The all-new Argon 18 All-road Krypton and Krypton Pro is driven to go beyond a racy endurance bike and aims to become your only bike. Now with a spacious 40C tire clearance, the Argon 18 Krypton can handle fast gravel while still remaining nimble and responsive on the road. Hot on the heels of the more capable new Dark Matter, the Krypton loses the kinked fork blades and gains a more aerodynamic shape to match its all-road performance.
True to Argon 18’s DNA, the new Krypton is built to ride hard and fast and features a truncated airfoil-shaped downtube and other minor aero queues. It’s not an aero bike, but does have some minor elements to shave drag. Instead of hoods-to-axle internal routing, Argon 18 has chosen to deliver the much more reasonable front-of-headtube cable entry. This eliminates unsightly cables from the head tube and still affords flexibility with stack height and bar/stem choices. It’s very much like the new Trek Domane SLR (which is in for review), and others who have realized that riders want flexibility with their own fit and component choices, and they want to consider easier resale when the time comes.
Aside from the added clearance and promised performance of the all-road Krypton, I’m very excited about two things: 1) downtube storage and 2) traditional seatpost collar. Downtube storage is coming on more road bikes these days and it can’t come soon enough to all of them. I’d much rather carry my spare kit down there than in a saddle bag or jersey pocket. And, a traditional seatpost collar is just a Godsend. Every single bike I’ve tested with an integrated seatpost clamp has had creaking issues, slippage or some other debacle that has required gallons of friction paste or fishing the wedge out of the bottom bracket after inadvertently dropping it down the seat tube. When they work, they are beautiful, but I’m still sold on a traditional seatpost clamp (like the one on the Open WI.DE. and Cannondale Synapse Carbon 1 RLE).
Back to the new Argon 18 Krypton and Krypton Pro. Argon 18 is offering the pro-level layup Krypton Pro as frame-only for $4500 USD or in a single SRAM Force AXS kit with Hunt Aerodynamicist wheels for $9000 — in a single color. The elite-level layup Krypton will be available in two colors and four build kits: Force AXS ($6050), Rival AXS Plus ($5000), Rival AXS ($4650) and Rival 22 ($3400).
In the words of Mark Beaumont, Argon 18 advisor and the current record holder for the fastest ride around the world, “The goal was a bike that had performance handling yet endurance comfort, that had aerodynamics for the road and yet clearance to explore the gravel, that looked minimalist, yet was packed with features. With my lifetime of endurance, adventure, and race, I loved getting around the design table with the Argon 18 engineers to challenge their designs, to build the dream bike for N=1.”
Argon 18 sees this bike as the N=1 solution instead of the N+1 solution, and it looks promising to deliver on that single bike to ride everywhere. We can’t wait to see it and ride it at some point.
More Info: Visit Argon18bike.com
