Price: $49

The One Up Composite flat pedal takes a unique approach to its flat pedal design, eschewing the commonly held theory that a concave profile works best.

>>> Best mountain bike flat pedals for 2018

Instead it uses a slight convex shape. In other words the centre of the pedal, around the axle, is thicker than the leading and trailing edge. Why do this? Well One Up says this allows the platform to sit in the arch of your foot, which makes sense if that’s the area that contacts the pedal. The thing is, it’s the balls of our feet that rest against the pedals, not the arch, and we can’t think of any flat pedal riders that are any different in this respect. So it sounds a bit dubious to us.

Fortunately, One Up provides a generous platform size and ten aggressive M3 bolts per side to dig into your shoe. At 12mm, these extend 1mm further out of the pedal body and really lock into the rubber sole as a result.

Internally, there’s an outboard sealed cartridge bearing and an inboard bushing with a seal at one end. Nothing out of the ordinary then, except it also has two end caps, which should help sealing. Compared to other flat pedals however, the axle is much shorter and the bearings are closer together. This means the platform is not as well supported as it with some other flat pedals. Whether this puts more stress on the bearings in the long run we can’t say, but the axles in our One Up samples didn’t have quite run as smoothly as the other flat pedals.

Out of the box however the One Up Composite generated considerably more grip than most other flat pedals.