Review: Bikeradar - Fox Float X2 Factory 2Pos-Adjust Shock

Bikeradar has reviewed the Fox Float X2 Factory shock. Here is what they said:

The Float X2 shock’s high price goes in hand-in-hand with high performance. Excellent depth and range of on-trail performance make this shock one of the best upgrades money can buy.

Fox’s Float X2 Factory rear mountain bike shock is the brand’s highest-spec, most adjustable air-sprung damper, designed for the toughest conditions.

This model features the 2Pos-Adjust climb lever, making it possible to lock out, stopping unwanted movement on the climbs.

The MY2022 Float X2 I tested has received a host of updates over the outgoing version. Fox claims these changes make the new Float X2 one of the best shocks it has ever produced.

The changes to the latest iteration of the Fox Float X2 shock include a damper redesign that permitted Fox to switch to its Variable Valve Control (VVC) high-speed rebound damping.

VVC is a new take on how to open and close high-speed rebound damping. Usually, an adjuster would increase or decrease preload on a valve stack to speed up or slow down the fork’s rebound.

This, according to Fox, can cause harshness, so VVC uses a small winged tab to apply pressure to the top of the shim stack on either its inner point or outer point, acting as a lever, to increase how much pressure is needed to open the valve and allow oil to flow through.

This change has moved the high-speed rebound adjuster to the eyelet end of the shock, too.

It also has a high-flow main piston, linear damping and an independent lockout lever, which is firmer than the outgoing shock.

The new damper now has the same number of high-speed compression and rebound adjustment clicks as the brand’s GRIP2 damper forks (eight clicks) and has 16 clicks of low-speed rebound and compression damping adjustment.

I felt the recommended settings made the bike feel over-damped, with the suspension reluctant to flutter over the top of the smallest trail chatter, struggling to both compress quickly enough and rebound fast enough to recover for the next hit.

The same was true for bigger hits when the bike was in its mid-stroke. It felt as though it wasn’t returning to its sag point fast enough and was getting choked on the compression stroke too.

This was especially marked over harder square-edged bumps and caused a harshness through the back end, punishing the rear wheel.

It felt simply as though the damper wasn’t allowing the rear wheel to move out of the way of bumps quickly enough.

This was less of an issue around berms or through compressions, and the over-damped feel improved the bike’s pop and helped keep its chassis stable. It was also less of a problem on one-off landings where the bike was going deep into its travel, but only if that landing was smooth. Add in bumps, and once again it felt choked.

The solution was to wind off the high- and low-speed compression and rebound damping beyond the recommended settings until the bike felt smoother and not as harsh over bumps, but while leaving enough damping on to retain chassis stability.

I ended up running all the compression and rebound adjusters fully open, with no detrimental effects to chassis stability, but an immense improvement in the freeness of the shock’s movement.

With these settings, I ended up installing a secondary volume reducer token to increase how progressive the spring was making the shock ramp up quicker, reclaiming some of the mid-stroke support lost by removing the compression damping.

Running the adjusters fully open was a universal setting across every bike I’ve ridden that’s been fitted with the Float X2 (and DHX2). These experiences and settings were also something my colleagues at BikeRadar noticed and used when testing bikes with this shock.

Clearly, the stock damping is on the heavier side, and although this might limit the range of useable adjustment – where an increase of two or three clicks of damping will begin to choke the shock’s movement – it wasn’t severe enough to limit performance.

When set fully open, the Float X2 was one of the best shocks I have ridden in recent times.

The massive amount of damping and spring rate adjustability of the Float X2 means that it is a highly adaptable shock. Volume reducer spacers are easy to install or remove (just make sure you have a pick or non-scratching sharp instrument to remove the shock body circlip), and thanks to the Allen key external damping adjusters, trail-side adjustments are also a breeze.

Notably, the relocation of the high-speed rebound adjuster from the piggyback to the eyelet end on this model made on-bike changes of this adjuster tricky, usually because the frame’s shock mount was in the way. This might not be an issue on all bikes, however.

Although the range of usable damper adjustability proved to be limited because two or three clicks of adjustment had a marked effect on how much damping there was, the overall span of how much difference there was between fully open and fully closed was massive. This will certainly appeal to the tinkerers out there.

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