2022 Canyon Grizl — Let’s be GRZLY honest, GRX-400 sucks.
In fact, GRX sucks so much that it detracts from the perfectly good Canyon Grizl. Racer H and I signed up for a demo day with Canyon in Napa, CA. We got to test out the cheapest carbon frame and fork that Canyon has to offer in the gravel bike lineup. Canyon’s marketing page bills the GRIZL as a go anywhere do-it-all bike that is at home on rough and chunky gravel.
Our test ride was only one hour long and featured mostly flat gravel trails, no singletrack, and topped off with an asphalt climb up the nearest hill. We tested the Canyon GRIZL 6 CF SL
It’s interesting how months after the test ride, I don’t really remember the Canyon Grizl frameset, but I do absolutely remember how horrendous GRX felt. Coming from the mountain bike world, it’s a wonder to me how horrible the shifting feels on the lower-tier GRX400. SRAM’s SX and NX mountain bike shifters perform and feel worlds better than Shimano’s “gravel” offerings. The GRX400 shifters have so much slop before actuation, and the derailleur shifting speed and accuracy is below SRAM’s SX. Why then would I want to ride a drop bar gravel bike if the shifting and braking feel horrible in comparison to the mountain bike groupsets?
Now, onto the bicycle. The GRIZL is a solid bike. Once again, coming from the XC world of mountain bikes, we understand carbon frames are fragile. It’s not like a road bike frame that will never see a pebble hit the downtube. If you’re riding chunk for long enough, you know that a bigger-than-pebble-smaller-than-boulder will get kicked up by the wheel and slammed into the downtube. Gravel bikes need to be able to handle that occasional impact and overcooked corner mini-crash. They need to be able to take a beating. Hence this Grizl feels as robust as a carbon hardtail with its own custom rigid fork.
On tarmac, the Canyon Grizl 6 CF feels like a touring bike. Which I suppose with all those mounts on the top tube and fork, it really is — a touring bike.
After taking a look at the rest of the GRIZL lineup and pricing, I understand where they wanted to price the lowest-tier components on the carbon frame. The carbon Grizl 6 CF is a great starting point for a carbon frameset with plenty of mounting points for frame bags and touring equipment. Ride it out of the box, and replace the soon-to-be dying parts with nicer parts that you enjoy. I didn’t get to experience the aluminium GRIZL, it’d be interesting to compare the Al with GRX800 vs the C with GRX400.