridley Kanzo A GRX 400 specifications

It's a familiar story for the Ridley Kanzo's kit, which pairs cockpit components from Forza with wheels and drivetrain from Shimano.

While some brands opt for 1x setups for their gravel machines, Ridley has gone for a 2x approach, based around Shimano GRX. It's a complete Shimano GRX 400 groupset, aside from the GRX 600 crankset.

The Kanzo A has a sub-compact 46/30T chainset and 11-36t cassette. This gives you a pleasingly low and knee-friendly 23in bottom gear, but without compromising at the other end of the gear range; you're unlikely to spin out very often on the 115in biggest gear.

While the GRX drivetrain only has 10 sprockets, I didn’t notice any ride-ruining jumps across the cassette no matter how challenging the conditions.

The tops of the GRX levers are comfortable and the braking is great, with strong stopping power and good modulation.

Shimano also supplies the wheels in the form of its tubeless-ready RS171 DBs. These have Shimano's usual qualities – well-sealed hubs and a tough build – but they're not that light and contribute to the Kanzo's overall weight of 10.74kg.

The tyres are the clincher Vittoria Terreno Drys, exhibiting the same positive qualities as the tubeless version.

I would have preferred the tubeless-ready model, opening the possibility of going tubeless without buying another set, but these worked really well on a variety of surfaces.

The near-slick central tread has a honeycomb pattern that runs smoothly on tarmac, with more aggressively treaded shoulders.

While nominally 38mm wide, these measured 40mm when mounted on the Shimano rims.

The handlebar helps with offering control when you're riding off-road.

The centre-to-centre measurement across the tops of the levers is 36cm, but the bar flares out to 50cm from drop to drop.

It means you can get into a nice little tuck when you're riding on the road, with great control off-road in the drops.

Ridley has one final trick up its sleeve for the Kanzo A in that it offers you a degree of customisation.

You can buy it as a frameset alone, or with a choice of SRAM and Shimano groupsets. You can also choose from a range of different colours – 'Inspired' colours cost you no more, while 'Spectrum' options incur a charge.

Ridley Kanzo A GRX 400 ride impressions

The Kanzo A tackled numerous surfaces well, with the geometry providing a comfortable riding position for long-distance commuting and very good control when tackling tougher surfaces.

The frame carried loads well too, so you could easily employ it for big days out, bikepacking trips and more.

But what stood out most about the Kanzo A’s ride is just how firm it is, even with tyres that measure 40mm wide.

I'd put some of that down to factors mentioned earlier: non-dropped seatstays, the plates across the seatstays and chainstays, and the stiff frame.

This is the first time I've used the Vittoria Terreno Dry tyres and was surprised by their overall performance.

They ran smoothly on tarmac and while not quite as quick as the narrower, slicker tyres on the Cube Attain SLX and Cannondale Synapse 1, I never had the sensation they were stealing much of my speed or wasting my effort.

They excelled on unsurfaced routes and trails, and were surprisingly decent on my local wet and boggy canal towpath, as well as dry grit and gravel.

Throw in an aluminium steerer and weighty wheels with the clincher tyres – having a lower-pressure tubeless setup could have helped here – and the ride became more wearing than some after a few hours in the saddle.

I wasn't a fan of the saddle either, which could have done with a touch more padding at the front.

This wasn't so noticeable when I was wearing bib tights with a plusher chamois pad. However, I feel it only added to the overall feel of firmness from the Kanzo A.

Ridley Kanzo A GRX 400 bottom line

A practical, versatile bike that should survive whatever you throw at it, the Ridley Kanzo A in this GRX 400 build would work well as a weekday commuter bike and weekend adventure machine.

However, it is quite heavy and the ride is on the firm side, even with the 700x38c tyres fitted. If Ridley had specified tubeless tyres (set up as such), this might have taken the edge off things.

My other gripe is with the saddle. I'd have preferred a plusher nose, which might have further softened the ride.