Seven trail bikes. Three days in Arkansas. One overall winner.

Pinkbike’s 2026 trail bike field test wrapped in Bentonville and Bella Vista, and if you’ve been following the trail bike space at all, the results are worth unpacking. The Revel Rascal SL took overall honors (praised specifically for uphill traction and trail poise) while the Intense Spider topped the descending challenge. All seven bikes sat in the 125-145mm rear travel range, the sweet spot where trail bikes are supposed to be do-it-all machines.

Here’s what the results actually tell you.

Field Test Summary

• Revel Rascal SL — Overall Winner
• Intense Spider — Descending Winner
• Propain Hugene — Descending Bronze

Travel range: 125-145mm rear Location: Bentonville / Bella Vista, Arkansas Format: Multi-day trail riding + timed descending challenge

The Test Setup

Bentonville is not a neutral venue. The Ozarks terrain is loose over hardpack, tight and rooty lower down, hero dirt on the faster flow sections. It rewards bikes that can turn efficiently and stay composed on unpredictable surfaces. Not a bike park. Not XC racing. Exactly what a trail bike should handle.

Seven bikes in the 125-145mm rear travel bracket is a meaningful range. At 125mm you’re asking a bike to climb brilliantly and manage descents without drama. At 145mm, you’re borrowing toward enduro. The test spans that whole band, which means comparisons aren’t always apples-to-apples.

The descending challenge added a timing component. That changes how you ride, and which bikes show their cards under actual speed pressure.

Revel Rascal SL: Why It Won Overall

The Rascal SL winning overall on uphill traction and trail poise is a combination that makes sense if you know the bike. Revel’s CBF (Carbon Bridges Frame) suspension design prioritizes small-bump sensitivity while managing anti-squat throughout the pedaling stroke. You can dig into the geometry details on Revel’s site. On the kind of root-threaded, varied Arkansas terrain where you’re constantly transitioning between pedaling and floating, that sensitivity matters.

“Uphill traction” isn’t a compliment about low weight. It’s a suspension and geometry statement. The Rascal SL keeps the rear wheel planted on loose climbs. Other bikes in this travel range either bob excessively or lock up so hard they lose traction on uneven surfaces. The suspension hits a balance that pure-XC geometry can’t achieve.

“Trail poise” is harder to quantify. At speed on mixed terrain, some bikes feel like they’re fighting you. The Rascal SL apparently doesn’t. That’s a chassis tuning and geometry story more than a specs story. It’s exactly why you run a test like this rather than just comparing geometry charts.

The Rascal SL isn’t cheap. Revel’s carbon construction keeps prices up, and the SL designation signals a lighter build that costs accordingly. But winning an overall test against six legitimate competitors on terrain that punishes mediocrity is the kind of result that justifies the price tag for the right rider.

If you’re considering the Rascal SL, compare it against bikes like the Specialized Stumpjumper 15 EVO, another trail bike that bets heavily on suspension quality to win the overall experience argument.

Intense Spider: The Descending Win

The Intense Spider taking the descending challenge is a different kind of result from the Rascal SL’s overall win. Descending performance in a timed challenge reflects confidence at speed, chassis stability under braking, and how the suspension manages repeated hard hits. The Spider won that on Arkansas terrain.

Intense has historically built bikes that skew toward the aggressive end of whatever category they enter. The Spider in the 125-145mm range isn’t a soft-pedaling trail bike. It’s built with descending as the priority. That shows up in the timed challenge result.

The trade-off: bikes that win descending challenges don’t always win overall tests. The Spider didn’t take overall. Which means the judges found something they preferred in the Rascal SL for the full-day, mixed-terrain experience. The Spider is the right bike if you live for descents and can accept the climbing cost. If you split time more evenly, that cost matters.

The Orbea Rallon RS is worth checking out alongside the Spider. Both bikes occupy the aggressive end of their respective categories and appeal to similar rider profiles.

Propain Hugene: Bronze in Descending

Propain doesn’t get the mainstream press coverage that the bigger brands do, which makes the Hugene’s third-place descending finish more interesting. It’s a German brand with a direct-to-consumer model that keeps prices sharper than what you’d pay for comparable spec through a dealer. Third in a descending challenge at a multi-bike Pinkbike field test is legitimate validation.

If you’re shopping in this category and haven’t considered Propain, the Hugene is worth looking at. The D2C pricing model means you can get more bike per dollar than the equivalent Trek, Specialized, or Santa Cruz build. The trade-off is no dealer support and fewer local demo opportunities.

What the Remaining Four Bikes Tell You

Seven bikes total. Three podium positions covered above. The other four aren’t named in the available results, but their presence shapes what the podium means.

A field test this size always includes bikes that are competitive but lose on specific criteria: a heavier climbing package that holds back overall scoring, a stiffer front end that costs points on technical sections, a price point that’s hard to justify against the winner. The Rascal SL won overall against a field of seven 125-145mm trail bikes, including bikes from established brands with big development budgets. That’s not a minor result.

Arkansas as a Testing Ground

Bentonville’s trail system has become one of the best testing venues in North America for exactly this kind of field test. The Ozarks Trail Network and the IMBA’s work in the region have produced trails that are genuinely diverse: not one-dimensional flow trails, not raw natural terrain, but a mix that asks real questions of both the bike and the rider.

For a test that wants to separate trail poise from pure descending aggression, Bentonville is a better venue than Whistler or a bike park. The terrain rewards the all-day bike over the point-and-shoot bike. That’s probably why the Rascal SL’s climbing and trail feel earned the top spot while the Spider, built more around descending, won that specific challenge but not the overall.

How This Affects Your Buying Decision

The 125-145mm trail bike category is crowded. If you’re shopping in it right now, the Pinkbike field test result adds useful signal.

Buy the Revel Rascal SL if: You want the best overall trail bike in this travel range as validated by a direct head-to-head test on legitimate terrain. You value uphill traction and mixed-terrain poise over maximum descending aggression. You’re willing to pay Revel’s premium for the CBF construction.

Buy the Intense Spider if: Descending is your priority. You ride trails where speed and composure on descent matter more than climbing efficiency. You’re willing to work a bit harder on the way up in exchange for the winning package on the way down.

Consider the Propain Hugene if: Budget matters and you don’t need dealer support. Third in descending at a Pinkbike field test at a D2C price point is a strong value argument.

Look elsewhere if: You’re primarily an enduro rider or a pure XC athlete. The 125-145mm bracket is the trail bike sweet spot. Both extremes are served better by other platforms.

The Bigger Picture on Trail Bike Testing

Field tests like this one are valuable precisely because they remove brand loyalty from the equation. Pinkbike puts the bikes on the same trails under the same conditions and lets results happen. The Rascal SL winning overall is a meaningful data point not because Pinkbike said so, but because the methodology is sound: multiple bikes, experienced riders, terrain that asks real questions.

What field tests can’t tell you: how the bike holds up over a season, how the suspension components age, whether the stock spec makes sense for your weight and riding style. For that, you need longer-term reviews. A proper long-term fork review covers the kind of component-level detail that field tests skim over. That matters when you’re deciding whether the stock build makes sense or whether a component swap is worth doing at purchase.

For drivetrain, bikes at this price tier often spec Shimano XTR Di2 wireless or SRAM XX, so factor in which ecosystem you prefer when comparing builds. And if you’re weighing suspension decisions at the component level, look at how chassis design and kinematics differ between platforms. That context matters more than spec-sheet comparisons.

The Bottom Line

The Revel Rascal SL winning Pinkbike’s 2026 trail bike field test is the result that matters most here. It won on the criteria that define a great all-day trail bike: uphill traction and trail poise, against a field of seven competitive machines on terrain that punishes weak spots.

The Intense Spider winning the descending challenge is the other result worth taking seriously. If you’re building a quiver around raw descending performance and the trail bikes in this test are on your list, the Spider’s timed-challenge win isn’t a fluke.

Both results point to the same underlying truth about the 125-145mm trail bike category: the bikes that win are the ones that do something exceptionally well without falling apart on everything else. The Rascal SL does that for the full experience. The Spider does it specifically on descents.

Shop accordingly.