Yesterday Giant quietly launched their first mountain bike suspension fork. It's called the Crest 34, it appears to be aimed at the lower, more budget trail bikes and it looks like it will only appear OEM on bikes from Giant and Liv rather than being sold separately. Here's what we know so far....

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There's not a huge amount of detail and there's no word on exactly which bikes these forks will be specced on or the price point of those bike but we do know some details. To start with this is an air sprung fork and from the user manual, it looks like it will be offered in 100mm and 120mm travel.  

The brands says the fork will have low speed compression, low-speed rebound adjustments and you can use tokens (volume spacers) too, just like you can on Rockshox or Fox forks to further tune. The compression damping can be adjusted via a dial on the top of the fork, there are three modes, open, trail and lock-out. Rebound is adjusted via a know on the bottom of the fork leg similar to that seen on other brands of fork. 

The bike uses a 15mm Boost spaced thru axle and the brand says the fork will be available for both 27.5" and 29er wheel but only using up to a 29x2.4" tyre (27.5 x 2.6"). We reckon the 34 denotes that this fork is designed around 34mm sanctions too for both travel lengths. We expect that the 27.5" version will be 120mm in travel and the 29er will use 100mm travel. 

Giant says the Crest is engineered with specific materials distribution around the crown, uppers, lowers and hollow bridge, establishing a perfect balance between stiffness and strength using a temperature controlled casting procedure in their factory in Taiwan which they reckon keeps the weight low. 

It looks like Giant is making this step to further the parts they make in house, probably in an effort to keep costs low and deliver better performance to more riders. It'll be interesting to get a new bike in for test that is specced with this fork and have a ride on it, then we'll be able to compare it like for like with forks already on sale. We haven't seen it specced on an 2020 bikes yet so perhaps this fork is being saved for 2021? We will keep you updated....

• www.giant-bicycles.com

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