Giant Glory Review: Versatile Or Conflicted? | 2024 Downhill Bike Field Test

Giant has had an interesting time in the last decade and a half. There have been the highs of Danny Hart, the constant podium threat of Marcelo Gutierrez, and in more recent times, the hot prospects of the Mayer-Smith brothers joining their factory team. That said, with so many big names, one might expect to see at least one World Cup win in that period. The renewed team and refreshed Glory seem to be made for that very task. The new Giant Glory has been 10 years in the making, or at least the old bike hung around for a decade. Now, Giant making the Glory is a tale as old as time. In recent years, at least the last couple of versions, that maestro link has been very much at its core, across the whole range really. This new Glory, it looks quite similar to the old one, but is it a different bike? What have they done to develop it in the interim? Compared to the old ones, they've made this one compatible with both wheel sizes. There's a ton of adjustment in terms of the chainstay, wheel position, also the reach on the frame, but largely it's still the same layout and still uses a carbon construction. It's just an evolution of the Glory platform that we know. I think it's a really great-looking bike and it has a lot of the mod cons, at least in terms of the spec sheet that you'd want, but do you think that with a brand, you can have the same platform going from the XC bike with 100 mil all the way through to the downhill bike with 200 mil and have the same suspension layout and not have any drawbacks? I mean, there are maybe some constraints, but the dual link design, you can do a lot with that, but is that what we saw on the trail? Well, it's difficult. I was testing one of those TransXs over spring and I was blown away with what they could get out of 140 mil. I thought as a bike, it was just fantastic. How the Glory stacked up is a bit more complicated. The mixed wheel bike we reviewed here is by far the slackest bike on test, but have we reached a point where downhill bikes are simply slack enough? Thank you very much. We've seen the Glory being developed by the giant factory off-road racing team at all the World Cups and it's being sold with a mixed wheeled setup, although it can run 29. How do they go about accommodating both wheel sizes? We see it with the YT where they flip the whole link. What did Giant do to affect the geometry so they can run both? Yeah, so Giant's devised a system of flip chips at the seat stay and rocker link pivot, and that changes the geometry to suit one wheel size or the other, but it doesn't retain the geometry like the YT does, does it? No, I don't think there is enough swing in those links, if you'll excuse the wordplay. It feels to me like it needs to offset more geometry adjustment going from a 29 to the 27.5. The 27.5 rear wheel, it makes this bike very, very slack and also slack but low at the front. It's a really interesting, hard to understand bike. Now, I find 29-inch wheeled downhill bikes really hard to ride. It might be considered low-hanging fruit in terms of criticism, which is ironic because that's what it's buzzing. I find just I don't have the movement. It'd be really great if the bike was optimized for 27.5, but by having that smaller rear wheel in there, it seems to just dictate where all the geometry goes. I imagine if the rear axle was higher due to a rear wheel, it would steepen up a bit. It would probably add a bit of stack. I think it would bring it far more in range for a lot of riders when actually the geometry of this stock bike with the mixed wheel is a real outlier. It's incredibly slack. What was that like to ride? On flatter terrain, it definitely liked to tip into the corners a little bit unwieldy, very slack, high front end, but then the bars were right on top of the fork. We had the stanchions set to an equal distance for all to keep a nice baseline there, but this bike, yes, there's something about it that just set your weight back and it's a little heavy feeling on the back end. I felt when you were at speed, it wasn't so noticeable, but the thing about head tube flop is it's really present at lower speed. If you're trying to go between sequential turns, it really felt like transiting through the y-axis. I know, you fell through onto the reg. I didn't really like that sensation. I don't know if it could be negated with a longer rear end, maybe add a bit more weight to feel that front anchored a bit more, but we were running it in the longer setting. For me, they have that reach adjust that you can get, which is a great adjustment to have. Honestly, the bike's got great adjustment all over it. We also see with the chainstay adjustment that I just mentioned, it's got little flip chips for the brake rotors. There's loads of really good stuff going on there. It's done well. It's executed so well, but the angles are maybe off. I would like an angle adjust in the headset to steepen it up. For me, it just felt so unwieldy and floppy. That's some of the geometry. What was it in terms of suspension feel to your mind? Definitely felt shorter than 200 mils. We smashed a couple of rear wheels. This one took a bit more abuse and it just felt a little bit harsh everywhere through the travel. It was a strange predicament to find yourself in because it didn't really have, to my mind, it felt quite involved in terms of pedal feedback. It didn't feel, at the same time though, to me that it had a shit ton of mid-stroke that was a really poppy bike. It didn't offer the best tracking. I don't really know what they were trying to level in on to be like, this is the thing at least it does best. For me, whichever way I looked at it, compared to the performance out of something like the Commencal or the Intense, which admittedly have that idler, but even compared to something like the Frameworks and the YT, I felt that they at least did one thing really well. For me, honestly, I found that it hung up on deeper stuff. Yes, that's the best way to describe it. It didn't want to carry speed or track as smoothly or as efficiently as the other bikes. It was a little bit rough and would hang for sure. Yes, and I think, I don't know, it's hard for me to really understand, to be honest, what they were going for here. It feels and everything from the geometry to the suspension, everything, it doesn't feel like some cohesive package that really is after something. I'd love to try it if I could have the clearance of a 29-inch wheel. I think it might make a good, if I think if you went up a spring rate and just forgot about the end stroke and went to a bigger rear wheel, you might get something that feels really racy and sporty, but in its stock setting with a spring rate that is all about having the correct sag, I don't really think, to me, it offers the same level of performance as some of the other bikes in this test. Yes, so you mentioned this might be a better race bike with a 29-inch rear wheel. That might help it roll faster over those small bumps and roots and chunder. Very true. It's also quite light. It was a fairly easy bike to pick up in place where you needed to. Didn't feel like it was stuck to the ground like the Commencal in a good and a bad way, I guess. Yes, totally. We spoke about it a lot, in fact, in the YT review, whether having the most confidence-inspiring bike isn't necessarily the fastest bike and how they aren't always absolutely linked. Maybe there's something in that. On smoother tracks, like I said, you up the spring rate a bit, you go for a bit less comfort, you might be able to get something that can go at least pretty quickly. An interesting bike to ride then, but what's it like to live with? The Giant is a carbon-framed downhill bike and it offers a pretty good spec. You've got full Fox factory, Shimano brakes, which I love the saints, you perhaps not so much. All in all, it's a pretty good finishing kit. Yes, and it did have those alloy wheels which didn't quite hold up. Yes, the Giant alloy wheels were somewhat soft. Compliant. Compliant. Compliant with edges of rocks. They're not so round anymore, sadly. To be fair, if you want to talk about racing equipment, it's pretty good because it never burped a lost sealant. It just dinged to all hell. Do you think that's fair to put on a bike that costs 8,400 bucks US? Honestly, I think no. They're not downhill ready, hey? They're not downhill ready. I think there's an argument to be said for having a race wheel. It's only meant to do one run. Having something that dings and doesn't burp or break is actually pretty good, but that's not how people ride downhill bikes. Yes, I'm not made of money. Yes, totally. You can't go through wheels like that. Very expensive, very quick. Similarly, I said you get the Shimano Saint brakes, which are the top most powerful brakes Shimano make. However, it also came with the cheapest stainless steel rotors, which I thought was a bit out of place. Like I said, this is an expensive bike and it can't all just go on the frame and suspension. Where the other spec goes is really important too. Yes, it did have that really low-rise bar. That was a little bit out of spec. You put it up next to the Intense and the and it's just way low for how slack it was. It was really odd. Absolutely. Something else that's worth mentioning is the tune on that Fox Shock, it can give quite severe top-out. I don't know if you experienced that much. If you like to run faster rebound settings, you'll find it will get noisy pretty quickly and you'll be running more low-speed rebound just to mute out the noise and feedback through your feet. Who's this glory for? Now, Matt, I'm pretty transparent. I can't lie and say that I was blown away by this glory because quite simply, I wasn't. Me aside, who's this bike for? Well, it does have quite a bit of adjustment. Whether you're going to be riding it in the full 29 setting or 27.5 rear wheel, you do have those options with the geometry adjust and the reach adjust. It does suit maybe riders that are going to be in between sizes of other bikes. It's also fairly light. It's maybe going to be best for an intermediate rider that's getting into downhill, wants a light bike that feels active like they can get some pump and energy out of the bike for jump trails, but they're not going to be hitting technical terrain like more demanding tracks quite as fast as an expert rider. I think that's fair. I would like to say as well, some of the adjustments on this frame are so well executed. A particular shout-out goes to the brake adjustment on the rear. When you change chainstay length, it just has a little flip chip and you're good to go. It's so simple and elegant. You don't even have to realign your brake. I think it's absolutely great. In terms of who this bike perhaps isn't for, I think it's for people that want to ride really technical, rough tracks quickly because for me, at times, it just felt a bit overwhelmed. The Glory does some things well, but it's hard to see it as anything other than a compromised beast. By running a smaller 27.5-inch rear wheel, the axle sits so much lower and subsequently skews the whole geometry, making it quite incredibly slack. That will undermine confidence on all but the very fastest and steepest trails. At the same time, other parts of the bike, most notably the Maestro suspension, feel like the steepest, fastest trails aren't really a place where it shines. If you look carefully, you can see Giant's factory racers running angle-adjust headsets to steepen up the bike. However, thanks to the proprietary reach-adjust cups, this isn't something you'd be able to buy off the shelves, at least for the moment. Either way, it speaks to the issues you can run into when trying to cover off two wheel sizes in one frame.