2025 ZEB ULTIMATE REVIEW

Bracketing and riding 

My first run on the new Zeb was down Makara Peak’s Ridgeline, a flattish, grade-5 track that’s littered with a jumble of small- to medium-sized rocks, a small drop, a couple of steeper bits, and some tight, sequential berms. It’s a trail that likes to unsettle rider and bike if your suspension is not set up properly, but it feels magic when you’re up to speed and everything’s dialled. 

During that first run I felt like I was riding off the back too much and the fork was diving through the middle part of the travel. Adding more compression damping over a couple more runs helped, but I still wanted more support and I was running out of clicks.  

The best option was to increase the air pressure and to make the spring more linear by removing the single, stock volume-reducing token. The aim was to boost the dynamic ride height and increase mid-stroke support by flattening out the spring curve. This should also help improve damping consistency making it easier to get the damper dialled. 

After a couple more bracketing runs, I settled on 0 tokens, 67psi, HSC at plus two clicks from middle, LSC at plus four clicks from middle, and the rebound damping at eight clicks from closed.  

Set up sorted, I could now really get a feel for what the fork was doing on a range of different trails. I should preface this by saying that I don’t think the “best and worst” or “good and bad” binaries are very useful—there are big differences in feel between suspension forks, from chassis, to spring, to damper, and what’s right for you may not work well for someone else. 

As a point of comparison, the EXT Era is roughly aimed at the same type of rider as the Zeb, but it couldn’t feel more different on the trail. Some people like the EXT feel, some prefer RockShox. Neither is bad, they just have different traits and characteristics. The key is knowing what traits and characteristics work for you. 

The defining trait of the Zeb is still its chassis stiffness—it might be the most torsionally-stiff single crown fork on the market today. That lack of twist creates a very direct steering feel, translating your every move into instant and precise direction changes. The Zeb is very good at resisting understeer and keeping the wheel pointing where you want. Heavier riders will enjoy the lack of twist as their weight swings through the bottom bracket in corners. Similarly, the Zeb’s stiffness will work well on heavier, full-power e-bikes. 

The downside of that torsional stiffness can be felt in slower, more technical trails, where low-momentum, angled impacts that aren’t absorbed by the spring and damper will be felt more at the bars.  If you ride a lot of these type of trails, a more compliant fork like the RockShox Lyrik might be a better choice.