The Latest Specialized Epic and Epic EVO Get Lighter and Meaner

The latest Specialized Epic in action. Photos courtesy of Specialized

While the press release is packed full of superlatives, there are some meaningful takeaways for the Specialized Epic 8. Namely, it’s a tad lighter, adds SWAT storage, and it has slightly improved suspension kinematics and more aggressive geo. Here’s everything that’s new on the bikes.

Specialized Epic v8 key specs

120mm frame travel, 120mm fork travel
3-position shock with Ride Dynamics tune
SRAM Level 4-piston brakes
29″ wheels F/R
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The geometry is more aggressive than ever, especially for a World Cup XC bike.

On a size large, they’ve grown the reach to 475mm and the head tube angle has slackened to 66.4° (high mode) while the seat tube steepened to 75.5°. The wheelbase is 1,210mm.

Of course the bike needed to remain as light as possible and to achieve this Specialized leaned into a leverage-controlled single pivot suspension design, but with no flex stays. After all, it’s a race bike and response is the name of the game.

To keep things comfortable and grippy, Specialized has custom shock tunes on all Epic 8s with three positions, and yes they have buzz words: Wide Open, for minimal compression damping and an active rear end. Magic Middle is “ideal for 80% of racing situations,” with a mix of grip and response, while Sprint-On-Lock is for those photo-worthy sprint finishes.

Specialized says the bike is 76g (2.6oz) lighter that the previous S-Works Epic frame. It looks like it might be getting hard to shave much more weight off of a very specially tuned carbon XC frame. They’ve also added a SWAT box (read: downtube storage), which is a little surprising since the feature surely adds weight and this is an XC bike.

The Epic also uses titanium hardware and a carbon shock extension on the S-Works version.

The bike gets a Specialized Renegade 2.35″ tire in the rear and a 2.35″ Fast Trak up front.

The Epic Evo.

Specialized Epic EVO

The Epic launch wouldn’t be complete without its meaner trail-ready counterpart, the Epic EVO. It shares many of the same features and the same frame, which may be why the race-ready build also gets a SWAT Box, since the brand will most likely sell more EVO versions.

Epic EVO Key specs

120mm rear travel, Fox 34 130mm travel fork
2-position shock
SRAM Code 4-piston brakes
Riser bars, shorter stem

Rather than the 3-position shock switch, the EVO simplifies things to a Wide Open mode and the Sprint-On-Lock mode (I wasn’t kidding about those compression mode names.)

For Epic EVO geometry, the size large has 470mm of reach, a 65.9° HTA (low mode), a 1,214mm wheelbase and 435mm chainstays. Since they share the same frame, it seems the additional 10mm of travel makes for a slightly shorter reach and slacker HTA and STA (75.1°).

And for tires, the bike has a Specialized Ground Control 2.35″ in the rear with a Purgatory 2.4″ up front.