I´ve been riding my SL Elite for a few weeks now. Have done my first marathons with the bike and was kind of surprised with the conclusion of the BikeRadar review.
First of all, I am not a racer, I´ve been riding mountainbikes for well over 15 years. My riding style can be best discribed as go anywhere. I just ride the bike over the local trails or take it for a marathon ride. I know what I can and can not do on a bike and just ride to have fun. I am 34 years old and mostly ride in the Netherlands (Limburg) and Belgium (Ardennes), and one week a year in the Austrian Alps.
The SF was to replace my '04 Fuel 98 (carbon) and `06 Sugar 292. I test drove a 2012 SF Elite, Cannondale Scalpel and a Specialized Epic before purchasing the SF100.
I agree with the verdict on the 2.0 tires, at least for the short ride I made with those. I got my bike end of march. It was (still is actually) cold and wet outside, those tires weren´t the best in those conditions. Just had one ride on them and switched to Michelin 2.25 wildgrippr in tubeless setup. Which seem to have worked pretty well over the last 600km. But in my experience there are no tires that would fit every possible condition out there, so it is very well possible that the 2.0 in other conditions would have been a good tire to ride.
The suspension set-up, it took a little while for me to get it dailed in. Comming from an "old" full suspension platform like the Fuel/Sugar, this bike has a complete different feel. It feels a lot more active, and lively, than I was used to on my old bike. I am now running at a bit higher pressure as suggested by Trek, the above mentioned 10 psi is about right. Haven´t changed the rebound setting though. This setting seems to work out quite nice for me on the trails I´ve ridden so far. I found it worth the time to try out various settings and finally got it set up to fit my riding. The way I have set up the bike at this moment I do not feel the need to switch the CTD setting and keep on riding with the Trail mode engaged.
I was completely puzzled by the rear-end stiffness problems as described by BR. What I did notice on my bike were poorly set up wheels. When I converted to tubeless I did a much needed re tightened the spokes of my wheels. So the out of the box wheel setup wasn´t what it should be. Actually did some more setup-tweaks, the initial setup by my LBS was not what you should expect, cleared it with my LBS and we are still friends
But after the tuning of the wheels the responsiveness and stiffness of the bike was all that I expected. Especially compared to my old bikes, the SF is a very stiff and stable bike, and comparing the G2 geometry of the SF to the Genesis geometry of my Sugar, the handling has much improved and is in line with the sharpness I got from my Fuel.
I don´t have the idea that the bike is less stiff than it´s competitors. From experience with test ride of the Scalpel, Epic and the 2012 SF100, I can´t imagine these bikes to be any stiffer or "better" than the SF100, at least not for the way I ride this bike, maybe a for a racing rider it is a different story.
I am still absolutely satisfied with the performance of my bike, and don´t see any reason to doubt my own experience after reading BR´s review. And I will still recommend anyone in the market for this bike to go out and experience it for themselves, because in my experience the SF100 is an awesome bike!