J.Guillem Orient

The Orient is J.Guillem's do-a-bit-of-everything road bike. With the geometry of an endurance bike and the ride qualities of a race machine, this titanium beauty has left me with a real quandary. I couldn't live with its comfort levels longterm even though it is such a great bike to ride, which got me thinking – is the Orient at fault or is it the UK's roads?

• Pros: Very quick bike, comfortable geometry, impressive stiffness
• Cons: Harsh ride, overly firm saddle, no mudguard mounts on fork

Ride

When describing the Orient on its website, one of the first things J.Guillem mentions is, 'J.Guillem's trademark stiff, lightweight and durable tubing.' So it's no surprise that this bike behaves like it does. For a bike of its kind it is brutally stiff. At times it's just downright uncomfortable, and that's coming from me – someone who'll take performance over comfort every time and actually prefers being battered around a bit for that feeling of a fast ride.

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You feel everything, every single little ripple and stone in the road, unless you are on the smoothest of recently resurfaced A roads or a race track, and it can become tiring to each and every contact point. You don't get the characteristic titanium softness; it lacks that vibration damping smoothness.

I didn't complete a single ride without pins and needles in my hands at some point. I even had to drop my saddle height a touch to remove some of the weight from my wrists. This obviously caused discomfort elsewhere, not helped by the firmness of the saddle.

All of this is such a shame, because boy is this bike stunningly quick. For anything under three hours I was knocking out average speeds of 19-20mph consistently and getting home feeling like I hadn't had to bury myself to achieve it.

Acceleration is impressive. Mixing things with rush hour traffic on one of Wiltshire's main arterial roads, where you really need to keep the pace up to match the flow, entering and exiting roundabouts and the likes to hold your position, the Orient is awesome. Out of the saddle and stamping hard on the pedals, you can bridge gaps with ease and really hold your own in amongst the cars and lorries.

That stiffness lends itself well to climbing, whether seated or standing, and those short, sharp power hills are an absolute blast. If you're heading into the local peaks, the 180mm head tube on this 56cm frame takes the strain off your back as you can sit up and tap it out.

If descending quickly is your thing, the Orient is pretty confident here too. It's well balanced and with the tight frame and stiff fork it tracks well and is easy to guide through the bends. The more upright position because of that tall front end does raise your centre of gravity, so when the speed really picks up or you have to make a tight turn the handling becomes a little vague and loses its sharpness.

This isn't really a criticism, because the Orient isn't a race bike, it's more of a public service announcement to remind you that, should you ride one you'll feel like you're on a race bike, and it's easy to come unstuck on the way back down.

Comfort issues aside, if long rides are your thing – or commuting, or touring – the Orient is a great bike for getting the miles in. The handling is nicely balanced and it is a very easy bike to ride at a sedate pace. If it's windy, though, that tall head tube stops you getting yourself out of it by crouching down: you're still a little too upright.

Frame and fork

The man behind J.Guillem, Jan-Willem Sintnicolaas, started the Van Nicholas brand from scratch in his garage 15 years ago, so he certainly knows a thing or two about designing and building titanium frames.

The Orient is well made – you can tell that both by the feel of the ride and how it looks. The welding joints of the 3Al/2.5V (aluminium/vanadium) titanium alloy tubing looks neat and tidy with a pretty smooth finish.

The tubes themselves are all seamless for strength, as in they've been extruded rather than rolled with a welded seam, and they all come in some pretty large diameters for a metal bike, which in turn creates all of that stiffness.

Up front you get a tapered head tube – no surprise there as that's pretty much standard these days – but J.Guillem hasn't gone for a consistent taper from top to bottom. It maintains a diameter to suit the 1 1/8in headset bearings for the majority of its length before flaring out to accomodate a 1 1/2in setup around the down tube.

This increase of diameter incorporates the guide for the internal gear cable routing. It's a neat design which avoids cable rub (not that it really matters too much on an unpainted frame) and you choose from various adaptors to suit whether you are running mechanical or electronic shifting, i.e. cables or wiring.

The down tube is a chunky beast with an overall diameter of 45mm throughout. There is no change of profile or ovalisation from front to rear that we often see on performance frames.

The rear brake hose runs internally through the tube, exiting out of the non-drive side chainstay.

One tube that does change in profile is the top tube, which has a larger 38mm diameter at the head tube end to keep the stiffness there for handling, before slimming down to just over 30mm at the seat tube.

That seat tube has an external diameter of 34.9mm and takes a 30.9mm seatpost rather than 27.2mm or 31.6mm more commonly found on road bikes, though it is quite prevalent in the mountain bike world.

The bottom bracket shell uses press-fit bearings, which aren't going to be everybody's cup of tea because of the potential for creaking after use in the wet, when water and grit can get in between the mating faces of the bearing cups and that of the frame. This bike has seen a lot of rain and bad weather without any noise so far, so that's a good sign of some tight tolerances.

The chainstays aren't massively oversized but there is still plenty of material there and their swooping curve out towards the dropouts gives plenty of heel clearance while still allowing for some pretty big tyre clearances.

Our test bike came fitted with 30mm Schwalbe tyres and I did try some 40mm gravel tyres which just caught the chainstays, but 35s would fit no problem.

The dropouts are cast titanium and look very nice indeed, incorporating a 12mm thru-axle fitment, flat mount brake calliper fitting, and those rather snazzy looking mudguard mounts with adjustment.

You get a replaceable gear hanger, which is always good to see, so if you were to drop the frame on its drive side you wouldn't write off the frame.

J.Guillem offers a 100-year limited lifetime warranty on the frames so it's obviously confident in its craftmanship and material choice.

The fork is full carbon fibre and also accepts a 12mm thru-axle to resist twisting forces from heavy braking from the discs.

The whole setup, as you'd expect, is hugely stiff and really benefits steering at high speed. You get plenty of tyre clearance too and the internal hose routing keeps things neat and tidy.

Oddly though, considering the frame is set up for mudguards, the fork isn't; there are no mounting points other than those for the flat mount calliper.

Finishing kit

The Orient comes in one build when it comes to the drivetrain and braking: Shimano's latest Ultegra groupset and hydraulic braking system.

We started seeing Ultegra R8000 being fitted to bikes from the tail end of last year and thanks to its performance versus quality it is specced on a lot of machines. We are in the process of writing a full review on the groupset, so for now I'll just take you through some of the highlights.

To be in keeping with its all-round road riding capabilities, the Orient has a 50/34-tooth compact chainset and an 11-30t cassette which should cover most eventualities for climbing and high-speed descending, or on those rare occasions when you have a tailwind.

Shifting is even crisper and lighter than it felt on the previous 6800 model range thanks to new mech designs, and feels even better when shifting under load.

The R8020 STI shifters with their hydraulic reservoirs feel barely any bulkier than their mechanical equivalents and they are very comfortable to use while still giving you plenty of surface area to grip on when climbing or braking hard.

The stopping power from the R805 flat mount callipers and RT81 140mm diameter rotors is very impressive and they offer massive amounts of modulation to get you out of some tricky situations. I've been riding a couple of test bikes alongside the Orient that are using cable disc braking and the difference is like night and day.

The stem, handlebar, seatpost and saddle are all J.Guillem branded, offering a subtle finish to the overall bike in understated black with minimal logos. The finishing kit, unlike the gears, are upgradable if you fancy a bit of customisation.

We've got an alloy stem here but if you want to keep the titanium theme going you can upgrade it for a whopping €190 to match the frame. The same with the seatpost: alloy is the default option but for €110 you can upgrade to titanium or, like here, you can go for a titanium model with a 3T Difflock system and cast titanium head for €254!

I actually tried using a smaller 27.2mm diameter carbon post with a shim to fit the 30.9mm seat tube, but it made next to no difference to the stiffness of the ride.

There are various other things you can change too, like headset spacers, bar width, seat collar and wheels.

Our test bike has the default DT Swiss R23 Spline wheelset, which like every other set of DT wheels I've used, from the top end carbon models to the entry-level R24s, are very good.

They are solid performers across a range of riding and feel quick rolling on the flats. Acceleration is decent enough and there doesn't feel to be any flex when pushing hard out of the saddle.

We've got a tubeless setup here, which doesn't seem to be an option on the website, with Vredestein Fortezza 28mm being the only tyre choice on offer, rather than the 30mm Schwalbe 1 G-Ones fitted.

I rarely puncture through the year, covering around 10,000 miles in all conditions, so I don't know if I've just been unlucky of late or Schwalbe's latest tyre offerings have become a little fragile. Three models from the Pro-One and G-One stable have all picked up punctures, with the front tyre here collecting a small gash no bigger than 3mm across and using virtually all of its sealant to fix. It was okay for a few hundred miles more but has now started letting air out if the pressure goes above 30psi.

That aside, the tyres have a supple feel to them out on the road, and certainly don't feel as though their rolling resistance is holding the bike back. Cornering grip is okay, but they tend to break grip when leaning the bike over for a fast bend or tight roundabout at speed.

Value

In its standard Ultegra spec, the Orient will set you back €3,999 (£3,451) but you can also buy just the frame for €1,799 (£1,552) or a frameset which includes frame, fork, headset, alloy seat collar and thru-axles for €2,233 (£1,927).

This bike with the upgrades (excluding the tyres) comes in at €4,303 (£3,713) and weighs 9.05kg. Comparing that against some of our favourite titanium bikes that we've tested over the years suggests that isn't over the top for a bike of the Orient's quality.

> Buyer's Guide: 14 of the loveliest titanium bikes we've ridden

The Kinesis GF_TI has always impressed us and that has a frameset price of £2,050. We last tested it back in 2015 and since then it has been upgraded to a thru-axle fork.

Then there is the J.Laverack J.ACK which is another four-season titanium road machine capable of a little bit of everything. It'll cost you £1,950 for the frame only and £2,380 for a similar frameset setup.

Conclusion

So to answer the initial question – yes, I think it's mostly the UK roads that are the problems with the Orient's ride rather than the bike itself.

It is actually a very good to bike to ride, fast or slow, long or short, and when you finally get a stretch of freshly laid tarmac it all makes sense. The performance for a non-race bike is stunning and it'll just cruise for mile after mile with you in complete comfort.

According to the J.Guillem website the designer lives in Mallorca, an island famed for its smooth roads and excellent climate. This would seem to be what the Orient has been designed for, and you just can't appreciate its ability on the UK's terrible roads where even the best ones have vibration-inducing ripples and minor cracks, none of which are tamed by the Orient.

Right bike, wrong roads possibly.

Verdict

Fast and fun ride but its overly stiff titanium frame is tiring on rough roads