Yeti SB165
Wheel Size: 29’’ front / 27.5’’ rear
Travel: 165 mm rear / 170 mm front
Geometry Highlights:
- Sizes Offered: S, M, L, XL
- Headtube Angle: 63.5°
- Seat Tube Angle: 76.9°
- Reach: 480 mm (size Large)
- Chainstay Length: 437 mm (size Large)
Frame Material: Carbon fiber
Price:
- T-Series Carbon Frame w/ Fox Float X2 Factory: $4,800
- Complete Bikes: $6,300 to $10,200
Test Locations: Washington
Reviewers:
- David Golay: 6’, 170 lbs / 183 cm, 77.1 kg
- Zack Henderson: 6’, 160 lb / 183 cm, 72.6 kg
Test Duration: 3 months
Intro
Yeti has been incrementally overhauling their line over the last year and change — and just brought back the ASR while they were at it — but now their final existing model has been updated to their latest frame architecture.
The SB165 has long been positioned in the “Rip” category in Yeti’s characterization of their lineup, contrasting the SB150 and later the SB160 in the “Race” column, with the SB165 serving as the more playful, freeride-oriented flavor of long-travel Yeti.
The new SB165 keeps the same 165 mm of rear travel and general intended purpose as the outgoing version, but it’s gotten a bunch of refinements to its construction and suspension kinematics, overhauled geometry, and it’s grown a mullet, too. Let’s see what Yeti has cooked up:
The Frame
Most of the updates to the SB165 aren’t going to come as a huge surprise to folks who’ve been following Yeti’s updates to the bulk of their lineup over the last year or so.
The brand’s longstanding Switch Infinity suspension platform stays but gets a bunch of tweaks and refinements, mainly meant to improve durability and serviceability. The bearings now press into the aluminum linkage parts rather than the main carbon frame members, and the pivot axles use a floating layout with locking collets to keep everything snug. The bottom bracket shell is threaded, and the cable routing is internal and fully guided, with bolt-on clamps at the exit points to keep the cables from rattling or rubbing. And Yeti has, unsurprisingly, added a UDH as well.
Arguably more surprising is the fact that Yeti has gone to a mixed-wheel-size layout on the SB165. Mullet bikes are, of course, rather trendy these days, but Yeti has been one of the stronger holdouts when it comes to keeping full-27.5’’ bikes around (including on the very fun SB135). So it feels notable that they’ve gone in a different direction with the SB165 — making it their first production mixed-wheel bike to date.
(We say “first production mixed-wheel bike” because the prototype Yeti DH bike that’s been raced by Richie Rude and Mick Hannah is not available for sale, but does feature a mixed-wheel setup.)
As per usual for Yeti, the SB165 is offered in a carbon fiber frame only, but with two different tiers of carbon layup. The more basic C-series frame gets a less expensive layup, and the fancier T-series one saves a bit of weight at the cost of, well, cost.
The T-series frames also get Yeti’s revised Switch Infinity mechanism with improved bearings and seals, which is claimed to run smoothly for longer than the older version (which still comes standard on C-series frames). Grease fittings are still featured on both versions, though the layout of Yeti’s newer frames means that accessing one of the two fittings requires some disassembly of the rear triangle.
Fit & Geometry
Yeti offers the SB165 in four sizes labeled Small, Medium, Large, and XL; the XXL option on the SB160 doesn’t make the cut here.
All four sizes of the SB165 get the same 63.5° headtube angle and a seat tube angle just a tick under 77°; reach ranges from 430 to 505 mm (with stops at 460 and 480 mm along the way). The chainstay length starts at 433 mm on the Small and grows by 2 millimeters per frame size from there. Yeti doesn’t list a bottom bracket drop but states the estimated bottom bracket height at 345 mm.
To put these into perspective, the differences in geometry are pretty interesting if you look at both the outgoing SB165 and the current SB160. The new SB165’s stack height is much higher than that of the old one but the two SB165’s headtube angle, seat tube angle, and reach figures are essentially identical. The new bike’s chainstay length in the size Small is the same as the outgoing model’s was across the entire size range, and the stated bottom bracket height is within 0.1 mm, too.
Now, compared to the more race-oriented SB160, the SB165 is a little slacker and a good bit lower, with a slightly shorter reach, a taller stack height, and slightly shorter chainstays in a given size. By and large, those are pretty normal-looking numbers for a modern longer-travel bike, but it’ll be interesting to see how the SB165 compares to the SB160 in particular, given their differences in wheel size, geometry, and everything else.
The Builds
Yeti offers the SB165 as a T-series frame with a Fox DHX2 Factory rear shock for $4,800 or as one of four complete builds with pricing ranging from $6,300 to $10,200 (with optional upgrades, detailed below). As per usual for Yeti, all four builds get Fox suspension with SRAM drivetrains and brakes.
The highlights of the build specs are as follows:
- Drivetrain: SRAM GX
- Brakes: SRAM Code R w/ 220 mm front / 200 mm rear rotors
- Fork: Fox 38 Performance
- Shock: Fox DHX2 Factory
- Wheels: DT Swiss E1900
- Dropper Post: OneUp (SM: 150 mm; MD: 180 mm; LG & XL: 210 mm)
- Drivetrain: SRAM GX Transmission
- Brakes: SRAM Code R w/ 220 mm front / 200 mm rear rotors
- Fork: Fox 38 Performance
- Shock: Fox DHX2 Factory
- Wheels: DT Swiss E1900
- Dropper Post: OneUp (SM: 150 mm; MD: 180 mm; LG & XL: 210 mm)
- Drivetrain: SRAM X01
- Brakes: SRAM Code RSC w/ 220 mm front / 200 mm rear rotors
- Fork: Fox 38 Factory
- Shock: Fox DHX2 Factory
- Wheels: DT Swiss EX1700
- Dropper Post: Fox Transfer Performance Elite (SM: 150 mm; MD: 175 mm; LG & XL: 200 mm)
- Drivetrain: SRAM X0 Transmission
- Brakes: SRAM Code RSC w/ 220 mm front / 200 mm rear rotors
- Fork: Fox 38 Factory
- Shock: Fox DHX2 Factory
- Wheels: DT Swiss EX1700
- Dropper Post: Fox Transfer Performance Elite (SM: 150 mm; MD: 175 mm; LG & XL: 200 mm)
Some Questions / Things We’re Curious About
(1) Yeti has made a number of notably game-on, aggressive bikes over the years (the SB160 being a prime example) but they’re very capable of making playful, more easygoing ones, too (e.g., the SB135). So, where does the SB165 land on that spectrum?
(2) How does the SB165 compare to the SB160, and what sorts of riders are going to get along better with one over the other?
(3) And how does the SB165 stack up against the ever-growing crop of mixed-wheel Enduro / Freeride bikes at large?
FULL REVIEW
We were pretty curious to find out what the new Yeti SB165 would be like when we first caught wind of it early this year. It’s Yeti’s first (production) mullet bike, the longest-travel Yeti you can buy right now, and it’s meant to be the more playful, freeride-oriented option in Yeti’s big bike lineup, alongside the SB160 Enduro race bike. But Yeti has a history of making some pretty game-on, hard-charging bikes (the SB160 among them), so how would the SB165 shake out? We were eager to find out.
Fit & Sizing
David Golay (6’, 170 lb / 183 cm, 77.1 kg): There’s nothing too funky going on with the fit of the SB165, and I had a very easy time getting comfortable on our size Large review bike. I trimmed the bars to my normal preferred width of 790 mm, fiddled with the bar height via stem spacers a little bit (kudos to Yeti for spec’ing a 35 mm rise bar to make that easier), and was quickly in a good spot. Yeti’s recommended sizing bands put me squarely onto a Large frame, just outside the overlapping bands for the Medium and XL, and I wasn’t the least bit tempted to deviate from that recommendation. The Large SB165 fits me great.
At 480 mm, the reach of the Large SB165 is a touch on the shorter side of my normal preferred range for this sort of bike, but it’s not a bike that I would be quick to size up on, reach-wise. Between the body positioning that the SB165 favors (more on that in a minute), and its goal of being a more playful, freeride-oriented sort of Enduro bike, the SB165 doesn’t feel like a bike that’s particularly suited to aggressively sizing up.
Zack Henderson (6’, 160 lb / 183 cm, 72.6 kg): The Large SB165’s fit numbers are squarely in my typical sweet spot, so I was unsurprised to feel quite at home from the start. Like David, I appreciated the 35 mm rise bar given my preference for a slightly higher-than-average stack, and I found that a taller front end seemed to suit the intentions of the SB165 quite well.
The one figure that I did notice just a bit was the somewhat slacker-than-average seat tube angle. The effective seat angle is just under 77°, but the actual is just a hair over 72°. Yeti does not specify the seat height at which that effective seat angle is calculated, but that slacker actual seat tube angle meant that the seated climbing position felt a bit longer than the advertised 625 mm effective top tube would imply. In my case, that was not a bad thing, but it’s worth mentioning given that longer-legged riders on a given size may find themselves with a slacker-feeling seat angle, and correspondingly longer-feeling top tube than expected.
David: I didn’t mind the SB165’s seat tube angle, but the length of the seated cockpit is another reason I wouldn’t want to size up on it. Given that I really liked the fit of the Large SB165 on the way down, too, all was well there, but Zack is right to note that the seated cockpit feels a little longer than the published effective top tube number might suggest.
Climbing
David: There’s not a ton that specifically stands out (good or bad) about the SB165’s climbing performance — it’s just a nicely sorted, well-rounded bike on that front. The pedaling position is good — upright enough that keeping the front wheel planted is easy, not so extreme as to feel awkward on flatter bits — and the SB165 offers a nice middle ground of solid efficiency and decent traction under power.
The SB165’s low-speed handling while climbing also feels very normal for a modern Enduro bike. There are any number of shorter-travel Trail bikes with steeper headtubes and shorter wheelbases that are more nimble in tight spots and so on, but the SB165 doesn’t feel unduly ponderous, either. And while the SB165’s static bottom bracket height is a little bit on the low side, its suspension feels quite supportive and un-wallow-y — most notably when doing rearward weight shifts to loft the front wheel over something — which goes a long way toward keeping pedal clearance manageable.
All told, the SB165 is a very respectable climber for a 165mm-travel bike, and one that gets there by being well-rounded and not having any notable shortcomings rather than specifically excelling at any one thing in particular. There are bikes in this travel range that pedal more efficiently, others that have more traction under power, and so on, but the sorts of bikes that really stand out for one particular attribute tend to make a substantial compromise elsewhere to get there. The SB165 takes the more moderate path and feels very intuitive and easy to get along with for it.
Zack: I don’t have much to add beyond what David said — the SB165 is a fairly fuss-free climber for a long-legged Enduro bike, with a comfortable seated position and supportive yet fairly neutral suspension feel. Sure, standing efforts will unsettle the rear suspension a bit (as with most bikes in this travel range), but Yeti seems to have struck a nice balance of creating a supportive suspension feeling that doesn’t over- or under-shoot in the anti-squat department, leading to a nice balance of grip and resistance to excessive bobbing under power.
I still find that full 29”-wheeled bikes tend to carry speed uphill a bit more effortlessly, but the short chainstays and smaller 27.5” rear wheel on the SB165 made it fairly easy to navigate some particularly tight switchbacks on my local climbs. With 165 mm of travel, the SB165 doesn’t feel particularly engaging on those steeper and more technical climbs, but it’s above average relative to many other descending-focused bikes that we spend time on.
Descending
David: I wasn’t quite sure what to expect from the SB165 when I got to the top of my first climb onboard it, and pointed things back downhill. For one thing, I was able to start spending time on the SB165 before I knew much about it beyond its wheel size and an educated guess about its travel numbers (the name made that part easy). But Yeti has a history of making some pretty game-on, aggressive descending bikes, including the SB160; on the other hand, Yeti describes the SB165 as being the more versatile big bike in their lineup, in contrast to the Enduro race-oriented SB160. Would the SB165 be a more easygoing alternative to its high-strung sibling, more or less an SB160 with a mullet, or something else entirely?
The answer is maybe a little bit of all of the above — or at least it’s not straightforwardly just one of those options — but I’ve gotten along extremely well with the SB165. And as with its fit and climbing performance, it’s the SB165’s intuitiveness and adaptability that most stand out on the way back down, too.
The SB165’s preferred body positioning feels pretty neutral, with a slight bias toward being ridden from a more forward stance than a super-centered one, and its sweet spot is relatively large. It’s possible to get too far backseat and make the front wheel start to push, but the window to work with is sizeable — especially for what is not a wildly long bike overall — and, in notable contrast to the SB160, the SB165 isn’t particularly demanding of being ridden from a forward stance with a bunch of weight over the front end. It’s still not a bike that I’d recommend for folks who want to ride super upright and centered, but I think the chassis balance of the SB165 will work for a fairly wide swath of riders.
And as long as you’re willing to put just a little bit of weight over the front of the bike, the SB165 corners really, really well at speed. There are other bikes in this class that feel more agile in really tight, awkward spots, but the SB165 shines when things open up a little more. In particular, I found it to be an especially easy bike to feather in and out of drifted turns by shifting my weight on the bike — weight up the front end to let the back step out, slide your hips back to get the rear gripping again and snap out of the drift. It’s excellent.
But I don’t want to make the SB165 out to be some ultra-jibby bike that just wants to be sideways all the time. It’s pretty lively, jumps well, and feels balanced and easy to throw around in the air, too, but the SB165 is more stable at speed and more composed going fast in rough, burly terrain than a lot of the most emphatically playful longer-travel bikes out there (check out our Deep Dive on the SB165 for a whole lot more on that).
It’s that versatility (of a sort) that really makes the SB165 stand out to me. It’s not especially “versatile” in the sense of being an easygoing all-rounder — it’s still a beefy bike that wants to be pushed pretty hard in big terrain — but the SB165 is versatile in that it covers a variety of big bike bases impressively well. The SB165 is a ton of fun to ride with a more playful style, throw around in the air, and go blow up corners, but can also focus and go fast when called upon, too.
The combination of geometry / handling and suspension performance that Yeti has cooked up feels like the key to the SB165’s recipe. Most of the relatively playful takes on a 160+mm-travel Enduro bike that I can think of get there by combining geometry that facilitates that playfulness with more plush, cushy-feeling suspension.
And that makes a certain amount of sense — if you’re trying to make a bike that doesn’t feel ultra-demanding and game-on, softening up the suspension will help you get there. But by combining fairly taut, supportive suspension with geometry numbers that facilitate a playful, freeride-y approach, Yeti has come up with an interesting middle ground that, despite its incongruous-sounding ingredients, feels entirely coherent and that I think will really click for the right folks. I, for one, am a big fan.
Zack: My first ride on the SB165 was on some slower, more technical terrain in some terrible weather, and to be honest, I wasn’t all that inspired. The MaxxTerra compound tires were displeased with the slimy roots they were being asked to manage, and the bike just generally felt a bit bigger and more ponderous than I expected. Those sensations are in contrast with my feelings from other Yetis I’ve ridden in the past, so I reserved judgment — and I’m glad I did.
Before venturing out for another ride, I made a few changes. I removed one 5 mm spacer from under the stem to help buy myself a bit more front-end weight bias, and I sped up the shock rebound while also reducing low-speed compression to allow the bike’s dynamic ride height to sink a bit lower. These were all just guesses in the garage but ended up paying huge dividends on the trail.
From the beginning of my next ride, the SB165 felt dialed. I was carrying a ton of speed through rhythm sections to the point that I was overshooting jumps, in part because the bike was a ton of fun to slap through corners just to see how much exit speed I could carry. The suspension felt like it had plenty of grip, and though the shorter-than-average chainstays and 27.5” rear wheel did still exhibit some of the tendency to break traction a bit earlier than a full 29” setup, it was always very predictable.
I expected the relatively short chainstays and smaller rear wheel of the SB165 to require a more forward stance than it does. In part, I think Yeti’s choice to run a 50 mm stem helped there, but compared to something like the Ibis HD6 — another mixed wheel Enduro rig with 165 mm of rear travel, short stays, and a 50 mm stem — the SB165 definitely has a larger and more neutral-feeling sweet spot as far as body positioning goes.
The SB165 needs speed to feel truly playful, but I think David hit the nail on the head with his description of Yeti taking a slightly different approach to bringing that playful feel into what’s ultimately a pretty big bike. Where other bikes we’ve tested feel playful because of some combination of short chainstays, maybe a steeper head angle, and maybe a shorter reach, the SB165 keeps the confidence-inspiring geometry hallmarks of a race-ready Enduro bike while hitting what I feel is a sweet spot with a very supportive suspension feel and short-ish, but not too short, chainstays.
It makes for a ride that requires a bit more speed to come alive as compared to some other bikes I’d call super playful, but the SB165 offers much more composure than some of those other bikes when pushing hard in rough terrain such that it feels good in most situations.
The Build
David: The top-tier T3 build that we tested is, unsurprisingly, quite nice, and didn’t leave me wanting for much. I’m glad to see things like a 200mm-travel dropper post and a 220 mm front brake rotor on a size Large Enduro bike, though the now-prior-generation Fox Transfer was pretty sticky out of the box, as we’ve seen from a whole bunch of those over the last couple of years. Hopefully the just-updated Transfer sorts that out, but we haven’t yet spent time on one to find out.
Another minor, but irritating recurring issue is the stock Yeti-branded carbon handlebar being slippery and hard to clamp controls on solidly. As has been the case with a few of those bars I’ve used over the years, I needed to add some carbon assembly paste underneath the brake lever clamps to keep them in place, but things were fine once I did so.
My only other gripe, which won’t come as much of a surprise to regular readers, is the tire spec — a 165mm-travel Enduro bike deserves burlier rubber than the stock Exo+ / MaxxTerra Maxxis DHRII rear / Assegai front tire combo. I swapped in another wheelset with Continental Kryptotal DH tires in the SuperSoft compound — still my current go-to all-arounder Enduro / DH tire these days — for much of the test period to better match the capabilities of the SB165.
Zack: I can give a solid +1 to everything that David said here, especially regarding the tires given my rather wet (and consequently kinda scary) first ride on the SB165. I did experience some rather mysterious degradation in shifting from the XO Transmission derailleur, which required a bit of trim adjustment in multiple gears throughout the cassette — fortunately an easy task with Transmission — and it didn’t come back after that one specific instance.
Another quick callout is on the DHX2 rear shock. A number of DHX2-equipped bikes we’ve tested recently have come from stock with the standard, (rather heavy) non-SLS spring. It makes sense to not throw a bunch of money at the fancier SLS option given that riders are likely to have to swap springs to get to their exact target spring weight, but after seeing Norco including a Sprindex on the coil-equipped versions of the new Sight, it reminded me just how cool it would be for other brands to do the same. Regardless, as with all coil-equipped complete bikes, buyers should be prepared to identify their ideal spring weight to get the most out of the bike.
David: Yeah, I love Norco including a Sprindex on the Sight, and it’d be super cool for more companies to follow suit. For what it’s worth, the 500 lb/in spring that Yeti sent over on our review bike was right on the money for me, at 170 lb / 77.1 kg.
Zack: Finally, as much as the rear suspension on the SB165 impressed me, I do have some skepticism about the longevity of the Switch Infinity system. A couple of wet rides saw a lot of grit accumulating around those little Kashima-coated sliders, and I’ve seen Switch Infinity bikes eventually showing significant signs of wear — including at least one with Yeti’s updated Switch Infinity sliders. I’d encourage buyers to stay on top of cleaning and maintaining the system to prevent issues down the road, as it is a bit more intricate than some other suspension designs.
David: As a final aside, I love the green paint on our review bike. It’s hard to get the full lustrousness of it to come out in photos but it looks absolutely killer in person.
Who’s It For?
David: The Yeti SB165 is a bike for relatively aggressive riders who have the terrain to put a burly 165mm-travel Enduro bike to work, and who want a fairly taut, lively-feeling option that can be pushed hard and ridden at pace, but is more playful, more fun to throw around, and more multi-dimensional than the sizeable crop of ultra-focused go-fast Enduro race bikes out there. Riders who prefer an especially centered, upright stance will probably be better off elsewhere, but the SB165 is adaptable enough to work for a fairly wide range of folks there, and its combination of precision and playfulness isn’t quite like anything else I’ve ridden.
Zack: At Yeti’s $4,800 US asking price for the frame (along with some pricey, albeit slightly more reasonable complete bike prices), the SB165 positions itself in the upper echelons of the mountain bike market. In my mind, that’s a bit of a shame, as I can see a whole bunch of different riders getting along very well with the SB165. It prefers more of a “driver” vs. “passenger” riding style, but it also has a large sweet spot and combination of quickness and stability that few other bikes I’ve ridden can match. The SB165 has been positioned as Yeti’s freeride-oriented Enduro bike, but I’d argue that it’s more than that — it’s a fun-loving Enduro bike that can mess around in the bike park one day and win an Enduro race the next.
Bottom Line
Yeti has taken their time coming out with their first production mixed-wheel bike, but they’ve come up with something interesting (and very good) in the new SB165. It’s more of a generalist (in the Enduro bike realm — a long-legged Trail bike it is not) than it is specifically tailored to one narrow sliver of the mountain bike world, and it’s a bike that the right riders will enjoy for precisely that reason.
Deep Dive Comparisons
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Check out our Deep Dive comparisons of the Yeti SB165 to see how it compares to the Yeti SB160, Santa Cruz Nomad, Rocky Mountain Altitude, Orbea Rallon, Norco Sight, Kavenz VHP 16, Ibis HD6, Contra MC, Trek Slash, Chromag Lowdown, Propain Tyee, SCOR 4060 LT, Cotic RocketMAX, Pivot Firebird, Specialized Enduro, and Banshee Titan.