Absolute Black Oval Chainring – Review
Absolute Black have been driving the not quite circular revolution in chainrings. Tom’s had it on his long term trail bike, check out his thoughts.
After the first look went live, the internet heartily proved her point, and the article got a full house of comments about BioPace chaingrings and blokes from the Tour de France. As you can see, the modern ring is 90 degrees different from Shimano’s mess, so let’s just get over it and move on! The Absolute Black ring comes in a range of sizes from 28T to 36T, the usual fittings for 4 arm, SRAM and RaceFace cranks and black, green or “racing red”. The aluminium alloy rings are anodised, and other than the teeth, which you’d expect to loose a bit of colour, mine is still as bright as the day it came out of the box.
The ovality is tweaked for each ring size, but essentially at their narrowest they behave like a ring 2 teeth smaller, and at their widest approximately 2 teeth larger. This gives our 34T ring dimensions that match up with a 36T and a 32T when all stacked up.
Fitting was really straightforward, regular chainring bolts do the job just right, while the 32T version has threaded holes for mounting, again these just use the regular chainring bolts. The AbsoluteBlack site has stock of all the chainring bolts you could need so you can order them at the right time. Each size has a video dedicated to fitting and aligning your ring, but it’s not rocket surgery, you line the little nubbin up with the crank!
As I reported before, the first thing you notice is that something is different. Not wrong, just different. Your pedalling action feels different. It took a few rides to get my head round how it truly felt. Basically you feel like you are always at the “front” of your stroke, i.e. your feet seem to always be in the right place to put down some power. On longer rides I’ve not found my legs to get as tired, especially on long spins up through the hills, and the feeling of always having power means that “mashy” steep techy climbs can be attacked with plenty of vigour. You definitely feel the benefit on loose climbs, a good back tyre will really bite in and grip you up the hills.
Longevity hasn’t been an issue, I’ve put in nearly 25,000m of climbing (and descending) on it with a range of chains – SRAM, Shimano and Clarks. In that time I’ve dropped the chain once, pretty good going really. It is possible to run a chain device as well to keep things super secure, you just need to make sure there is a bit of range in the device to accommodate the change.
Overall, if you ride your trail bike a lot, this could be for you. I was skeptical, but after swapping back and forth across a few bikes, I’m definitely an oval-convert. Currently they are offering a 30 day cooling off period – buy an oval ring, ride it for 30 days, and if you aren’t convinced they will swap it for a round one for you. Absolute Black also have a simple sister, BLACK, which use the same tooth profiles and chainring shapes but with a less elaborate CNC pattern to keep the costs lower, worth a look if you want to sample oval rings on a budget.
RRP£36.99-£38.99
Weight (34T) – 44g
