During this test, we rode 17 pairs of flat pedals, with many being passed out to Singletrack contributors for a while to get as much wear on them as possible. None of the pedals we tested were bad, just diTherent to each other, with varied price points and feature sets, and some more suited to certain types of riding or grip preference over others. As the bike industry gets more experience, it’s getting better at designing pedals than it’s ever been.
Even the cheapest pedals have never really been better than now, and prove they don’t have to be generic to come in under a budget. At the more expensive end of the scale, companies are engineering everything right down to the smallest details, experimenting with and creating features that might become standard in future.