BikeRadar Names Revolt Advanced Pro Bike of the Year! 

BikeRadar and its affiliated print magazine Cycling Plus published their 2022 Bike of the Year awards and the Giant Revolt Advanced Pro gravel bike was crowned overall winner, the highest honor in their annual awards feature.

It was a historic win for the flagship model of the Revolt range. The Revolt Advanced Pro 0 model not only won the gravel bike category, it also became the first gravel bike to earn the overall crown from BikeRadar and Cycling Plus.

“It’s a bike that captures the gravel zeitgeist by offering performance and versatility in equal measure,” said Warren Rossiter, senior technical editor for BikeRadar and Cycling Plus.

Rossiter led a team of testers that combed through a collection of the year’s best road and gravel bikes to choose the top performer. They narrowed the field down to 22 finalists, from which the Revolt Advanced Pro was chosen as the winner.

In his review, Rossiter detailed some of the key updates on the next-generation Revolt Advanced Pro including its lighter weight composite frameset, updated geometry, optimized compliance, and greater adaptability to the terrain.

“This evolution takes the Giant Revolt’s proven pedigree, adds a racier ride and increased tyre clearance, and delivers some of the most fun you can have on a drop-bar bike,” Rossiter wrote. “The biggest change, however, is the way in which the bike’s handling has been sharpened up, with Giant steepening the head angle by a degree to 71.5, while also dropping the bottom-bracket height (to accommodate the trend toward larger tyres).”

Rossiter also pointed out the new, lighter weight fork and increased capabilities offered by a new flip chip dropout feature that allows riders to adjust the wheelbase and change the bike’s handling characteristics: “At the rear, there’s a clever flip-chip dropout, so you can extend the wheelbase to accommodate a 53mm tyre here (in its short standard setting, you get 42mm of clearance).”

Also contributing to the high-performance feel is the new Giant CRX 1 WheelSystem. "With a weight of 1,398g a pair, it's in quality road-wheel territory, rather than toughened gravel hoops to take hard knocks," Rossiter wrote. "The wheels accelerate well with a solid laterally stiff feel, and the 54-point engagement from the DT Swiss internals on the Giant hub means snappy acceleration when you put in a big effort."

As for its ride, Rossiter wrote: “The front end feels sharper, quicker to react and generally nimbler. Where it’s improved markedly, however, is the ride comfort. The wearying vibrations of hard-packed gravel are crushed into smoothness by the combination of the very clever D-Fuse bar that soaks up bumps and buzz with ease, yet feels brutishly stiff when sprinting or out of the saddle climbing.”

For more, check out the full review in the latest issue of Cycling Plus, or on the BikeRader website, which also includes this in-depth video feature.