Review: Wideopen Mountian Bike - Fox DHX Live Valve Neo Shock

WideOpen Magazine has reviewed the Fox DHX Live Valve Neo shock. Here is what they had to say:

Pete heads south to the Silverfish Service Centre in Risca to get a first ride on the brand new Fox DHX Live Valve Neo shock.

Fox’s Live Valve goes wireless and shock-only, for now, and our man Pete met up with the team in Risca to see what the Fox DHX Live Valve Neo can do.

Key features:

• Based on DHX shock
• Transparent and trackable 125-hour service interval
• Separate valved reservoir circuits for compression and firm mode
• Factory series only
• Bearing mount and Fox-approved strut mount
• Reservoir lengths match shock length
• Numbered, tool-free, rebound adjuster
• Standard and trunnion mounts available
• Travel adjust in 2.5mm increments up to 7.5mm
• £1,099.00 RRP
• RideFox.com

Fox’s Live Valve Neo replaces their older, wired Live Valve system and does away with the Live Valve for the fork… For now, anyway. Now on offer is either a DHX coil or a Float X Factory shock with Live Valve Neo, a wireless system that claims to be the fastest wireless shock on the market.

400 computations a second give you changes between Active and Support in 1/70th seconds, where Active is essentially an open damper, with Support offering more support, unsurprisingly. The level of support is variable depending on the information coming from the caliper-mounted sensors.

Having a fork-mounted sensor allows the shock to open before the rear wheel has met the same impact, with the aim of the Live Valve Neo protocol is to add support and backing it off for berms, jumps and technical sections faster than you could think to do it yourself. A magnetic latching solenoid controls the compression circuit.

Pete was lucky enough to get a ride on the shock last week to see what it can, and can’t do. With his Saracen Ariel 60 Elite coming stock with a DHX2 coil, it was a good opportunity to run it up against the DHX Live Valve Neo.

I opted to run a slightly lighter spring at 375lb (rather than the stock 400) to get the damping somewhere closer to the middle rather than almost full open and this in itself brought the bike alive, with far more control in the opening portion of the travel.

With that aside, it was time to head into the hills above Risca with Tim Williams. This involved some steep Valley winches through the estates, a blast along the canal, a hefty old climb then the usual Risca descents in the bone dry.

On the smoother climbs, the shock defaulted to Support, making the bike almost like a hardtail, then once off road, the front wheel hitting some rocks would open the shock but not to fully open, maintaining traction and allowing me to maintain my cadence.

As the ground tipped downhill, the shock came alive, wonderfully supportive, as I tried to keep up with Tim, as I stuffed the bike into turns. Freefall came into effect on the various fly-offs, defaulting to open in the air, before firming up as the bike took the hit.

I opted not to play with the multitude of app settings available as the shock seemed to be doing what I wanted it to. Hopefully I’ll get another play on the shock in the Scottish grease where I can really put it to the test and start to fine tune my settings.