SL8 vs SL7 vs Venge Specialized Road Bike Comparison

Today we are down in Winchester and we're currently sat in the Southdown Social Cafe

and today I've been joined by Specialised Ambassador Alan Murchison because this is a man who has ridden

over 70 Specialised bikes, he has an in-depth knowledge of the S-Works SL7 and has recently

taken delivery of the SL8. So the question that I'm asking him is what is the difference between

the two we've been out on the roads to do some real world data testing it's a little bit ghetto

it's a bit of a car park test but it is going to give us some numbers to have a look at to see how

these two really perform i think a really good place to start actually is just going to be looking

at the similarities between both of these bikes because you know this is a this is the eighth

generation of the tarmac so it is another iteration of it and that means that there are a lot of

similarities and i think one of the key ones actually is just the shape of the frame they're

still sticking with the drop seat stays um the frame shape itself actually hasn't changed all

that much and the geometry is identical it's also meant that comfort of the bike i think is also

going to be quite similar specialized did quote that there was a six percent improvement in

compliance at the saddle when you've ridden this bike your short experience with it so far

could you feel any difference in comfort between the two bikes nah no i think six percent is a very

small margin. I couldn't feel any real difference it just felt really really responsive without being

mega stiff because normally you say well it's responsive that means stiff and stiff means

uncomfortable. Yeah it seems responsive but it doesn't feel like you're riding a plank of wood

for example. The only other similarity that I can really draw from this bike actually is the fork

of the bike really replicates that of the Venge fork. I'd say the two between the SL7 and the SL8

i think they're actually quite different the sl7 fork is a bit more circular and actually a bit

narrower whereas the sl8 fork is definitely flatter and a bit longer they've really dialed

in the aero at the front of the bike i think the other thing is a head tube as well yeah there's a

chunk there and that's more reminiscent of the venge so when i first saw this bike it looked

quite odd because it looked very front heavy because it was built up at the front and then

very very small rear stays and i i wasn't convinced about the aesthetics of it whereas

when you see a built up yeah it looks pretty good yeah looking at the price and weights of the bikes

on offer an interesting picture emerges not only is the sl8 now cheaper compared to the sl7 in

certain builds but now you don't need the s works sl8 to beat the s works sl7 in weight the difference

between the top end sl7 and sl8 is acclaimed 120 grams however the lower grade 10r carbon version

of the SL8 is just 100 grams heavier than the S-Works version. So if you want a bike as light

as the S-Works SL7, then opt for the cheaper variant of the SL8 and then build it up in a

matching spec. I was really surprised at how fast the SL7 was. Climbing it was considerably faster

than anything else. Where the Venge came into its own was once you started getting over 50k an

like dual carriageway stuff, which is rare. Let's be brutally honest, we all have delusions

of riding everywhere at 50k an hour. It's not something that any of us do on a regular basis

So the Venge was still very very fast above 50k an hour but rolling air roads climbs the tarmac was just fast from the box You know it was a really really fast easy to get on with bike and it felt fast and then the numbers the little test that we did it proved to be really fast on the road

Just day-to-day riding, it's fast. So just run us through, what did that test consist of in terms of the parkour

It was a climb, an 800 metre climb, it was a couple of K of rolling bumpy A-road, sort of mixed surface and then there was 5K of dual carriageway

so a little bit of everything yeah nothing too technical and i i was looking for repeatability

as well so i did it on a bit of road that i think according to strava i've done over 700 times

so another road and we did it based on heart rate and power yeah so we did a run on avenge

we did a run on the sl7 and we did a run on the sl8 bikes were pretty much set up the same they're

all running uh durace di2 power saddles uh clx wheels uh tire setups almost identical so

they were all as close as they could be now one caveat yeah obviously i like to tinker with bikes

the venge and the sl7 ceramic bottom brackets ceramic jockey wheels wax chains etc yeah the

sl8 straight out of the box yes literally no changes at all so it's got standard bottom

bracket it's got a greased up chain yeah factory yeah and it's got a stack on it like a big mark

35 mil of stack there so i mean compared to the sl7 which has 15 mil yeah that's a sizable

difference um and i think the other thing as well was that on the sl8 there is no oversized

pulley wheel system it's a standard it's completely standard straight out of the box cool okay so run us through some of the numbers so first off we had the venge then the sl7 and the

sl8 yeah how did the venge perform the venge was really good um today we had a tailwind uh on a

carriageway which is always going to favor a full aero bike so climbing we did the climb the

Venge was climbing uh 19.9k an hour and it did the the little loop that we did in 10 minutes and

eight seconds marking out at 66k an hour so it was fast uh it climbed okay and it was good and it felt

really stable so the Venge was good okay cool and then the SL7 SL7 was climbing like an absolute

demon right putting in context the same climb the average 20.4 km an hour so half a kilometer an hour

yeah faster on a climb that's only like minute and a half long yeah uh it was almost identical

speed max that is 65 km not quite as fast as the venge um was honestly it was in within one to two

seconds so so to be honest in the real world that's kind of negligible differences yeah it was

it was what you'd expect the sl7 climbed faster it was faster on the bumpy rolling airwood yeah

the Venge was faster above 50k an hour. We're not telling anybody anything they're not going to expect

Exactly, yeah. And if you went to the engineers that specialised and said that to them

you go, yeah, that makes sense. That's what it makes sense. For sure. Then, SL8

Bog standard SL8. Now, bear in mind, this was the first time I rode this bike today

So I've done nothing to it. I went out. It climbed at 20.6k an hour

So that's 0.2 faster than the SL7. 0.7 of a kilometre faster than the Venge

Wow. down the factors when the climb was flattening off i was actually going down the gears i was

you needed to yeah it was remarkable and it did it actually seven seconds faster over 10 minutes

and again very short climb so as soon as you start to extrapolate that out yeah over something longer

you know the gains will kind of compound it was mad and it also maxed out at 69k an hour

you know so quicker than the venge quicker than the venge and nearly 4k an hour faster than this bearing in bearing in mind wow that running that stuck i can get down so it was really really quick but it just felt fast and there

quite a lot of things i can do to make this bike faster and personalized but it was faster it was

faster on the climb yeah it was faster max speed and it was faster a to b so if you actually put

that into context on a 10 minute test section you go half an hour 21 seconds over half an hour faster

than the sl7 based on real ghetto error testing but it felt comfortable it felt easy to ride

um i hadn't dialed it in at all there was nothing i'd done i just rode it yeah and it was bloody

quick well okay okay i think that's a really important point i reckon because in the real

world how many of us are really like accurately tracking i mean most people ride bikes because

they enjoy riding a bike for a lot of people it's not all about the data sometimes it's about

that kind of intangible feel a bike gives you so in terms of ride quality is like we were saying

you are so dialed in with the sl7 you really know that bike obviously this is still new to you but

that also means you're going to be able to pinpoint where things are different yeah so

how does the ride feel compare from the sl8 to the sl7 okay that it feels more comfortable and

it feels more responsive which those two things really go hand in hand so you think comfort you

go ruby comfortable bike it's comfortable you could be on it all day responsive you think i

could do an hour and a half two hours on this that feels comfortable and it feels responsive

and it feels fast like doing just under 70k an hour that's seriously pretty fast seriously quick

on the first time out on a bike and it was planted bear in mind cross tailwind today so you've got

the wind gusting in it's running the same wheels there's something they've done with a back end and

how it feels it just feels fast so actually one thing i found with my time with the sl8 is how

stiff the bike felt but i'd be interested to hear from you how do you think the stiffness compares

not only to the sl7 but also the venge the venge was always a fairly harsh ride yeah because it just

there was no comfort basically in that bike no it was never about comfort it won a lot of races but

it wasn't as easy to get on with you know what i mean you you felt tired after it whereas you could

ride the SL7 day in day out you could do long days you could do a training camp you could do 25 hours

in a week and you wouldn't feel completely battered yeah I would define anybody to do 25 hours on a

Venge and not feel tired it was it just it was a raffled ride yeah with this bike I think

immediately it just feels more comfortable now I'm not going to be deluded it's got a high stack

it's got wide bars that's always going to feel more comfortable but it's bloody quick that shouldn't

be quick in that setup for me no it's 69k an hour with 35 mil of stack like that's really surprising

it shouldn't be so you think i take that out and then i will play about with the position a bit

it's good if we kind of come away from ride feel and we come away from the numbers in terms of

aesthetics there's a lot of ethos found within this bike specifically towards the rear end

what are your thoughts in terms of look i like the look i didn't like it as a frame set when i saw

initially just because of the bulbous head tube on its own i wasn't convinced and it looked very

skinny at the end it looked like a almost like a tte triathlon bike at the front and a crit bike at

the rear i thought it's an odd combination just let it kind of looked unbalanced but when you

have it built up it looks great this one's obviously some pearlescent funky matte white

which that monochrome look is really cool it is yeah i love it so built up i think it looks ace

i think it looks really good and it's also gone away from the kind of aerofoil tubes there's

quite a lot of round tubes going on i like it so you and i been privy to some some of the data from Specialised you know Vontu Milan samremo what what does that mean to you to a man woman cyclist in the street not much not an awful lot and the

thing is my issue with that data as well is that it is so far extrapolated from a real world race

situation yeah it's kind of that just to me feels a bit like marketing yeah um but yeah for the man

in the street that's going to go and buy one of these bikes what does what does he or she care

about yeah and that's the thing that's why i always like to do this ghetto testing because

people are like ah the tires or the power meter or the crank length or whatever that feels fast

i ride my bike a lot i've had a lot of s works i've had a lot of road bikes i think that gives

you an opinion that's valid yes as opposed to saying well it'll be however many seconds faster

i've won two or it'll be x minutes faster than my land some rainbow none of us are going to race

my land some rainbow not not this week i don't think it's fast it's easy to ride fast i think

that's something that's really important so look at the data that you're going to get from marketing my gut feel

hadn't ridden it is the numbers we're getting from specialised marketing downplay

how good it is interesting that would be they've actually erred on the side

of caution in my opinion because they did it with the SL7

I remember when it came out they gave you these numbers on the SL7 and I did some

ghetto testing and I was like nah it's faster than that and I spoke to

some pretty key people in specialised and I said so that's actually faster in the Venge is it

I said it is on real roads as a real person and the problem is

is if you've got a world tour pro testing a bike or you've got a wind tunnel

neither are those in the real world. No, no. And having tested them. It's a completely staged situation

Yeah, and how a world tour rider will ride a bike with a position, a pedalling technique

Yeah. It's completely, and how they hold their head and how they hold their hands

It's all very different to normal cyclists. Even, you know, people like yourself

For sure. We love a bike and we ride a bike a lot, but we're not world tour level cyclists

And then you go to wind tunnels and you get data. Wind tunnels are only part of the parcel

You know, it doesn't take into consideration the texture of the road, how fatigued you are

It's a finite number, but it's a very controlled environment. So I think that's why you've got to ride the bike

And I think if, I don't know if they're going to run demo bikes or whatever, I'm sure they will

Because people go, well, why am I going to change this really good bike? That bike's easy to ride real fast

So that's what you've got to say is these numbers are great, but they're only a guideline. And that's why I would say get on the bike, ride it, play about with tyre pressures, play about with tyre weather and see how you get on with it

obviously as we said it's kind of the speed data is one thing but it's the ride feel that's what

people are going to care about and i think we've both experienced the fact that this feels markedly

different to the sl7 it does it does and even today you look we're going down a dual carriageway

nearly hitting 70k an hour with a side tailwind yeah i never felt uncomfortable i never felt

unstable i felt completely safe battering down the dual carriageway like that no problem at all

there's not many bikes you could do that one straight out of the box and it felt really really

fast and it just feels intuitive as well so now it's it's cool but i say use the data numbers as

a guideline don't use them as a benchmark because if i actually think that the numbers are going to

be far better in real life than they are on a paper that's published by marketing so there we

have it now obviously i think we do always have to make sure that we take a little pinch of salt

when we're speaking to an ambassador but this is someone who has got a vast amount of knowledge of

the SL7 and the Venge and basically every S-Works bike. Let us know your thoughts though down below

what do you think of the differences between the SL7 and the SL8? If you enjoyed the video then

please do drop it a like, subscribe to the channel for more content and I will see you again very soon