Vitus ZX-1 EVO brings major performance boost to accessible aero road bike

Vitus delivers another jump in carbon road bike performance with a new evolution of the ZX-1 EVO aero road bike. Hitting pretty much every aerodynamic & integrated talking point, their new aero bike is lighter, stiffer, and faster all around. While its pricing doesn’t dip quite enough to say it’s truly affordable, Vitus does offer a lot of bang for your buck with fully integrated cockpits and deep Reynolds AR carbon wheels at every price-point.

2021 Vitus ZX-1 EVO light, integrated carbon aero road bike

Much like their lightweight Vitesse EVO climber’s road bike got a major overhaul last autumn (and their Energie EVO cyclocross bike before that), Vitus is steadily marching through their dropbar line-up reworking their bike to make them all lighter, stiffer & faster.

While plenty of bike companies tout the number of watts saved, seconds gained, and grams lost to convince riders to upgrade their bikes, consumer-direct Vitus is trying to take a simpler approach. They say, they wanted to make a fast, fully-integrated bike that cyclists could actually afford, so that’s what they did.

All those lighter, stiffer & faster technical details do exist, and we want to know. I just had to pry a bit harder from the Vitus product development team to get the details. And you aren’t going to find it on their website where they’re more likely to say, “Trust us when we say we’ve done our bit and this bike is fast… the rest is up to you.”

Lighter, stiffer, faster

But since I’m not so trusting here’s the numbers…

The new mixed-mod carbon ZX-1 EVO frame has a claimed weight of 975g for a claimed 6% weight savings, with bikes at all price levels sharing the same frame. Overall it’s a much more ‘aero-looking’ bike with deep tubing profiles, and Vitus says it’s a higher spec base carbon material that still allowed them to save weight overall.

(Interestingly, Vitus suggested that they also had done some work on a heavier/lower spec carbon layup as well, possibly hinting a future model at even lower pricing?)

Those bigger tubes also bring 9.9% increased stiffness overall vs. the previous generation ZX-1. The big stiffness improvement was focused on the lower-half backbone of the bike to increase power transfer & handling stability without losing rider comfort. Compare 13.8% more fork stiffness, 13.9% more rear end stiffness & 11.5% more bottom bracket stiffness, to just 0.7% increased stiffness at the headtube.

As to how much faster it is, validated in the aerodynamics labs at the UK’s Silverstone Circuit race track, Vitus says the new complete bike showed up to 45% decreased at a common 15° yaw angle (at 45km/hr) or still 18% less drag at 0° & lower 35km/hr speed – much of which goes to better integration overall. But since they wanted to focus more on real-world rideability, Vitus simply says the new ZX-1 EVO looks fast, feels fast & goes fast.

Tech details

Developed to be an accessible and reasonably affordable everyday aero road bike, the made-in-China, painted & assembled-in-Taiwan, and UCI-approved Vitus ZX-1 EVO gets common modern standards for the most part.

The bike has flat mount disc brakes, 12mm thru-axles, a 386EVO bottom bracket, 2-positon bottle cage bosses on the downtube, and enough room for 30mm tires on pretty much any rim. The road race-focused bikes come spec’d with 25s on the Reynolds AR 19mm front/21mm rear internal rims, but Vitus says they even fitted some 32mm tires during testing.

Geometry of the new bike is also actually a ground-up redesign, with a generally longer & lower fit than before. The 6 size range (XS-XXL) is a wider curve overall, with improved fit options especially at the top & bottom ends.

It also now adds a size-specific fork offset to maintain good handling & steering stability in the two smaller bikes without toe overlap.

The fully integrated cable routing uses the FSA ACR headset & cockpit system for the full carbon 1.5″ tapered steerer fork. And every bike gets an integrated cockpit, no matter if mechanical or electronic shifting, 1-piece Vision Metron 5D bar for the top 3 specs or separate FSA alloy stem & carbon Prime bar for the lower 3 that reveals a section of cables where they transition from under the bar into the stem.

Since Vitus is consumer-direct we were curious about how much fit setup flexibility there was with the internal routing for buyers out of the box. Vitus tells us that every bike ships with a 3-piece stack of hinged spacers under the stem (5, 10 & 10mm), so buyers can lower their stem up to 25mm to get the ideal fit. The carbon steerer can be (carefully) cut down this 25mm & spacers unclipped without needing to shorten, bleed, or otherwise touch the internal cables.

The new bike does feature an internal wedge-style lamp for the proprietary aero seatpost design, with a sliding head design that offers the same horizontal adjustment of both a 0 & 15mm offset post, plus round & oval saddle rail compatibility.

2021 Vitus ZX-1 EVO aero road bike – Pricing, options & availability

Sold exclusively consumer-direct through online partners Wiggle & Chain Reaction Cycles, the Vitus ZX-1 EVO aero road bikes are generally affordable, but those race-ready aerodynamic upgrades are still noticeably more expensive than their Vitesse Evo lightweight road bike. The more aero bikes are also heavier. Even with starting with a lighter frame… the deeper wheels, aero post & more complex internal routing hardware mean these bikes are around 75-200g heavier than the previous, less expensive models. The price of speed…

The most affordable Vitus ZX-1 EVO CR £2800 / $3600 / 3900€ gets a full Shimano 105 mechanical/hydraulic mid-compact groupset, two-piece integrated cockpit, and top-tier tubeless carbon Reynolds AR 58/62 wheels at a claimed 8.3kg complete (about half the price, but only 400g heavier than the most expensive bike in the lineup!) Next up, the 8.2kg ZX-1 EVO CRS at £3100 / $3900 / 4300€ gets an Ultegra mechanical upgrade and an otherwise identical build.

A new addition thanks to the latest SRAM Rival AXS, the £3600 / $4700 / 5000€ ZX-1 EVO CR eTap AXS gets full Rival AXS eTap wireless group and is the only complete not to get the Reynolds wheels, instead swapping in house-brand Prime Attaquer Disc 19mm internal, 30mm deep alloy wheels – at a complete claimed weight of 8.18kg.

Next the ZX-1 EVO CRS Di2 at £4000 / $5200 / 5500€ steps up to Ultegra Di2 and back to the Reynolds AR carbon wheels, now getting the one-piece Vision Metron 5D cockpit at a total weight of 8kg.

Two more wireless SRAM builds are offered. The £4200 / $5400 / 5800€ ZX-1 EVO CRS eTap AXS gets a Force 2x group and the Reynolds wheels at 8.2kg claimed.

And the £5400 / $7000 / 7400€ ZX-1 EVO CRX eTap AXS takes it one step further to SRAM Red with a power meter, trimming a few extra grams off to 7.9kg.

All of the new Vitus ZX-1 EVO aero road bikes are said to be globally available between now and the next couple of weeks depending on spec & size.

VitusBikes.com