Crank Brothers Highline Dropper Post – Review
Tom’s been using the Crank Brothers’ Highline for the last 6 months, see how it’s held up.
It’s a bit sad, but every bit of coverage of Crank Brothers’ Highline dropper post I’ve seen (including my own!) has included a “will it be as rubbish as the last two?” paragraph. After a couple of pretty dreadful seatposts from CB, it certainly raised a few eyebrows when I ditched the reverb onto the wife’s bike. Maybe I’m a sucker for the marketing, but the chat from the lovely folk at Extra about the development of the post certainly convinced me that it was worth a go. Worst comes to the worst, it’s got a 3 year warranty after all!
Stealth is the only option, but with 125mm of drop and 30.9/31.8mm options it should be grand for most modern bikes. Fitting is dead easy, as all the adjustment is made at the lever end, and once the cable was fitted and tension’d I haven’t had to do a thing to it. The only maintenance has been removing the collar, adding a small sachet of provided grease, and refitting the collar. No tools, and only needed roughly every 150 hours. The service manual reckons a full inspection every 450 hours, a suitably lengthy service interval, the kind of product I love – fit and forget! 6 Months in, and all is well, the post still happily going up and down after thousands of actuations. When I opened the collar, it was sparkly clean inside, a testament to the quality of the seals.
The lever is a great thing, a real design masterpiece. The ball joint and reasonably long lever mean you can place it just where you need it. There’s no direct mount options, but with a slim clamp this doesn’t cause any issues. Any cable tension adjustments are done at this end as well. When I’m on a bike with a different dropper I am always surprised how much more I have to move my grip. It’s safe to say it’s the best lever on a dropper post! The levers are also available as an aftermarket part, so you could pimp your non-CB cable post.
125mm of range is pretty good, and a 150mm post is in the final testing stages ready for next season. Next season will also see the introduction of grip tape style stickers for the lever, colour matched for your bike, of course.
The speed of the post isn’t adjustable, but I’ve never found it to be too fast, or indeed not where I’ve needed it. There’s no audible top-out clunk as there is on some posts, and the responsiveness to the lever is impressive, as good as any dropper, cable actuated or hydraulic.
I’m delighted to say that Crank Brothers have got the dropper cracked at last, it’s been a long time coming but the Highline really is as good as the best out there. I’m going to keep using it all through winter to really push the reliability, but I am expecting it to just keep on droppin’!
RRP £299.99