Liv Cycling shares a lot of tech and design ideas with their brothers at Giant, but we’ve started to see more innovation happening first on the Liv side of things. While Liv have had their own aero road Envie for several years, women looking for a top-level, light road bike had to go directly the Giant TCR which has been available in small sizes. Now Liv has its own light all-around road race bike specifically for women called the Langma that makes some iterative changes to the base TCR platform to create a elite-level road bike just for women, with both rim brake and disc brake frames on offer…
Developed together with the successful Sunweb pro team whose bikes we featured winning in the Spring Classics, the Liv Langma is the lightest bike the brand (or Giant) has ever built and combines the top carbon tech of the Giant family, plus new aero optimized features. Taking its moniker from the Tibetan name for Everest, the light-focused bike is meant to be a climber with frame+fork weights around 1150g and complete bikes at 6.05kg.
Designed to take on everything from extended climbs, rolling races and technical descents the Langma range includes five framesets to fit a wide range of riders & budgets: Langma Advanced SL, Langma Advanced Pro Disc, Langma Advanced Pro, Langma Advanced Disc, and Langma Advanced.
The bike sticks with Liv’s 3F design philosophy that boils down to delivering on Fit, Form & Function to get serious women cyclists on the best performing bike possible. Geometry itself for the bike has been developed based on Liv’s global database of women riders and their sponsored pro racers. Each bike comes in a four size range from XS-L.
Each of the different framesets shares generally the same tube shapes, where lightweight & ride quality was the priority, but there was still room for aero optimization. The Langma gets Giant’s oversized stiff PowerCore bottom bracket and asymmetric chainstays for max powertrain efficiency, and a MegaDrive downtube & OverDrive 2 tapered steerer for precise steering & control.
The top-level Advanced Composite SL frame with its premier carbon layup also includes an integrated seat mast design to trim weight even more, and boost aerodynamics a bit with a D-shaped section. The disc brake variants of the bike – Langma Advanced Pro Disc & Langma Advanced Disc – get 12mm thru-axles and flat mount disc calipers for optimal brake performance in all weather conditions.
Each of the bikes uses slightly aero-optimized D-shape down & seattubes, and include a recessed aero upper headset cap that helps Liv get the headtube stack down for flexible racers, but still works well with aero-shaped spacers for slightly more upright positions. The Langmas also get spec’d with a new carbon Contact SLR Flux stem provides that balances aerodynamics in a light & stiff package.
All of the Langma bikes are designed to run 28mm tires width, and each gets spec’d with Giant’s tubeless ready house wheels & Gavia Race 0 tubeless tires. The bikes also all include Giant’s RideSense speed+cadence sensor integrated in the non-driveside chainstay which communicates with any ANT+ computer.
The top-level Langma Advanced Pro SL 0 is the only bike with the seat mast and is rim-brake only. At $9800 it comes with a complete SRAM Red eTap group and top-level 30mm deep Giant tubeless carbon wheels.
The Advanced Pro bikes also come in only one spec a piece, with one step down in carbon fiber spec and a more traditional round seatpost. The Langma Advanced Pro in its rim brake guise will sell for $4600 with an Ultegra Di2 groupset and a set of 30mm deep Giant wheels one level down in carbon spec as well. The disc version, the Langma Advanced Pro Disc shares the same carbon grade but comes down to $3250 with a new mechanical Ultegra group with hydraulic disc brakes.
The Advanced bikes bring the cost of entry down even more with the Langma Advanced 1 selling for $2300 with mechanical Ultegra and the Langma Advanced 2 for just $1700 with a 105/Ultegra mix.
The Langma Advanced Disc rounds out the line at $2375 with a mix of 105/Ultegra and 105 levers operating hydraulic disc brake calipers made by Giant.
