All-road bikes explained: The perfect balance of speed and versatility

Who knows what the road ahead may bring? Smooth pavement? Washboard gravel? A little dirt? If you’re up for the challenge, then an all-road bike may be for you. Canyon’s new Endurace Allroad is just as capable racing a weekend crit as it is exploring gravel back roads with friends. Intrigued?

Race-oriented road bikes, such as our Ultimate and Aeroad models, are designed to help you ride as fast as possible on paved roads. These are ultralight models with aerodynamic tubes engineered to cut through the air. Endurance road bikes (like our standard Endurace models) are also fast, but are designed with a slightly more upright riding position, allowing you to ride longer distances, at speed, with more comfort. 

All-road bikes take that endurance road bike formula and inject even more versatility to the mix. Our aluminium Endurace Allroad model is a great example. The Endurace Allroad is a jack-of-all-trades rig for the adventurous rider, designed to tackle tarmac, gravel, and dirt roads. From the after-work group ride to a weekend bikepacking journey, this all-road bike handles it all. The bike’s emphasis on speed, comfort, and stability allows it to excel wherever the road leads and in all sorts of conditions.

There’s some overlap between gravel, endurance, and all-road bikes. A gravel bike, like the Grizl Raw 7, shines brightest on rough, dirty terrain, while endurance road bikes, such as the Endurace CF 7) are ideal for comfortable long-distance asphalt rides.  

All-road bikes straddle the middle ground between gravel bikes and endurance road bikes, offering the best of both worlds. The Endurace Allroad is designed to be ridden fast while offering more stability than a standard road bike, over a wider range of road surfaces.  

So what makes a great all-road bike?

Race-oriented road bikes are typically equipped with tyres that are 28 mm wide or less. Endurance road bikes feature slightly wider tires - typically 32 mm. That extra tire volume helps boost comfort on long rides and on rougher asphalt roads. 

All-road bikes take this wider-is-better approach even further. The Endurace Allroad, for example, is equipped with 35 mm Schwalbe G-One Comp K-Guard tyres and has enough wheel clearance to accommodate tires as wide as 40 mm. This larger contact patch delivers several benefits. The increased contact with the ground means more rubber grips the road at any one moment. On smooth tarmac and rough gravel alike, that increased contact provides more traction, allowing you to ride both faster and safer no matter the terrain.  

Check out this article to learn more about how road bike tyre width and pressure can increase comfort, traction, and more.

Although it shares the Endurace name, the Allroad version does have some unique frame geometry modifications that make it incredibly comfortable and versatile.  

Let’s start with the Allroad’s unique stack and reach dimensions. Effective stack is the vertical distance between the centre of the bottom bracket and the top of the head tube while effective reach is the horizontal distance between these same two points on the bike.  

A longer reach places you in a stretched-out position on the bike, while a shorter reach provides you a more upright riding position.  

A short stack height will have you leaning forward with your torso nearly parallel to the ground, while a taller stack places you in a more upright riding position. 

Canyon’s endurance road bikes, like the Endurace CF 7, already sport relatively short reach dimensions and tall stack heights, which (like the Endurace’s wider tires) increase your comfort. The Endurace Allroad shortens the reach and increases the stack a few more millimetres to place you in an even more upright and less stretched-out position. The end result is excellent comfort after hours spent pedalling the roughest of roads. 

Finally, the Endurace Allroad ‘s wheelbase also strikes a middle ground – longer than a road bike and shorter than a dedicated gravel bike. What you feel in the saddle is an excellent mix of quick handling and steady control. 

Curious about race, endurance, aero, and cyclocross geometries? Discover what fits your riding style best in our road bike geometry guide.

The Endurace Allroad is built with aluminium tubes, allowing it to be sold at a lower price than our carbon-framed Endurace models. Traditionally, aluminium bikes were considered less comfortable than their carbon counterparts. Indeed, older aluminium frames were much stiffer, transferring the bumps and jolts from the road into your hands and backside. Unless you were riding pristine pavement, a trip aboard a lot of older aluminium road bikes left you feeling like you’d gone 10 rounds with a prize fighter. 

But that’s no longer the case. While carbon road bikes are still frequently more forgiving than aluminium models, the better grades of aluminium, and improved frame designs, have significantly reduced the comfort gap between these two frame materials. Using advanced hydroforming techniques, Canyon can vary the shape of aluminium tubing throughout the frame, adding and subtracting material as needed, much like a carbon frame. Most aluminium models also sport carbon forks, which help smooth out the ride even more, as do wider tyres inflated to a slightly lower PSI. 

Given the variety of terrain you can tackle on an all-road bicycle, components like drivetrains and brakes are hugely important when it comes to maximizing versatility and control. Most all-road bikes feature a dual chainring “2x” drivetrain, but some manufacturers also take a cue from the gravel and mountain bike side of the industry, offering a simpler, single chainring “1x” setup. 

The Endurace Allroad comes standard with the new Shimano CUES groupset, compact 50/34 chainrings and a wide-range, 11-39 cassette that’s equally as good climbing as it is racing on the flats. The bike’s hydraulic disc brakes boast plenty of stopping power in both wet and dry conditions. 

Most road and gravel bikes are equipped with 700c wheels; that’s been the dominant road bike wheel size for more than a century. Some companies equip their smallest (double extra-small and extra-small) models with smaller-diameter 650b wheels. As you can imagine, fitting a larger 700c wheel into a very small frame can be a challenge for designers and engineers due to the limited space within paricularly small frames.

When it comes to our own Canyon Allroad model, you’ll find 700c wheels on all but our double extra-small (2XS) models. The bigger-diameter wheels maintain momentum well and, all things being equal, are faster on long riders.  

Our 2XS Allroad models, however, wear smaller 650b wheels. Why? Because equipping our tiniest Allroad model with a smaller 650b wheelset ensures that there’s no annoying rub between your toes and the front wheel (a.k.a. “toe overlap”) when you are making very tight turns. In short, our goal is to ensure that every rider enjoys the best riding experience possible – no matter how short or tall they happen to be. Going with a smaller wheel on our smallest Allroad frame helps make that a reality. 

There’s been massive interest in all-road bikes of late. And with good reason. Many riders want a do-it-all rig that can tackle all sorts of terrain and situations. Given the number of attachment points on the Endurace Allroad, it’s also a great bikepacking and commuting bike. In short, all-road bikes are finding favor with so many riders because these bikes are simply good at so many things.  

All-road bikes are fast enough for most group rides, while also being stable enough to take an unexpected detour onto gravel. That built-in versatility lets newer cyclists dip their toe in the water and discover which types or riding they enjoy most. 

But the Endurace Allroad is great for another reason: price. Starting at €1000 ($1,500), the aluminium Allroad is Canyon’s least expensive road bike. For new riders wanting to jump into the sport, that’s a practically unbeatable price point. What’s more, the Endurace Allroad boasts many features normally reserved for much more expensive bikes, such as the Allroad’s high-quality DT Swiss wheelset and powerful Shimano hydraulic disc brakes. In short, this is a bike that’s in a class of its own. 

Most race-oriented road bikes won’t accept tires much wider than 28 mm and can’t, consequently, be made into an all-road bike. You’ll have better luck modifying an endurance road model like an Endurace since these bikes already feature more comfort-oriented frame geometry and the clearance to fit wider tyres.  

Throw the widest tyres you can onto a standard Endurace (typically 35 mm) and you can confidently ride most gravel roads and some not-terribly-technical dirt trails. Our dedicated Endurace Allroad model, however, sports an even more upright ride position and more cargo mounting options than our standard Endurace models, making it more versatile than our award-winning endurance road models.

So, is the Allroad right for you? 

If you only want to push the very limits of speed on tarmac and gravel riding holds no allure for you, then consider a race-oriented road bike like the Aeroad or Ultimate. If you ride primarily gravel and dirt, love to bike pack, and are less focused on shattering speed records on fast-paced road rides, then stick with a gravel bike like the Grizl.   

But if the reason you ride is the thrill of the unknown, then consider the Allroad. Limited budget but you still want plenty of features? Consider the Allroad. Just want a solid, do-it-all bike? Consider the Allroad. 

Still can’t decide? Check out our road bike buying guide for a full breakdown of categories, features, and riding styles. And if you’re new to cycling, our road bikes for beginners guide is the perfect place to start. 

For more detailed information on the specifications or if you have additional questions, be sure to check out our bike comparison tool. Just hit compare on the page, and you can choose up to two other bikes to analyse components, geometry, and more. 

Not quite sure yet? Try taking an Allroad or any of the other bikes for a test ride at one of Canyon’s demo centers found across the world, including Carlsbad, California and München, Germany. If after your purchase, you feel like you’ve made the wrong decision, you can easily exchange it, thanks to Canyon’s generous 30-day return policy.