The Lowdown is also going to work best for folks who prefer to take a more dynamic, active approach than many of the other more composed, aggressive descending bikes in its class. A lot of the bikes that favor that sort of active, precise approach get there by being on the more nimble, sharp-handling end of the spectrum for a big Enduro bike, but the Lowdown is quite stable at speed, fairly composed and planted in its suspension performance, and more adept at soaking up whatever comes its way than a lot of the more nimble, lively takes on a longer-travel Enduro bike out there.

Mostly, the Lowdown just wants a good bit of speed and aggression to come alive. At lower speeds and on flatter trails it can feel sluggish and not especially engaging. It’s not a bike that’s super quick to build speed by pumping through terrain features on flatter trails, and in slower, flatter sections of trail, getting light on the Lowdown and lofting it over holes and rough bits takes more exaggerated movements and a bit more effort than some other more lively, pop-y sorts of Enduro bikes.

But once you start really moving, the Lowdown delivers a compelling combination of being quite composed and confidence-inspiring, while being more agile and maneuverable than its lower speed handling might suggest. With a little speed and some downward pitch to the trail, the Lowdown’s low-speed sluggishness melts away and it really starts to come into its own.

That duality of its handling is one of the things that stands out to me the most about the Lowdown — and is one of the things that I like the most about it. There are plenty of super stable, planted Enduro bikes that need some speed and aggression to come into their element, but those sorts of bikes tend to still feel like big, blunt objects that just want to run things over once the pace picks up. And there are nimbler, sharper-handling bikes that are more engaging at lower speeds while still being able to be pushed quite hard, but they generally need to be ridden fairly precisely to get there.

The way that the Lowdown manages to be fairly maneuverable once it’s up to speed, while still also being quite adept at just smashing its way through rough bits when called upon is pretty special. And while its handling is a big part of the story there, the Lowdown’s suspension performance and overall feel of the chassis play a role, too. The Lowdown does an excellent job of feeling smooth and comfortable, particularly in how it mutes out smaller feedback and trail chatter, while still offering good support from the suspension, and without feeling particularly flexy or imprecise in how it responds to rider input.

We’ve reviewed a lot of steel full suspension frames over the last couple of years — they’re having a definite resurgence of late — and that smooth, quiet ride feel is something of a consistent throughline with them, but to a widely varying degree. It’s possible to make a steel frame (or front triangle) pretty stiff, as with the Reeb Steezl; at the other end of the spectrum you’ve got very compliant-feeling frames like the Starling Murmur. The Lowdown’s frame (which, again, uses a steel front triangle and an aluminum rear end) feels fairly stiff overall while being a bit more muted and transmitting a little less feedback to the rider than most modern carbon fiber frames.