One of the lightest shocks on test

Price: £349.00 • From: Silverfish UK, silverfish-uk.com • Weight (w/o spring): 384g Adjustments: Low Speed Rebound, Low Speed Compression

Although the price has crept up over the year or two since it came out, the Marzocchi Bomber CR is the ‘affordable’ coil shock being pushed as the every(wo)man’s choice. Or, something you needn’t be worried about if you see it specced as original equipment on a potential bike purchase. Sure, you could claim that the Marzocchi Bomber CR is fundamentally a Fox Vanilla RC from about a decade ago. And you’d pretty much be correct. The thing is, so what if it is? The past decade of rear shock technology has pretty much been a Porsche 911-style exercise in reverse-solving an inherently bad engineering choice (for ‘engine in the rear’, see ‘using air as a spring medium’). Out on the trail, the Bomber CR rides excellently. It’s very much a set-and-forget deal. This is for two reasons: there ain’t much to actually adjust, and the actual adjustment dials aren’t the best. They’re stiff and lack a positive clicky indexed feel/sound. This stiffness and lack of indexing only gets worse with filth ingress too. Hey-ho.