Merida Scultura 9000 review – Road Bikes – Bikes – BikeRadar

Ultegra Di2-equipped speedster
This competition is now closed
By Warren Rossiter
Published: April 27, 2023 at 3:00 pm
This fifth-generation Scultura takes what was its lightweight road racing all-rounder and adds a layer of aerodynamics, while still maintaining the lightness the model is known for.
This aero-influenced design means a new set of tube shapes, including the ovalised down tube.
The result is a faster aero road bike that’s torsionally stiffer and comes with a lighter frame than when using full-on aero tubes.
Further tweaks to this model of the Scultura include a smoothed seat-tube junction and a hidden seat clamp, as well as dropped seatstays.
The broad-legged fork is also designed to reduce drag, and Merida claims this new design will take 224.5 watts of your power to achieve 45kph compared to the previous bike’s 234.3 watts.
The Scultura frame weighs in at a claimed 822g, which is 40g lighter than the fourth-generation design.
Up front, the Team SL one-piece bar and stem adds more aero efficiency and the brake hoses are routed internally through it for a clean silhouette. The bar is 44cm wide and the stem has an effective length of 120mm.
This creates a speedy long and low ride position; the size-large frame we tested already has a long reach of 400mm, combined with a low stack of 571mm.
Unlike the flagship Scultura Team model, the 9000 gets ‘just’ a standard carbon seatpost rather than the S-Flex post. That said, the offset head of the post does allow for some vibration-smoothing flex.
The post is topped with ProLogo’s Scratch M5 saddle, which combines a great shape with different levels of flex throughout its hull.
At first, the Scratch can feel firm but I found it to be one of the most comfortable minimalist road bike saddles around.
The 9000 is completed by a combination of a full Shimano Ultegra Di2 groupset and Reynolds Aero 46 wheels. Ultegra Di2’s shifting performance is impeccable and well matched by some of the best hydraulic disc brakes in the business.
The 52/36 chainset combined with an 11-30t cassette shows the bike’s racing predilections.
I was comfortable with the gearing, even on extended longer climbs, although for an epic sportive you may want a couple of extra teeth on the rear. Ultegra Di2 is, of course, now 12-speed and Shimano has used the extra gear to plug a gap often found in 11-speed cassettes.
The gear range now has a progression of 11-12-13-14-15-16-17-19-21-24-27-30, bringing back the 16-tooth sprocket often missed on wider 11-speed cassettes.
For fast flat or rolling terrain, I tend to sit in the 16-tooth sprocket and spin, and having such a smooth progression up and down from it makes this specification of Ultegra so usable.
Even with its performance gearing, the Scultura 9000 is a great bike to ascend aboard.
The combination of a stiffly efficient frame and fork with low overall weight add up to a bike that makes you want to attack short, steep climbs. Splitting longer efforts between high-tempo seated spinning and out-of-the-saddle inputs dispatches them with absolute efficiency.
The ride quality is certainly firm, as most great race bikes are, but that firmness doesn’t mean the bike transmits tiring road buzz and vibrations.
In fact, it neutralises those rather well. Hit a pothole or speed bump, however, and the solidity of the Scultura shows itself with bone-thumping, teeth-chattering resistance.
The Scultura is not the bike I’d choose if cobbles were part of my ride, certainly not with the 28mm tyres fitted here (the frame has clearance for 30mm tyres).
The steep parallel 73.5-degree angles and 45mm fork offset mirror the brand’s Reacto aero race bike.
This was done to allow Merida’s pro riders to switch bikes mid-tours with little adjustment needed. Running a 28mm tyre, this leads to a 55mm trail measurement for a quick-handling bike, as you’d expect.
The Reynolds Aero 46 wheelset combines, as the name suggests, a 46mm-deep rim with a 19mm internal width and uses Reynolds’ own i9 minimal hub design.
The freehub’s three-pawl design gives a fast six-degree engagement, and also quite a vocal buzz when freewheeling. The wheels feel tight and stiff and, at 1,525g, are light for the depth.
They are shod with the superb Continental 5000 S TR (tubeless-ready) tyres, which Merida should be applauded for.
So often on bikes, the first way to cut costs is to skimp on tyres. With Merida fitting one of the best road bike tyres available on the Scultura 9000, it has created a bike that hits every mark out of the box.
I can’t think of one part I’d look to change, or even add, because Merida also includes both an out-front GPS mount and a pair of carbon bottle cages as standard.
It’s an exceptionally fast, light, sharp-handling aero road bike that builds on the Scultura’s heritage and reaches another level of excellence.
Senior technical editor
Warren Rossiter is BikeRadar and Cycling Plus magazine’s senior technical editor for road and gravel. Having been testing bikes for more than 20 years, Warren has an encyclopedic knowledge of road cycling and has been the mastermind behind our Road Bike of the Year test for more than a decade. He’s also a regular presenter on the BikeRadar Podcast and on BikeRadar’s YouTube channel. In his time as a cycling journalist, Warren has written for Mountain Biking UK, What Mountain Bike, Urban Cyclist, Procycling, Cyclingnews, Total Bike, Total Mountain Bike and T3. Over the years, Warren has written about thousands of bikes and tested more than 2,500 – from budget road bikes to five-figure superbikes. He has covered all the major innovations in cycling this century, and reported from launches, trade shows and industry events in Europe, Asia, Australia, North American and Africa. While Warren loves fast road bikes and the latest gravel bikes, he also believes electric bikes are the future of transport. You’ll regularly find him commuting on an ebike and he longs for the day when everyone else follows suit. You will find snaps of Warren’s daily rides on the Instagram account of our sister publication, Cycling Plus (@cyclingplus).
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