Flash Review: Öhlins RXF36 m.3

David Golay (6’, 160 lb / 183 cm, 72.6 kg): I already liked the Öhlins RXF36 m.2 Trail bike fork quite a bit, so I was somewhat relieved that their updates to the newer m.3 generation didn’t sound like they were taking the design in an entirely new direction. Having spent a good bit of time on the RXF36 m.3 now, the short version of my take is that the changes Öhlins made are (1) generally fairly subtle and (2) largely for the better.

The tweaks to the spring side are the most noticeable. The fundamental design of Öhlins’ dual-positive chamber air spring (check out our First Look for more on that if you aren’t familiar) hasn’t changed, but they’ve reconfigured the standard spacer configuration to make some changes to the spring curve, and I like the results quite a bit.

In short, the RXF36 m.2 shipped with a spacer installed in both the negative and main positive chambers to reduce their volumes. In the RXF36 m.3, Öhlins has dropped the negative chamber spacer altogether and put a larger one in the main chamber. The combined result is that the initial sensitivity of the new fork is noticeably better, and that the inflection point where the second positive chamber comes into play feels smoother and less abrupt.

The excellent midstroke support of the m.2 iteration was one of its most standout traits, but it could also be somewhat tricky to balance pressures in the two positive air chambers such that there wasn’t a big, rather sharp ramp-up fairly deep in the stroke shortly before the second positive chamber came into play. It was doable — and, again, I was able to get great results out of the spring as configured in the m.2 — but it wasn’t the easiest fork to set up.

The reconfigured spring in the RXF36 m.3 feels like that transition has been smoothed out across a wider range of spring settings. Especially if you’re running a bit higher differential in main chamber / ramp chamber pressures than Öhlins’ recommended baseline (which I prefer to do in both RXF36 iterations I’ve been on), the sensation of the fork getting very progressive around the 70% travel mark is tamped down considerably. The midstroke support from the spring in the m.3 iteration is still very good, but the spring curve feels smoother and more predictable.

I’m also a fan of the lighter rebound damping tune Öhlins switched to with the RXF36 m.3. As with the spring side, the damper itself hasn’t changed, but the way it’s configured has. I can find rebound settings that work with both tunes, but I’ve got more leeway to go in either direction with the lighter tune on the m.3; with the m.2 I didn’t have a ton of room left to go faster.

More significantly, the lighter tune means that there’s less high-speed rebound damping overall — as with most dampers, the single rebound adjustment primarily changes the behavior at lower shaft speeds. The RXF36 m.3 is a bit quicker to recover from deeper compressions while still feeling nicely controlled.

So, all told, the updates to the RXF36 m.3 are indeed more refinements to the earlier m.2 version than they are a massive overhaul of the fork, but I like what Öhlins has done here. We’ll have a Full Review to come in a bit, but I feel like I’ve got a pretty good handle on the performance of the RXF36 m.3 at this point, and my take on it isn’t likely to evolve much from here.