Fara Cycling F/Gravel Apex XPLR AXS ´24 gravel bike review (2024)

Overall

Quality

Performance

Value

Fara CycingF/Gravel Apex XPLR AXS ´24 Is a fast (and stiff) gravel bike with a large tyre capacity and some really neat bikepacking bag attachment solutions. It’s bang up to date with the latest hidden cable craze with a headset cable entry port and SRAM’s XPLR AXS groupsetcreating a very smart, clean-lookingand easy-to-wipe-down bike. It might not be the most comfortable gravel bike but, heck, it is fast, even standing still.​

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Fara Cycling F/Gravel Apex XPLR AXS ´24 - Technical details

Fara is an Oslo-based bike company with a physical store operating a direct-to-consumer business model (for those outside of Oslo) where the consumer can choose between two options when buying their own personal Fara.

Option 1 is to spec up your bike from a base frameset from a choice of five colours, Campagnolo,SRAM or Shimano GRX groupsetsand various finishing kit and wheel options. This option has a price and lead time calculator on the website to show how long and how much it will cost. It’s a great tool.

Option 2 is the Ride-Ready bikes that have been specced by Fara, apart from a reduced colour option of black or white. All you have to do is pick the size that you believe is correct using your knowledge or a very simple height-related sizing chart. If you are unsure or between sizes you can always talk to Fara by booking a session with a salesperson from Fara or, even better, if you fancy a little holiday, organising a trip to Oslo (highly recommended for multiple reasons)for a test ride.

Unlike a local shop or even some other internet brands, you cannot change the tyres, upgrade the wheels or swap the seat or bar widthor tape for your own choice with Trail-ready bikes. The spec is fixedbut, in exchange, you get the advantage of Fara’s buying power and the resultant reduced price and quicker lead time for a complete bike.

The bike pictured here isthe Ride-Ready adventure bike in its Apex XPLR AXS’24 for just £3,292.

Farahas designed the F/Gravel so that the control cables can be almost completely hidden. Obviously with a SRAM ApexAXS set-up (see Aaron’s review of the SRAM Apec Eaglemechanical groupset) there are no gear cables anywaybut Fara has incorporated a ported headset design where both the front and rear brake cable disappear straight into the headset bearing top cap and are threaded either through the frame to the rear brake or through the fork steerer and out of the lower leg for the front brake. It’s a good-looking setup.

The F/Gravel geometry is pretty racy for a gravel adventure bike despite Fara’s claims of a go-anywhere design it has a head tube angle of 72-degrees and a seat post angle of 73-degrees, it’s certainly nearer many road bikes than the current crop of adventure gravel bikes.

Those racing genes shine through with its longeffective top tube of 576mm on the 56-size bike, areach of 396mm and a stack of 590mm. A small concession to being more comfortable is that it has a head tube length of 159mm and the bike comes fitted with 25mm of spacers underneath the Ritchey stem. So it's not completely head down and charge.

The frame and fork are both made from Toray carbon fibre with various grades being used to achieve the performanceFara's designerswanted to create. The frame has a claimed weight of 1,050g (short of stripping the bike, which was not possible in the time Ihad it)I am unable to check that. Thiscomplete bike weighs in at 9.3kg.

After the clean aesthetic has sunken in the next stand-out feature, especially on this off-white coloured frame is the large flat black water bottle mounting plate on the downtube. Being made of carbon fibre, Fara has opted to emulate a lot of mountain bike brands and offer a storage hatch in the frame which can be accessed via a rubber clip. Stuffed up inside the frame is a fabric sausage bag (think school pencil case) with a pull-loop capable of holding a range of spares or tools or whatever you can squeeze in it.

Fara has adapted its seatpost and the inside of the main frame tube with multiplebolt holes for its own direct-mount bike packing systemavailable on the webshop. The frame mount idea is not new and other brands have been doing it like this for a while, but the seat post option is new to me. The seatpack (and frame) uses Fidlock attachments bolted directly into the rear of the seatpost thus avoiding a strap and keeping that clean look. All cargo mounts on the frame, fork legsand seat post have a max weight limit of 5kg should you be mad enough to want to carry that much kit.

The seatstays are very dropped and there is no mudguard brace even though there are mudguard eyelets by the rear dropout (and forks). If you want to run mudguards a brace is provided in the extras bag that just needs bolting on. That fabric extras bag is stuffed full of a range of cable port plugs, mountingbolts, spare front mech hangers and a torq tool for assembly which is a nice touch.

The F/Gravel also has a top tube bag mount, a lower downtube mount for a third bottle or caddy, two standard bottle mounts inside the main triangle and a neat little polished anti-chainstay scuff plate between the chainring and frame.

Fara offers a limited lifetime warranty for the frame and the forks for the first owner.

Fara Cycling F/Gravel Apex XPLR AXS ´24 - Specification

This Ride-Ready F/Gravel is supplied with a SRAM Apex XPLR AXS groupset which is the perfect companion for that super clean look.Shifting and braking duties are provided by SRAM's newApex 12-speedshifters.

Fara has specced a 40T chainring on Apex cranks spinning smoothly in a Token T47mm bottom bracket paired with an 11-44T Cassette on an HG11 freehub. And, yep, you guessed it an Apex AXS rear mech performs the shifting duties. This setup provides a crawler gear ratio of 0.91 which is not as low as the MicroshiftSword's 0.83 but it is perfectly suitable for this bike.It's good to see thatT47 threaded bottom bracket which shouldprevent any worry about press-fit creaking two months down the road.

Brakes were set up Euro style on this test bike and it’s not an easy switch around considering the integrated set-up but the PR agency assures me that when a UK order is placed it triggers an automatic e-mail from customer support requesting which way you would like your brakes set up.

Handlebars and stem are both from Ritchey with 42cm wide Butano V2 WCS bar (44cm option on the next size up) held in place by a Ritchey comp four-axis 100mm stem. Handlebar tape is Fara’s silicone version in matt black with Fara Logo embossed. The Butano bar has a flare of 18-degrees and a slight 5-degree back sweep as well as having an extended flat top section for comfort and aero gains.

Fara uses its own 27.2mm carbon seatpost with a two-flex Zone section to provide a little more comfort for those washboard gravel tracks. The seatpost has a small threaded mounting hole on the rear for the Fara integrated Saddle Pack.

The saddle is a Fizik Argo X5 with Kium rails and not such a bad perch to sit and watch the world roll by.

Wheels are Fulcrum’s Rapid Red 900 700c DB wheelset which is a model only available to bike manufacturers and weighs in at roughly1,950g. Both wheels feature 28 spokes front and rear and offer a 22mm internal rim width and are ideal for tyre widths between 28-45mm.

The rims are pre-taped and ready for a tubeless setup but come fitted with tubes. Tyres are the ever-popular Panaracer Gravel King SK+ 700 x 43mm. The '+' symbol is a very welcome addition as it denotes an extra level of protection in the tyre’s construction to help prevent punctures.

What else does Fara offer? When you purchase a Fara you can buy a selection of accessories to match your bike, some of which are rather excellent. I didn’t test any of these apart from the very useful Torque Wrench Karmic 4Nmwith 3/4/5/6mm bits for assembly purposes.

Fara Cycling F/Gravel Apex XPLR AXS ´24 - Performance

The SRAM Apex XPLR AXS groupset shifted almost faultlessly up and down the block throughout the horrendous filth that the wettest December and January Wiltshire can remember. That’s a tribute to the decades of engineering and all-weather and testing that goes into each SRAM drivetrain launch and the trickle-down effect from years of high-level testing.

Almost faultlessly I say, as I did have the two different occasions when the shifters stopped working. After checking everything was paired with the SRAM AXS app on my phone, which it was, and it still didn’t work, I unplugged the mech battery and reinstalled it andI was back in action again without issue. I've no idea what happened, the bike was left leaning on its own in view with no one near it. Still, not a difficult fix but slightly frustrating in the cold.

The brakes on the other hand are the noisest brakes I’ve tested for a while. From the first ride, they squealed and that's an understatement. After cleaning rotors and pads with disc brake cleaner they improved but quickly reverted to squealing especially in low-speed situations where you might not want to frighten horses and other trail users. On steep descents, the squeal died and the performance was spot on. The performance was good regardless of the noise – it’s just you don’t like using them when they are that noisy. I’m sure replacement pads could solve that issue, it's just a shame that they are that noisy from the off. Maybe that first ride was the culprit.

Fara describes the F/Gravel as itsgo-anywhere, ride-anything adventure gravel bike but, while it is excellent in some areas, it falls short of this wide remit for me. Depending on what you are used to riding and just as importantly where you do your gravel riding the Fara will feel quite different.

If you are coming to the gravel scene from a road riding background or you are looking to supplement your road riding with some smooth fast gravel tracks, byways and poor road surfaces then the Fara will excel as it is super fast off the line and fun to flick in and out of smooth corners.

That road-based geometry and stiff carbon front end make it a complete weapon in terms of its attacking position and feedback through the bars. You can feel exactly what is going on under the front tyre and can adjust your line instantly making light work of the changeable gravel/broken concrete perimeter trail.The fork feels solid and stiff out-of-the-saddle sprints on the flat gravel or uphill and it’s no slouch on the climbs either, quite the opposite, with fantastic power transfer via the cranks and that threaded (and creak-free) T47 bottom bracket. There was no noticeable flex in the bottom bracket area when pushing hard out of the saddle on the climbs around the Plain and I produced some of the best results on the steepest sections of the smoother climbs.

Conversely, if your history is more mountain biking and you’re looking for something faster to blast around the gravel with regular forays onto technical trails with rough surfaces and off-camber twisty descents then that F/Gravel’s steep head angle will hamper your enjoyment by making everything feel a little too twitchy and direct and making it difficult for you to relax and just enjoy the adventure the trail is taking you on.

The stiff front end that works so well on smoother surfaces starts to jar on the longer rutted sections of graded gravel and the ride feel can become fatiguing. It is certainly much more tiring than the 853 steel Windover Bostal I reviewed last year which glided over the same surfaces.

I think some of that lack of front-end comfort can be attributed to the fork and its overall stiffness. I don’t want to see any fork shuffle or flutterbut it felt remarkably hard and unforgiving blasting the gravel washboard and it was fatiguing on long rides where you’re not going “full-gas” and just looking to enjoy yourself.

The rear of the F/Gravel, with its heavily dropped seat stays designed to swallow up the sharp shocks and vibrations from the rear wheel axle (as well as save a few aero watts), delivers quite a different ride feel to the front of the bike. Whether this is just due to the frame design dampening the surface imperfections, the Fara 2-flex Zone seatpost from preventing the shock from passing up to your backsideor the pair working together, the F/Gravel doesn’t punish your backside or lower back on washboard surfaces like it does your wrists. There’s no obvious flex present, it’s just that the jolts that hit your hands do not transfer to your backside, all that chatter and drama at the front is smothered by the combination of the frame, post and saddle.

The Fizik Argo X5 saddle with its shorter length nose and soft central relief zone is very comfortable straight from the off and fast becoming one of my favourites of 2023 -24. I ran it a little further forward to combat the offset seatpost and long top tube to regain my preferred position.

Fara’s 2-flex Zone seatpost is a carbon post with a 15mm offset and a sculptured carbon Flex section between the offset mount and the main seatpost shaft. Without side-by-side testing with a range of inline posts, it's hard to say if this post was more or less comfortable than others but, the seated position on the Fara was comfortable without any of the harsh trail feel getting up through the frame to your backside.

Fulcrum’s Rapid Red 900 wheels spun smoothly and their pickup was okay at this price point. I can’t help but think that they are a little hefty and solid feeling and lacking in excitement levels that a higher-end wheelset would offer. They certainly didn’t help with the already stiff front end of the F/Gravel.

I had some difficulty getting the normally easy Panaracer Gravel King SK+ tyres to pop into the Fulcrum rims throughout the test periodbut I did achieve success on the front more easily than the rear. Of course, you could also have left the tubes in and relied on the SK+ puncture protection.

Once inflated to my usual 29/31psi front/rear pressurepreference, the Panaracer Gravel King SK+ tyres cover the ground quickly and without complaint. Sure, they don’t appear to offer a huge amount of grip for winter riding but, in my experience, only mud and wet chalk thwart them. Unfortunately, I’ve had a lot of this during the test period so it's just as well we have the gravel main perimeter road on the Plain and the Kennet and Avon Canal to ride on as well. If it was my bike I’d be swapping changing the tyres for something with more grip for the crappy conditions and putting these back on when it dries out.

The Ritchey Butano WCS bars wear Fara’s F logo instead of the usual WCS logosbut they are the same triple-butted models and should offer a comfort upgrade over their double-butted brethren although I wish they had fitted 44cm bars to provide a little more control off-road – but that’s a general niggle with lots of brands. Wider bars please for adventure riding not all of us want super narrow turned-in levers.

The Butano bar is a comfortable bar to hold on the flat top with its five-degree back sweep and watch the scenery go by and the drops are the optimum depth and at the perfect flare for me to drop into for extra control with tired hands. However, that bar shape can cause restrictions on how many and what type of accessories you can mount due to the wide flat-top section.

The Fara bar tape was decently grippy in the nasty conditions I had whilst testing the bike but I didn’t deliver anything above and beyond in comfort stakes and was a long way off the feel from admittedly fatter tape from ENVE and Lizard Skins.

So the F/Gravel Is very good in the saddle so perhaps some changes to the tyre and handlebar tape setup could make it a little more comfortable bike to ride at less than 100%. What it won’t do though, is slow that overly quick steering down and make it more fun to ride off-road. That’s the result of the geometry being a little too road-based.

Fara Cycling F/Gravel Apex XPLR AXS ´24 - Verdict

Loaded up, utilising the frame and fork mounts I think the Fara F/Gravel would be best on smooth gravel trails, Scandinavianforestroadsor maybe down the west coast of France to Bordeaux. Its steep, road-based geometry will make for an ideal fast bike for something like Transcontinental but for the same reason not for Tuscany Trail where the geometry is just too steep for the technical off-road riding. This is not a problem for most of us as there are hundreds of thousands of miles of trails across Europe and North America that it is suitable for, but it’s worth mentioning that there are other gravel bikes with better offroad manners that are just aslight, fast and more comfortable.

The last few years have seen brands slackening the head angles of their gravel bikes (think 71-70-degrees as becoming the new normal) some are even pushing further to 69- or even 67-degrees depending on where they see their consumers riding and creating new models to facilitate this.

Fara is leaning towards a race gravel direction with the F/Gravel and although it has large tyre capacity, it's just not the best option for technical trail-riding gravel adventurers. If you looking for a comfortable go-anywhere adventure bike then there are others you might like to look at.

For the the same money, you could opt for a Mason Bokeh as reviewed recently with a GRX 12-speed mechanical groupset and and very well-regarded choice or fast gravel. The Windover Bostalin its new spec option of GRX820 12-speed version, is most definitely worth a look if you like the idea ofReynolds 853 tubing and fast and comfortable handling.Without question, you should also consider Lauf’s Seigla Rigid Weekend Warrior Wirelesswhich currently (exchange rate dependant) is around £3,000 for Apex AXS and also comes with Lauf's Smoothie bar.

The Fara F/Gravel is a great race-day gravel bike where its outright stiffness and speed are more important than its comfort credentials. It’s happiest blasting gravel tracks at warp speed kicking up dust as opposed to adventurous singletrack trail riding. While the handling will be familiar to those from the road market, it’s a little sharp for carrying kit on rough trails and a little lacking in the front-end comfort for relaxed long-distance off-road routes.But If you are looking for a super fast gravel bike for a FKT, then the F/Gravel deserves a look.

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