Canyon's Ultimate CF SLX 8.0 Disc is here, and it sure looks mean

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The 2017 Canyon Ultimate CF SLX 8.0 Disc is also available in other, less stealthy colour options(Image credit: Oliver Woodman/Immediate Media)

This article first appeared on BikeRadar.

Canyon claims that these changes have added just 70g to the weight of each frame, yet that total doesn't account for the weight difference in the braking hardware itself, which will be more significant. We weighed our size medium test bike in at 7.79kg/(17.2lbs). A like-for-like comparison isn't easy to make, that's because this model uses Mavic's weightier, disc-specific Carbon Cosmic Pro wheelset, but we think it's fair to say that you're looking for a weight penalty of around 1kg to switch to discs.

In terms of geometry, the Ultimate is close, though not identical, to its rim brake brother. There's a slightly longer wheelbase to the disc models, mostly down to a slight extension at the rear chainstays, yet the bike's head and seat angles stay within a fraction of a degree of the rim brake frames. Reach figures remain identical across the board too (with the exception of the women's models). Disc and rim brake Ultimates will be available in 7 sizes ranging from 2XS through to 2XL.

The Ultimate is also big on integration and is full of neat touches: its integrated seatpost clamp, for example, tucks away behind the seatstay/seattube intersection yet leaves enough space to use a torque wrench to set the single bolt to its require 5nm value. Similarly, the cockpit of the integrated aero cockpit is an in-house Canyon design that features a specific recess for Shimano's Di2 junction box. Even the spacers below and the top cap above it are specific to its wind-cheating profile.