Exclusive: 2019 Merida One-Twenty trail mountain bike, more capable than ever

Merida is about to introduce a ground-up revamp of their 120mm travel trail bike, that makes the bike lighter, more durable, and more playful. The mid travel One-Twenty goes back to the basics of mountain biking, where one bike is all most riders need for everything from aggressive cross-country to proper technical trail riding, and with three different carbon and/or ally frame combinations that can work in a range of budgets.

2019 Merida One-Twenty trail mountain bike

Merida wanted to redevelop a proper all-rounder trail mountain bike, so they took the One-Twenty back to the drawing board. Now pairing 130mm travel forks to the revamped 120mm of rear travel the new One-Twenty can be built up as a more burly trail bike or a lightweight all-day marathon race bike.

From the outside the new trail bike looks a lot like the old One-Twenty (which didn’t have a full-carbon option), sharing the same high pivot faux-bar suspension design with a floating lower shock mount on the extended chainstay, albeit with a lower leverage ratio trunnion mount shock.

But Merida has made the new family of bikes more durable with a more beefy set of chainstays and larger main pivot bearings.

Updated Geometry

Those chainstays have actually shortened by 10mm as well for a snappier ride, and now clear up to 2.35″ tires (with 30mm internal rims). The new stays are now just 435mm long on the 29ers (sizes S-XL), while the smaller 27.5 bikes get 430mm stays (sizes S & M). Overall geometry is a bit more slack too for technical riding, with the new 29er slackening 1.7° to 67.3° making for a confident descender.

In addition to making the bike stronger to withstand more aggressive trail riding, the move to carbon also drop a bunch of weight. While this is still not meant to be a weight weenie bike, the new CF4 frame drops 400g off the previous One-Twenty.

The new One-Twenty is optimized for 1x drivetrains, with its high pivot strategically placed to align with efficient pedaling for the standard 32T chainring.

The bike uses a BB92 bottom bracket, gets Boost spacing, a 180mm post mount rear brake, and a tapered integrated headset. The carbon bikes are 1x only, but the alloy front triangles can mount a low direct mount front derailleur.

Bike/Frame Construction Options

While the old One-Twenty was an aluminum-only bike, the new One-Twenty has three frameset options. The top-level One-Twenty 9000 & 8000 will share the same carbon frameset that pairs a carbon main triangle to a carbon rear end, with a two-piece alloy rocker for all bikes. Claimed weight for a One-Twenty 9000 with shock hardware is 2102g (in medium) or 2417g once you throw in all

The new One-Twenty 6000 will get the same carbon front end, but swap in an alloy rear end to keep pricing more affordable.

Then a whole family of alloy bikes One-Twenty 800 down to 400, will share a new LITE aluminum frame with 6061 forged parts & 6066 tubing, that gets the same geometry updates as the carbon bikes.

Merida-Bikes.com