Spot Rocker Long Term Review
I’ve had my Spot Rocker for a couple of years now and I feel like I’ve had enough time in the saddle with it to give some feedback on this bike. I’ve also made a few upgrades/modifications to my Rocker which I will also discuss. I wrote my initial impressions of the Spot Rocker if you want to check that out as well here: Spot Rocker Initial Ride Impressions.
I bought the 4 star build of the Spot Rocker 29er version which has a Sram GX drivetrain, Fox 34 Stepcast Fork, Stans Crest S1 wheelset (new Rockers have S2), and Sram Level brakes. I paid about $3,800 for my Rocker, which has since gone up, come back down in price, and at the time of this writing is up again. I thought $3,800 was a good price for the bike given the spec, and I have to admit all of these components have performed great. If I were to buy a new Spot Rocker now, I’d probably get the same 4 star build. Spot did a really nice job selecting these components. I have been particularly impressed with the Stan’s Crest wheels. These are alloy cross country wheels so they are not wide at 23mm and also not the lightest 1800 grams, but they are stiff and tough (the new Stans’s Crest S2 that now come on the Rocker are slightly wider). I live in a rocky area and I’ve put a good beating on these wheels through rock gardens and over rocky ledges and they’ve never dented or bent. The hub engagement on the lower line Stan’s neo hub is not great, but not bad either. The GX drivetrain is really good and the Fox Stepcast fork is fantastic. So right out the box the Spot Rocker 4 star build is ready shred.
Ride Quality
So one of the things you notice right away with the Rocker is the bike is lightning fast. As I mentioned in my first impressions blog post it almost feels too light and twitchy when you first start to ride it. I had to have a bit of an adjustment period. My 4 star build weighed in around 25lbs, but whenever I let someone else ride it they thought it weighed closer to 20lbs. I’m not sure what it is but the bike just feels light. And the transfer of power from the pedals is instantaneous. It is a super fun bike to ride.
I do have a couple of small complaints about the Rocker build spec though. First the 4 star build comes with a 35mm clamp Raceface Aeffect Stem and Bar combination. These are quality components, but I honestly found them to be a bit stiff. I think the bike would be better served with something a little more forgiving. The second is the Schwalbe Racing Ray/Ralph tires that come on the bike. They are really light and fast rolling, but I thought they were just too low tread of a tire. These are both pretty minor complaints since these components are swapped out so easily. Overall the build spec was great.
Overall Quality & Customer Service
I’ll start with the frame. The ride quality of the frame is amazing. It is light, responsive, and compliant. It’s amazing! This bike is so much fun. The frame has a weird ability to mute the trail chatter. You still feel the bumps, but it doesn’t send vibrations up through your body. Once you get used to it and then go back to an alloy hardtail you realize how compliant the Spot Rocker frame is. That being said, as I previously mentioned it feels almost too light, in particular the back end. The bike skips around a little bit over rocky areas, especially if you have those Schwalbe tires on there. Additionally the frame feels like you have to baby it a little bit or it will break. I’m always worried that if I crash it will break in half or something. In the review by Steve from the Hardtail Party channel made a similar observation stating it felt “delicate”. I totally agree it feels like that, however I've absolutely smashed my Rocker through rock gardens and over rocky ledges at pretty good speed and the frame is still solid. It could be just a perception thing because it is so light and the seat stays are so thin.
There is one really weird issue with the frame. When the chain is on the smallest cog of the cassette the chain will rub against the chain stay protector. When I initially noticed this I thought the chain stay protector wasn’t sticking flush against the frame. I reached out to Spot and they confirmed they had a batch of Rockers that had the chain stay protector misapplied, and sent me a new one right away. They told me there should be about a ¼ inch clearance between the chain and the chain stay. So, I took off the old chain stay protector, and very carefully put the new one on, but the chain still rubbed. At this point I took it to a couple of my local bike shops to get a professional opinion. One of them called and spoke to someone at Spot who said basically they all do that, which is a totally different story than I got from Spot. Both bike shop’s thought that it was really weird. The best conclusion they could come up with is that the Rocker was probably originally designed and intended to be a single speed and converted to a geared bike after the fact.
My main concern is that the chain would rub on the chainstay and damage and/or compromise the frame. It does not appear the chain actually rubs against the frame itself, just the chainstay protector. So I decided to keep riding it since each shop thought that it was probably safe to ride, but to keep a close eye on it. The clearance between chain and chainstay is only a couple millimeters, so if you get a Rocker you probably want to keep an eye on the chainstay protector and make sure that you replace it if it begins to wear down a lot. Also, I did write an email to Spot and asked if the chain rub damaged the frame if they would honor the warranty and replace the frame and they never responded. Overall, it’s just a weird design and also the response from Spot Bikes (or lack thereof) was not great.
I did have another much less significant issue with the assembly of the bike. The master link on the chain was put on backwards. If you’ve never had this happen to you before what happens is that your chain will pop out of the highest gears when you crank down on the pedal. It kept occuring and I thought that the derailleur must be out of alignment. So I kept fiddling with the derailleur adjustment until I finally took it to my local bike shop where they diagnosed the real problem. And I get it, it’s a 2 minute fix, but the fact is it is not something that is not obvious and it’s not an issue that will manifest in the bike stand spinning the cranks. So this seems like a minor assembly issue, and I don’t want to overstate this issue, but it would jump out of the gear pretty violently which could’ve either jacked up my knee because of the sudden and unexpected change or caused me to crash. And that’s not just me saying this, it was the sentiment of my local bike shop owner as well. The point is that this is a boutique bike and we are paying a premium. It’s not a bike bought and assembled at a big box store. So I hold companies like Spot to a higher standard on everything, including assembly.
Upgrades/Changes
One of the first changes I made to my Rocker was swapping out the stem from the 50mm that comes on the bike to a 40mm. In all honesty the 50mm stem feels very balanced in terms of steering responsiveness, however I was just a little too stretched out on the bike. This was causing soreness in my lower back, so I needed a shorter stem to shorten up my reach and put me in a bit of a more upright position. This worked great, however the trade off is that the bike’s steering was even more twitchy, though I got used to it after a couple of rides, and now it just feels normal. Spot also cuts the fork long, which is awesome and I wish more bike companies would do this. I was able to move a spacer down below the stem to move the stack up a little higher as well. These couple of changes have me in a perfect position to ride the bike for days.
I’m not a huge fan of the Race Face Aeffect bars that come on the Spot, they are just too stiff. So I decided to experiment with some different alloy bars to get one that fit right for me, but also wasn’t as harsh a ride as the Aeffect bars.. I started with a PNW bar, and this did not work out at all. Raising the hand position due to the 30mm rise of that bar causes you to feel like you’re going to go over the bars when pointed down hill or going over ledges. Nothing against the PNW Range bar, it’s a great bar I have on another one of my bikes, it’s just a bad fit for the Rocker in my experience. I’m currently running a Cannondale bar that has just about 10mm of rise and a lot of back sweep which is pretty comfortable on this bike. I’m looking to upgrade the bar to an alloy bar that is a little more forgiving and not quite as heavy as the Cannondale.
As I mentioned before the Stan’s Crest wheels are really tough and a good spec for this bike. However, after a couple years I decided to upgrade to Hunt’s Proven carbon XC wheels. This dropped the weight of the bike from 25.84lbs to 25.36, or about half a pound. That is with pedals, two water bottle cages, and a bike bell. Even though this is not a huge difference in weight, it is all rotational weight, so this change took this bike to the next level. I thought it was fast before, but now it is an absolute rocket. I’m not a weight weenie, but this is definitely a huge bang for your buck in weight savings. Personally, I don’t think saving grams off every component of your bike amounts to much difference, the major exception being the wheels. So, if you can afford to get a set of carbon wheels or buy one of the higher level specced Rockers from Spot then go for it. The Rocker absolutely comes alive with the lighter wheelset. Also, if you want a reasonably priced set of carbon wheels, then check out the Hunt Proven XC wheelset, they’ve performed great for me. If you can only afford the 4 star build with the Stan’s Crest, then no worries because it’s still a great wheelset and the bike is still very fun and fast. If I had to do it again, I’d still probably buy the 4 star build so I could save up and pick the carbon wheelset that I wanted. Also, now I have two wheelsets and I’m thinking of selling the Stans and using the funds to buy a 27.5+ wheelset.
The Rocker also came with Schwalbe Racing Ray/Ralph tires which honestly are just too low tread. This has been mentioned in other reviews such as the Hardtail Party review on YouTube (which I highly recommend watching). I live in an area that is very rocky, so at the recommendation of Hardtail Party Steve I put on 2.3 Specialized Eliminator in the front and 2.35 Specialized Ground Control in the back. I can tell you this changes the bike for the better. It loses what Hardtail Party Steve refers to as sketchiness, and he’s absolutely right. The Rocker feels way more grounded with this tire setup. Steve recommended this as a compromise between the Swchalbe’s and the 27.5 wheels set up with 2.8 wide tires, which he said caused the Rocker to lose some of its spunk. However, after riding the Rocker with the Specialized tires for a few months I thought it still lost a little of that spunk as well. I live in Central Texas where the trails are very rocky, but you also get these segments between the rocky areas that are flat clay that just twists through the woods. On these segments I felt like the Specialized tires would still bog the bike down. I’m sure this tire setup makes perfect sense for Sedona where Hardtail Party Steve lives, but I didn't think it was quite right for my area. I did some experimenting and I’ve landed on running 2.2 wide Kena Regolith in the front and 2.2 wide Kenda Booster in the back. This tire combination is right in between the Swchalbe and Specialized setups. I have better grip up front, but these tires are still light enough that I don’t feel bogged down in the flat smooth areas of the trail. The Rocker still has a super light feel to it though, and as I mentioned in my initial ride review sometimes I feel like the back end of the bike skips over the rocky sections instead of rolling over them. I believe this is partly due to it being a hardtail, but also partly due to the the light back end of the bike.
Other features include a 160mm dropper post, which is great. Two water bottle mounts, with enough room to run large water bottles in both. And oddly, mine came with Vans branded grips, which was an interesting choice, but could’ve been a result of the pandemic. They weren’t lock on grips and I didn’t really like them, so I swapped them out for some Ergon grips. At the time of this writing the Rocker is coming stock with Ergon grips. I put PNW pedals on my Rocker, which are a wide platform flat pedal, and they’ve performed great.
Lastly, the bike comes with a nice frame protector that runs on the bottom of the crankcase up about 5 inches of the bottom tube. Since I live in a rocky area I wanted to ensure that the entire bottom of the down tube was protected from any rocks that got kicked up by the front tire. I gave Spot a call and they recommended Miles Wide frame tape. I put it on from the top of the factory install guard to the headtube two years ago and it’s still holding strong. The corners and edges of the frame tape are still flush and haven’t separated from the frame, which is great. Also, Miles Wide is made in America, so if that’s important to you it may be worth it to give them a try for frame tape.
Final Thoughts
I’ve read at least most of the Spot Rocker reviews on the Spot Bikes website and I’ve watched the Hardtail Party review of the bike as well. And those reviews are that the Rocker is awesome and the customer service from Spot Bikes is nothing short of awesome. So, truth be told, I wanted to write a review about how the Spot Rocker was a flawless and awesome bike, and Spot Bikes had the best customer service you could ever ask for. And that’s not to say that my experience has been bad. Overall the Spot Rocker is a super fun and fast bike. It’s the bike I most often grab when I go for a trail ride. I’ll say it again, the Rocker is a fast, fun hardtail mountain bike. However, that said there is an oddity with the frame design and Spot was a little bit dodgy when it came to addressing the issue. Also, the assembly issue with the chain is inexcusable. So Spot Bikes record on frame design and customer service isn’t perfect. I should mention that I have corresponded with Spot a couple times and talked to them with questions such as the aforementioned recommendation for the Miles Wide frame tape, and they were genuinely nice and helpful whenever I had a question outside of the chain rub issue.
So bottom line, would I buy this bike again? Yes, absolutely. However, if I could do it over again I might also take a little bit harder look at something like a Yeti Arc or a hand built steel or titanium frame. Who knows, even after that I still may end up with the Spot Rocker. But, I’d probably just give those other bikes a bit more of a look. Like I said, I really love this bike, and I ride it all the time. And also, it is definitely a conversation starter wherever I take it. It’s super cool. Your buddies out on the trail will notice you on it. So if you’ve done your due diligence and think the Spot Rocker is the right bike for you, then I say go for it! You’ll have a blast! However, I had to be honest and say some things about this bike and my experience with Spot that I haven’t seen mentioned in any other reviews I’ve seen so far. Hope this review was helpful, and as always thanks for reading.
