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TECH NEWS

Just In: Giant TCR Advanced Pro 0

A redesigned and lightened road bike with a top level Shimano Dura-Ace groupset

Giant has redesigned its TCR Advanced Pro bikes for 2016, making them lighter without losing any stiffness, according to the brand. The top level Advanced Pro 0, priced at £3,799, has just arrived here at road.cc for testing.

Giant divides its road line up into three: you have the Propel which is an aero bike, the Defy which is designed for endurance and comfort, and the TCR which is designed for light weight – or, more correctly, stiffness-to-weight, but we’ll come on to that in a mo.

Giant TCR Advanced - top tube

The TCR range is further divided into the Advanced (starting at £1,049), the Advanced Pro (starting at £1,299) and the Advanced SL bikes (starting at £1,999), in descending order of weight.

We went to the launch of the new TCRs back in June  and took the TCR Advanced SL out on a First Ride

Giant TCR Advanced - down tube

The Advanced Pro is made from what Giant describes as its ‘Advanced-Grade Composite’. Giant takes T-700 raw carbon-fibre and uses it to produce a custom composite material in its own composite factory. 

Giant has slimmed down the Advanced Pro for 2016, reducing the profile of the top tube, seatstays, chainstays, seatpost and fork legs, and making the walls a more consistent thickness than before to minimise excess weight. 

Giant TCR Advanced - cable route

Giant says that it has been able to shave off the weight without sacrificing stiffness. This is something that the brand was keen to emphasise at that TCR launch I mentioned. There have been plenty of superlight bikes launched lately, but Giant says that it doesn’t want to compete solely on a battle of the scales. It points out, rightly, that making a lightweight bike is easy if you don’t mind the frame flopping about all over the place as soon as you crank up the power. It’s retaining stiffness while reducing weight that’s tricky, and Giant reckon that’s exactly what it has managed with the Advanced Pro. We’ll find out when we get it out on the road.

Giant TCR Advanced - head tube

The TCR Advanced Pro’s geometry has been tweaked very slightly from before, but it’s still completely race-driven and exactly the same as that of the TCR Advanced SL. We have the M/L model here with a 57cm top tube, a 50cm seat tube, and an 16.8cm head tube. That seat tube length is effectively shortened by the sloping top tube, the Advanced Pro being built to Giant’s Compact Road Geometry. The idea is that this design reduces the size of both the front and rear triangles to create a lighter, stiffer bike.

The stack (the vertical distance between the bottom bracket and the top of the head tube) is 56.7cm and the reach (the horizontal distance between those points) is 40.5cm. 

Giant TCR Advanced - bottom bracket

At the heart of things is what Giant calls its Powercore oversized bottom bracket/chainstay area, with an 86mm-wide BB and asymmetric chainstays that are designed to provide stiffness. The head tube is designed for stiffness too, Giant using oversized bearings both top (1 1/4in) and bottom (1 1/2in). This is what it calls its Overdrive 2 system.

Giant TCR Advanced - rear mech

The TCR Advanced Pro is available in three different builds, the most affordable of these being the TCR Advanced Pro 2 at £1,799, built up with a Shimano 105-based spec and Giant’s own SL 1 wheels. Next up is the £2,599 TCR Advanced Pro 1 with Shimano Ultegra components and Giant SLR 1 wheels. Finally, there’s the TCR Advanced Pro 0 that we have, built up with a Shimano Dura-Ace mechanical groupset and Giant’s SLR 0 wheels. It’s available as a frameset too, priced £1,299. 

Giant TCR Advanced - drive train

Like all the other TCR Advanced SL and Pro bikes, ours has a 52/36-tooth chainset, often called semi-compact or faux pro. It’s a popular option that gives you a good mix of high and low gears. The only non-Dura-Ace groupset component here is the KMC X11SL chain.

Giant TCR Advanced - rim

The Giant SLR 0 wheels aren’t your typical in-house wheels in that they come with DT Swiss hub internals and a claimed combined weight of just 1,335g. We’re really looking forward to trying these out.

Giant TCR Advanced - seat post junction

A couple of other components that deserve a mention are Giant’s own Variant seatpost, made from composite and designed to offer compliance, and a new Contact SL saddle that features what the brand calls its ‘Particle Flow Technology’. Two separate pockets of padding contain free-flowing particles that, according to Giant, reduce pressure points by more than 20 percent. 

The complete bike weighs in at 6.83kg (15.1lb).

Giant TCR Advanced - rear brake 2

Of the bikes that we’ve reviewed here on road.cc recently, the closest in price to the Giant TCR Advanced Pro 0 is the £3,600 De Rosa Idol equipped with a Campagnolo Athena groupset and Fulcrum Racing Zero wheels. The De Rosa has a very stiff frame but it can’t live with the Giant in terms of weight, coming in almost 700g heavier.

Giant TCR Advanced - front brake 2

Right, that’s plenty of info to be going on with. We’re going to get the Giant TCR Advanced Pro 0 out on the road. We’ll be back with a review soon.

www.giant-bicycles.com

Mat has been in cycling media since 1996, on titles including BikeRadar, Total Bike, Total Mountain Bike, What Mountain Bike and Mountain Biking UK, and he has been editor of 220 Triathlon and Cycling Plus. Mat has been road.cc technical editor for over a decade, testing bikes, fettling the latest kit, and trying out the most up-to-the-minute clothing. He has won his category in Ironman UK 70.3 and finished on the podium in both marathons he has run. Mat is a Cambridge graduate who did a post-grad in magazine journalism, and he is a winner of the Cycling Media Award for Specialist Online Writer. Now over 50, he's riding road and gravel bikes most days for fun and fitness rather than training for competitions.

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10 comments

Avatar
mperko | 8 years ago
0 likes

Does anybody know how much the 2016 TCR Advanced 1 weighs in comparison to this one?

Avatar
biga | 8 years ago
0 likes

Wondering about these wheels! Wow! That's light! Are they claimed aero?

Avatar
700c | 8 years ago
1 like

I thought that De Rosa was heavy when it was reviewed the other day! And this isn't even a comparable frameset , as it's nearly £1k cheaper! (The tcr sl is a closer comparison)

I suppose the groupset makes it more expensive in this case - I'm a Campag fan and even I'll admit the athena on that de rosa is inferior to dura ace.

Having given that one 4 stars I imagine it'll be a tough call not to mark this one higher?! I know how stiff those TCR's are from personal expwrience so it won't be wanting in that regard. Otherwise how are punters going to differentiate between the huge number of 4*-rated expensive carbon frames out there. .?

On the subject of weight difference between the sl and pro - for 2015 it was 256g (estimated by Giant and mainly due to seatpost weight as the sl's is integrated)

Avatar
CharlesMagne | 8 years ago
0 likes

Don't let this lovely thing out in the cold and wet! It's far too pretty for that.

Avatar
Guernsey Donkey | 8 years ago
0 likes

Quote:

Campag likes to see it’s third tier Athena as roughly the same level as Dura-Ace, although Shimano would doubtless disagree.

 

I'm sure Shimano would!  

 

I always thought that Athena=105

Chorus=Ultegra

Record=DuraAce

Super Record= DuraAce with gold plate

 

Have I got it wrong?

Avatar
Rapha Nadal | 8 years ago
0 likes

Who set up the cabling on this?!  Awful job.

Is it possible to buy the wheels as an aftermarket product from a Giant dealership?

Avatar
samvegg replied to Rapha Nadal | 8 years ago
0 likes

Rapha Nadal wrote:

Who set up the cabling on this?!  Awful job.

Is it possible to buy the wheels as an aftermarket product from a Giant dealership?

Well not everyone wants to slam the stem, and yes you can get those wheels from any giant dealer for a good value.

Avatar
Chuck | 8 years ago
0 likes

TCRs seem to have got steadily less compact, or does it just look normal now?

Avatar
joules1975 replied to Chuck | 8 years ago
1 like

Chuck wrote:

TCRs seem to have got steadily less compact, or does it just look normal now?

Looks to me like that's a large frame size, which will naturally look less compact, plus I'd say they have taken a one or two design features from the Propel, which had a very level top tube by modern standards.

I'm surprised the seatstays don't joint he seat tube lower down that the top tube junction, like Giant have on both the Defy and Propel. Wonder why given that having them join lower is supposed to help comfort, stiffness and aero.

Avatar
peted76 | 8 years ago
0 likes

Very keen to see how this tests!

I'm not sure if you can measure, but any chance you could weigh the frames on this model so we can see what the weight difference between this model and the Advanced SL reported frameweight of 856g.

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