We could have picked a Tour de France-winning superbike. Instead, we chose the bike that redefines usability for the rest of us.
(Photo: Alvin Holbrook/Velo)
Published December 23, 2025 09:24AM
The Velo 2025 road bike of the year winner is the Cannondale Synapse.
If you are surprised, that’s understandable. It’s a bike you might not have expected us to pick.
Certainly everything in the 2025 best road bike nominations was a contender but the Colnago Y1RS seemed like an obvious shoe in. That bike was so visible and so important in the racing world during 2025. Personally though, I think a bike more people will get to experience is a better choice.
(Photo: Alvin Holbrook/Velo)
The Velo review of the Cannondale Synapse is for the range topper Lab71 model but you can get almost that same performance for drastically less money. There are aluminum frame versions starting for $1299 but even if you consider that cheating, you can get carbon starting at $3,325. That’s a rare price for a quality bike in 2025.
This isn’t a price point bike though. It’s not only the wide range of prices that makes the Synapse so available to a wide range of cyclists. The Cannondale Synapse is also usable in a way few other bikes are. Yeah it’s winning our road bike of the year category but as I discussed in the nominations article, the Synapse helped create the gravel bike category. Now that gravel bikes have become what mountain bikes once were, the Synapse is back to filling in as a gravel bike when needed.
Oodles of tire clearance. Oodles! (Photo: Alvin Holbrook/Velo)
All that usability starts with big tire clearance. Again, this is being sold as a road bike but you can fit a 42mm tire front and rear. I’ve had a lot of gravel bikes that topped out at 40mm and while we’ve expanded in 2025, this will still do a whole lot. Just to put a point on that aspect, Lachlan Morton used the Synapse in his FKT around Australia where he spent more time than expected on gravel roads. Certainly the engineered flex in the frame helps with that kind of huge effort as well.
That seat tube tapers quite a bit. (Photo: Alvin Holbrook/Velo)
Then, to further the blurred line between road and gravel that’s happening here, there’s solid in-frame storage. Certainly there’s other endurance bikes with this feature, the Enve Fray might even be a little better in that regard, but once again, Cannondale offers room for a jacket, or plenty of flat repair supplies, across a huge range of prices.
The final piece that deserves recognition here is the SmartSense system. This is a system that came out a few years ago and was pretty universally disliked. On the Synapse it’s been refined and that’s all gone.
SmartSense is all about minimizing the hassle of electronics. I’ve told anyone who will listen that Varia radar is one of the best purchases you’ll make for riding on country roads. Cannondale includes it on the bike and pairs it with a very usable front light. Of course in 2025, there’s also plenty of electronic shifting options across various models.
(Photo: Alvin Holbrook/Velo)
Normally all that means a bunch of things to charge. The magic here is that SmartSense takes all that and adds a battery to the mix.
In the downtube is a 11600 mAh battery that powers it all and has a few clever tricks for prioritizing the way that power is delivered. Most important though, one battery means one charger. That’s a simplification that makes sense.
If you want to dive deeper on this bike, take a look at our Cannondale Synapse first ride review. We think it’s worth it for a lot of people who ride bikes and that’s why we are calling the Cannondale Synapse the best road bike of 2025.