Seka Spear review: Incredible specs and dialled geometry, but a disappointment in one vital area

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Chinese bikes are one of perhaps two overarching themes in road bikes, along with ‘aero at the front, lightweight at the rear’. While it’s safe to say that a great proportion of ‘Western’ frames are manufactured in China, those bikes that are fully and proudly Chinese are very much upsetting the apple cart, and are now challenging the best road bikes on the market for top dog status and, more importantly, for your money.

In order to furnish you with objective and subjective testing to help inform your purchasing decisions, we’ve begun incorporating these Chinese bikes into our testing. We’ve run the X-Lab AD9 through the wind tunnel before giving it a full review, and at the time of writing, I am due to receive the new Incolour SSR, and my colleague Tom is in the process of testing a new Winspace. Now, though, it’s the turn of the Seka Spear, a bike (or frameset, I should probably say) that has been at the very forefront of the hype train.

The Spear has class-leading aero, a superbly low weight, it’s very speccable at point of sale, offers a ‘race’ geometry in some sizes, and comes in at a price that undercuts the likes of the Specialized Tarmac by a fair wedge, a bike it shares basically its entire geometry with. On paper, it should be able to claim status as the best road bike going, but there is a big catch: it’s just not stiff enough.

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I was lucky enough to pinch the frame from our video manager, Jamie, and cut about on my home roads before taking the Spear out to the Alps to zing it up and down some mountains to see what it’s really about. It’s good, but I don’t think it’s quite good enough for ‘best’ status.

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It’s a good looking bike, that’s for sure(Image credit: Will Jones)The cockpit can be specced to be sufficiently narrow and long for modern tastes(Image credit: Will Jones)Sadly the cockpit is not terribly stiff(Image credit: Will Jones)The ‘Wind Eye’ at the rear might go some way to explaining the brilliant wind tunnel performance(Image credit: Will Jones)Like the cockpit, the bottom bracket isn’t very stiff either(Image credit: Will Jones)Design and aesthetics

The frame itself is lovely and skinny, very much in the vein of the Tarmac, which belies the extremely impressive aero package on offer. With a rider on, this is the fastest all-rounder we’ve ever tested, only being beaten by three full-on aero machines. Where it really seems to shine is at higher yaw angles, which likely has something to do with the ‘Wind Eye’; the bifurcated seatstay insertions that create two large holes where they join the seat tube. We obviously can’t attribute performance to a single feature, but it’s at least not holding it back in any way. If you want to have a deep dive into the aero package, then we’ve got a whole Seka Spear wind tunnel deep dive for you to pore over.

The frame is available in two guises: a standard version weighing in at 780g, or the RDC version (Race Day Combatant), tipping the scales at 685g, both for an effectively unpainted matte black frame in a size Medium. I tested the RDC variety.

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As well as two tiers of frame, separated by $600, you also have the standard run of sizes plus a ‘Race’ geometry in both medium and large that are a little longer and a little lower. In geometry terms, the Spear is effectively the same as the Specialized Tarmac, but with a smidge shorter reach and higher stack in the standard option and a smidge longer and lower in the race version. I tested the standard geometry.

I’ll get into value later on, but from what I can see you have to order a Seka Rapier cockpit with the frameset at an additional cost of $500, and a seatpost at a cool $200. The latter isn’t an issue, but as I’ll get into shortly, the former is. While it comes in a great many widths and lengths, it is very flexible and not one I got along with at all.

You can only buy the Spear as a frameset, and given the impressive specs, I wanted to give it a fair crack of the whip, so the aforementioned Enves were paired with a full Shimano Dura-Ace groupset and 30mm Continental GP5000 S TR tyres in a build that’s pretty hard to fault.

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No complaints with Dura-Ace, though the bike is frameset only(Image credit: Will Jones)Some slight aero profiling on the back of the fork legs(Image credit: Will Jones)And on the back of the head tube, but it hardly yells ‘aero’ compared to some bikes(Image credit: Will Jones)RDC denotes the higher tier frameset(Image credit: Will Jones)Decent tyres and wheels gave it a fair crack of the whip(Image credit: Will Jones)The stays are lovely and thin to keep the weight low(Image credit: Will Jones)Here’s the Wind Eye from another angle(Image credit: Will Jones)Performance

The cockpit itself is ergonomically and aerodynamically sound, but there’s simply too much flex, especially in the drops. This is compounded by a frame that, by our lab testing, has a very flexible bottom bracket (less stiff even than my steel Fairlight Strael), but the thing I found most frustrating was the amount of torsional flex you can put through the thing, meaning that with the saddle braced against your leg, the bike can shift under you more than you lean in cornering. It doesn’t feel more flexible than a light steel frame, but it certainly doesn’t feel as stiff as a moderately stiff carbon one.

It’s not scary in any way like the Felt Nexar either, but it gives a feeling of imprecision in the bends that you simply don’t have with stiffer machines like the Pinarello Dogma, Scott Addict RC, and the Specialized Tarmac SL8.

This is a shame, because the geometry is excellent. It’s stable at high speeds without ever being dull, and the turn-in is immediate without being so lively that you have to back off. It sits right in that Goldilocks zone.

The flexibility does mean it eats up road chatter and poor surfaces very well, however, and as a bike for long, fast days without being ground to a fine powder, it’s excellent, and at times when descending Alpe d’Huez during some resurfacing works I was glad of the additional compliance. In fact, I set my fastest ever time down the hill on the Spear (361 / 77,749 at the time of writing, thank you very much), but I know that if it had that pip and zing of more taut frames, I could have gone faster.

The low weight is certainly dreamy uphill, especially on sustained efforts. On those little raises where a sprint can muscle you to the top the stiffness means you feel a little less connected to the rear end at max attack, but it doesn’t skip about either like I find with some very stiff machines under high load out of the saddle.

The aero package is certainly satisfying, aided by the ability to fit a cockpit of suitably modern (by which I mean narrow) proportions, flexibility aside. On the flat it ticks away very well, though because it’s more compliant than many bikes, it doesn’t feel all that fast on the flat, as humans perceive speed primarily through that high-frequency vibration that comes broadly under ‘road buzz’. Feeling fast and being fast are different things though, as evidenced by the Cervélo S5 for example, which is phenomenally fast but never really felt it.

Time, and a lack of suitable 32mm tyres at my disposal, meant I wasn’t able to max out the stated tyre clearance, but I suspect this would turn the Spear into a brilliant poor-surface all-road-lite machine (no, I know we don’t need yet another new genre of bikes). Despite the RDC designation on the fork crown, it sadly doesn’t quite feel like a true race-ready machine. It’s not far off, but I suspect the designers prioritised weight over stiffness, and with the aero package on offer I’d take a handful of extra grams in the frame and cockpit to make it feel more like a coiled spring.

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The slender form means it’s a lightweight machine(Image credit: Will Jones)On protracted climbs the low weight is definitely an advantage(Image credit: Will Jones)But it does lack the zing of stiffer climbers(Image credit: Will Jones)Value

Given that the hype around the Spear is that it’s a ‘Tarmac killer’ it makes sense to compare it to the SL8, though as I write this I am aware that a new version is imminent, having spotted one at the Tour Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes recently. All the same, the non-RDC varietal is about $600 less than the standard Tarmac frameset, and the RDC varietal is about $2k cheaper than the S-Works model.

On paper, especially compared to the S-Works, it’s an absolute bargain. With that ‘spare’ two grand, you could get a better cockpit and some very good wheels, but with the guts of the machine feeling as they do it’s still going to feel a lesser bike. I don’t honestly think many customers are weighing up an S-Works or an RDC Seka, and more likely is an RDC Seka or a standard Tarmac, which retail for a near identical value; get the Tarmac.

The Seka is good, but the Tarmac is excellent, and while I appreciate that $600 is a lot of money, if you’re erring on the side of economy and choosing a non-RDC spear over a standard Tarmac I’d perhaps suggest saving up some money or trimming the grams elsewhere in your build sheet to get a better chassis.

A good bike, but perhaps not great, but my word does it have the potential to be amazing with an improvement in stiffness. (Image credit: Will Jones)Verdict