REVEL Ranger

Hot Take

The Ranger is the closest the category still has to its original promise: a fast, efficient XC bike that comes back down better than it should. 115mm rear, 120mm fork, 67.5° head angle. Steeper and shorter-travel than most bikes in this category, intentionally. Reviewers keep landing on the same idea: it accelerates faster than its peers and rewards a clean line, but gets harder to ride well when the trail turns really chunky. While most of the category drifted toward "trail bike with a steeper seat angle," the Ranger held its ground. When Adam Miller bought Revel back from private equity last year, he didn't change the bike. He didn't have to.

The Brand

Revel is in Carbondale, Colorado. Adam Miller founded it in 2018, sold it to a private-equity firm in 2021, and bought it back in May 2025 via an Article 9 asset sale after the PE firm wound the company down owing more than $8 million to its bank. The brand is open again as a mostly direct-to-consumer outfit: dealers still sell framekits, but complete bikes move through revelbikes.com. Existing lifetime warranties are honored. Every full-suspension Revel uses Canfield Balance Formula suspension, a licensed dual-link platform developed by the Canfield brothers that has a reputation for pedaling efficiency without the anti-squat punishment that makes some XC bikes feel harsh. The lineup spans short-travel trail (the Ranger here) up through enduro siblings (the Rascal, the Ritual), an e-MTB on a Bosch Performance Line SX motor (the Rerun), plus a small slate of titanium hardtails and gravel framesets. Small company, opinionated about parts, distinct philosophy.

The Bike

The Ranger is Revel's short-travel entry: 115mm out back, 120mm up front, 67.5° head angle. That's on the steeper end of our downcountry range, positioning the Ranger closer in spirit to a pure XC bike than the longer-slacker, more aggressive end of the downcountry spectrum. Revel claims the frame at 2,470g (~5.45 lb) for a medium, painted, without a shock. We haven't come across a proper in-the-field weight for complete builds. If you have one and a scale, let us know.The current version is the V2, launched Spring 2023. Changes from the original (2020) were modest: stiffer rear triangle (Revel claims +20% lateral stiffness with no weight penalty), SRAM UDH compatibility for Transmission drivetrains, beefier pivot hardware, cleaner internal routing. Same geometry. Same 115/120 travel.Reviews of the V2 have been consistent. Escape Collective's James Huang, reviewing the Ranger in July 2023, called it "absolutely gorgeous, excellent handling, highly capable suspension, very good pedaling performance," and wrote that "what truly defines the Ranger is its CBF suspension design." Bike Magazine's V2 test called it "a precise and playful short travel bike that's great for long, hard rides," with "balanced geometry and the Canfield Balance Formula suspension platform making it wildly fun and easy to jump." Blister described it as "quicker to accelerate" than its peers, with "more of your effort going right into the rear wheel." Singletracks wrote that the V2 "delivers" on its CBF suspension promise and called it "a fast, stiff, and responsive cross-country bike with trail bike capability." BikeRadar's long-term test was the honest outlier: "the Ranger is light and whippy, but skips and stutters when rattling over rough, rocky terrain."

The Last Word

The Ranger is an efficient climber that's enthusiastic on descents without pretending to be a trail bike. It rewards a precise line and an aggressive front-wheel weight bias. At 120mm of fork and 67.5° up front, it won't soak up the rough stuff the way a slacker bike will. What it does offer is one of the clearest expressions of what "downcountry" was supposed to mean when the word first started getting used: an XC bike that descends. That's worth something, especially now that the brand making it is back in the hands of the person who started it.