Revgrips Suspension Grips

Grips are an extremely important part of your bike as they are two of your main four contact points. Your hands are sensitive with only a thin palm of a glove at most separating flesh, nerves, muscles and bones and the grip; it’s something you want to get right, especially if you are planning to ride pain-free for a few decades. I’ve been very specific about grips and bars for years, and at 37 with over 20 years of riding, crashing and breaking my hands, I’m still lucky enough to be riding pain-free.

You put a lot of weight and pressure through your hands and when riding: the killer for trail/XC riders is simply hours holding the grips, if you are a DH or enduro rider then there can also be a lot of vibration, which can even be as bad as some power tools which have safety warnings and time limits applied to protect workers.

This is where RevGrips come in, they essentially isolate the grips from the handlebar, leaving it floating and rotating slightly on rubber dampers. But do they work?

Yes, they definitely work. I’ve used them in the past with good success, and have a number of followers that swear by them. I bought this pimping gold pair for the my Commencal Supreme custom build last year, but that bike didn’t last long and they have been in a box ever since.

More recently, I’ve been trying them back-to-back against the ODI Longnecks which have re-become my favourite grip after using them for years as a BMX kid (BMX’ers grip opinions are extremely valid as they are riding those tiny, harsh bikes in hard environments). The simple rubber push on Longneck is at the opposite end of the scale costing around £8.99 in BMX stores compared to the whopping £99.99 price tag of the Revs (there is a cheaper Revgrip ‘Race’ costing £69.99).

So can the Revgrips be 10x times better? No, they can’t. But they are still a good product.

I chose the 31mm half-waffle Pro-Series grips which are a similar size to the ODI. Installing the Revgrips is a bit of faff as there are different shims to choose from for more or less movement, then there are rubber dampers to install, then you need to make sure everything is in the right place and hold it in place to tighten them up, then finally install the bar end plugs. Overall, probably a similar amount of work to glueing and wiring on the Longnecks; if you live in a dry climate you’ll probably be fine without glue and wire.

Riding them back-to-back I found the Longnecks are definitely more forgiving. I was riding Longnecks for days on end with zero hand soreness. After 4-5 downhill runs in Pila on the Revgrips I had some sore skin, I put this down to the fact that the Revgrips still suffer from the main issue of lock-ons: most of the grip depth as taken up by a plastic sheath leaving only a thin layer of rubber, even more on these as the a sheath has a bigger internal diameter than the bar to allow movement.

I measured the rubber thickness of the ODI’s at a smidge under 5mm. The rubber thickness of the Revgrips is about 1.5mm-2mm maximum (don’t quote me on those numbers as it’s difficult to measure accurately).

Vibration-wise, they actually seem to feel similar, but the Longnecks are noticeably more accommodating on the skin in the rough stuff and on long days. Revgrips come from the moto world, and while I don’t ride petrol power, I can imagine there is more vibration to be damped on a moto and maybe they would offer more benefit there.

Which would I choose for MTB? I’d have to opt for the Longnecks simply for the ridiculously better value and comfort.