Braking the bank: AbsoluteBlack launches wild-looking £100 disc brake pads

Given the scarcity of disc brake pads at the moment it’s certainly heartening to see a new option come to market as this will hopefully at least increase the collective ability to come to a halt at will. Brake pads, rare or not, are usually some of the least glamorous parts of a bike, and often when replacing them a lot of us are guilty of just putting in what’s available or cheap to get the job done. 

AboluteBLACK though has brought a new brake pad to the market, the Graphenpads, with options compatible with Shimano road, mountain bike and SRAM calipers, and with new material tech and a cooling fin design that’s reminiscent of industrial fencing. There are some bold performance claims, and an even bolder price tag - Would you drop a cool hundred quid on a full set of pads?

Graphene to replace copper 

Disc brake pad compounds, in the collective consciousness, are usually defined as either sintered or organic. Very little attention is actually paid to the composition of the compound, but in order to understand what’s new about these pads, we must delve beneath the murky surface of resins and friction modifiers. 

In general, a brake pad is made up of things that are grippy, things that are slippy, and things that hold the pad together. Too many grippy compounds (like ceramic particulates) and the pad will be too grippy and too abrasive on your rotors, especially as the binder resin is usually pretty grippy in its own right. In order to bring the pad compound back to an optimum performance ‘friction modifiers’ are added (slippy particles, in effect); it’s a little bit like taking spirit straight from a still and cutting it with some spring water to make it palatable vodka rather than just pure ethanol.

The majority of pads use copper dust as their friction modifier, but given that California has decided to ban the use of copper dust beyond 2025 due to toxicity to aquatic life, absoluteBLACK has instead opted to include graphene particles. These particles not only modify the friction to the desired level, but given their propensity for thermal conductivity, they improve the pad heat dissipation by conducting the heat energy from the braking material into the pad backer plate, which itself is also coated in a graphene compound to further enhance cooling.

Furthermore, metals, despite seeming impenetrable, are slightly porous on the micro-scale. These Graphenpads have an added benefit over and above the standard claims of improved braking performance by also claiming to improve rotor lifespans. The theory goes that as the pads wear, the tiny, very durable graphene particles embed themselves in the pores of your brake rotors, improving their wear life.  

Those cooling fins

These are not the first brake pads to feature cooling fins; Shimano pads have had them on the go for a good few years now. The aim is to conduct the heat away from the rotor and pad to decrease brake fade, sending it to a finned cooling area that provides a large surface area over which air can flow to dissipate the heat. 

The fins on Shimano pads take the form of a series of parallel rows of metal, which, while certainly providing a heat sink, does mean that radiative heat from one fin is fired directly at its neighbour. The mesh construction of these Graphenpads instead uses surfaces angled at 45 degrees, which it is claimed avoids any radiative re-heating, but also encourages airflow over the surface. This is in conjunction with the aforementioned thermally conductive graphene coating. 

All of these features together, which have taken three years of development, add up to a pad that is claimed to offer silent braking that is completely free of fade, even during prolonged descents. Given the price tag of £49.99 for a pair, meaning a full set of front and rear pads will set you back just under a hundred quid, you’d certainly expect a noticeable difference in performance and longevity over standard pads. Either that, or simply having them available to buy, which isn't necessarily a given for many of the competitors of late. 

And to that last point, they are indeed available to buy, at AbsoluteBlack's website.