Tested: Eminent Cycles Onset ST Advanced 29

When my Eminent Onset test bike arrived and I put it in the stand, my first thought was that it looked … heavy. I could feel judgements starting to bubble up. Wasn’t this supposed to be a whippet-quick, short-travel 29er?

In that moment, I didn’t weigh it or start studying the geo chart or researching its suspension kinematics or examining the value for each spec package. Instead I finished set up and immediately rolled from the garage out on a shakedown loop—5 miles, 800 vertical feet up less than a mile of fire road, traverse, then down a steep, narrow, bumpy, slightly overgrown, singletrack descent.

Fun achieved. Mind reset.

By the time I was back home, my outlook had completely changed. The Onset Advanced ST, a 120/130 29er from the San Diego, California-based newcomer, Eminent, is clearly bringing something unique to the table, and not just because of its unusual silhouette.

And I was wrong about the weight assumption—it’s about the same as my Ibis Ripley—but the Onset’s unconventional, almost-industrial aesthetic threw me. Like an iPhone user suddenly fumbling to open an app on an Android, my UX was all off—the chunky tubes, floating shock and long rocker arms looked foreign to my brain, which was pre-programmed to recognize chasses built around familiar names like ‘VPP,’ DW-Link’ or ‘Switch Infinity.’

The Onset has similar numbers to name-brand models made by the companies that use those well-known linkages, and it fits squarely into the ever-expanding XC-plus category, with its 66.8-degree head angle, 76-degree seat angle and moderate 441-millimeter reach (size medium). But it achieves its travel through Eminent’s Active Float System suspension, which floats the shock between the seat and chain stays in a design that prioritizes traction over all other ride characteristics. The idea is to keep shock alignment consistent regardless of lateral forces, reducing shock bind. It’s not an entirely new concept, as Travis Engel wrote when Eminent launched three years ago, but it is a modern take on the style of linkage with roots in the mid ’90s downhill race scene.

Eminent’s design uses a floating brake mount to decouple suspension movement and braking force to eliminate brake jack, and, again, optimize traction. Its leverage curve is designed to be progressive but straight, offering small-bump sensitivity, as well as support deeper into the travel.

I definitely felt these characteristics, but it took me a couple of rides to find the sag sweet spot to achieve that ideal suspension feel. At 30 percent, I sank too low into the travel on seated climbs, even with the blue switch on the Fox DPS Performance Elite shock toggled all the way to the firmest ‘Climb’ setting. At 25 percent, riding higher in the travel, I felt enough support to climb in the middle ‘Traction’ mode while seated, and was still able to use every bit of available travel on descents. When climbing required more effort, standing up and upping my power input to the pedals was rewarded with rear-wheel traction over techy bits. The Onset felt plenty efficient and laterally stiff—perhaps not earning rocketship-status like the Yeti SB115, but a nice, supportive pedaling platform. That, coupled with the appropriately modern 76-degree seat angle, and the cassette range and crisp shifting of Shimano’s 12-speed XT drivetrain, and the Onset was a perfectly pleasant climbing companion on southern California’s signature steep, loose, dusty, exposed fire roads.

The Onset looks the part of a short-travel brawler, with wide bars (810 millimeters; if it were my own bike, I’d cut ‘em by at least 30 mil), a 203-millimeter front brake rotor, bomber  aluminum rims, a downtube protector, an integrated chainguide, and certainly seemed up to throwing a few punches on the descents. This is a bike that gives back what you put into it, and comes more alive the more you step on the gas. It behaves predictably with a goes-where-you-point-it personality, and motors through rock gardens with delight. It doesn’t have the hover-bike feel of an Ibis Ripley in those situations, but it requires less line precision than stiffer, racier short-travel bikes like the aforementioned SB 115; its overall demeanor is more laidback than that bike, but more serious than the poppy, playful Evil Following. The Following begs to turn every trail into a playground, while the Onset has a more stable, planted feel, likely due to its longish 442-millimeter chainstays. That’s not to say it has the unwieldy, barge-like qualities of early 29ers, the Onset just waits a little longer to reveal its livelier side, like in successive berms or fast, smooth, snaking lines when it responds instantly to how you maneuver the bike.

For $6,100, the Onset ST Advanced offers a pretty dialed package, anchored by Fox Performance Elite suspension and Shimano XT components (Eminent doesn’t spec SRAM or RockShox on any of its models). My one gripe was the KS LEV Rage dropper, which felt slow to activate, up and down—that aside, an internal dropper was a nice touch; previous Eminents were routed externally—and if it were my bike, I’d likely replace the Vittoria Martello 2.35 tires with a Maxxis Minion DHF/Aggressor tire combo to shave a few grams and customize the rubber to best suit the trails where I ride.

Still, in such a competitive category, that pricepoint could be problematic for Eminent, which sells both direct and through a handful of brick and mortars. For example, you can get a Ripley with an XT build for $5,800. For $300 more than the Onset, your money buys a Yeti SB115 with full XT and Fox Factory suspension, a step up from the Onset’s Performance Elite level. A Santa Cruz Tallboy with similar spec to the Onset runs $6,000.

But not everyone wants a bike that everyone else has, and that’s where Eminent comes in with a real contender in this widely contended category—anyone with an appreciation for engineering over off-the-shelf designs and open-source suspension, or a penchant for boutique brands, will find an all-arounder worthy of consideration in the Onset ST.

The Onset ST also comes as a frame-only for $3,000, an SLX "Comp" build for $4,600 and an XTR "Pro" build for $8,100. The ST is part of a family of Onset models, which includes the 140/150 LT and the 155/160 MT.

You can get the details straight from Eminent here.