THE YEAR'S BEST AND MOST EXCITING BIKES - ROAD

Bicycling's annual Bike Awards are the culmination of a year's worth of realworld ride testing of hundreds of bikes. We rode them as you would-commuting on city streets, in the bikepark, up tough climbs, deep in the woods, or just out for a spin after a busy day. In selecting our top 40, we evaluated each bike's performance, its value, and how it stacks up against similar models in its category. We thought hard about each bike and whether it was one we'd want for ourselves before recommending it. If you're searching for a new road, mountain, gravel, or commuter bike-or just dreaming-one of these will be right for you.

ARGONAUT RM3

$15,500 // 15.5 LB (53CM)

Bikes do not need to be expensive. Bikes do not need to be expensive to ride well. I want this to be unequivocally clear before I say that this $15,500 Argonaut RM3 is one of the best-riding road bikes I’ve ridden in my more than 25 years of working for Bicycling, because I can’t pretend that this Argonaut is anything other than a masterpiece.

The typical ride of a mass-produced, high-end carbon bike is damped and smooth, but there’s an ever-present sense of fragility, that unmistakable brittle quality that signals you’re on a very light frameset. The RM3 certainly glides over road surfaces, but does not have that archetypal carbon feel. It’s light and darty in the best way because it’s communicative and predictable in its quickness. It’s smooth and also feels substantial, like it’s digging into the asphalt while simultaneously floating above it. I know this sounds like I’m trying to wax poetic with meaningless phrases, but the RM3 feels at once heavy and light in a way I can’t recall ever previously experiencing.