The Race Face Ride stem is one of those components that makes you question whether you need to spend mega bucks on parts. Coming in a shade under £25, it looks better than some a lot of (much) more expensive stems.

Race Face Ride stem wouldn’t look out of place on any high end build

No fuss

The Ride range is aimed more at general cross country riders and light trail use, rather than the more heavy duty stems in Race Face’s range. But that aside, we had no issues with it at any point during our test period. We rarely had to think about it, and it happily kept our bars held tight and pointing in the right direction; all without a single complaint.

Eye see you…

The stem is forged from 6061 aluminium and then shot peened to create a hard wearing finish. The face plate is machined out for accuracy and a snug fit with the handlebar. Because of the more basic design it has a more traditional four bolt handlebar fastening so you need to be careful to evenly tension all four of the steel bolts.

Read: Race Face Aeffect 35 stem review

No bother

We had no major issues with regards to flex from the 70mm length, but due to the nature of the intended use we kept bar width down to under 720mm. Stack height is relatively average at 39mm so should fit in place of the majority of stems.

Buy now: Get the Race Face Ride stem from £19.99 at Chain Reaction Cycles 

Weight wise the Ride isn’t too overly built, the 152g weight for the 70mm version is lighter than many stems double the price.