2019 Merida road bikes – get to know the full range

Welcome to the latest edition of road.cc’s buyer’s guide to Merida road bikes in which you’ll find a road cycling reviews full run-down of the Merida range to help ensure you pick the right bike.

​Merida road bikes span everything from children’s 20in wheelers to cutting-edge aero bikes that are raced at the very highest level by the Bahrain Merida Pro Cycling Team. Let’s take a look.

As far as Merida road bikes are concerned, there are three main parts to the range: the Scultura is focused on light weight, the Reacto is engineered for aerodynamic efficiency, and the Silex is designed to offer plenty of comfort across a variety of different surfaces.

That perhaps oversimplifies things a little because each of those categories contains more than one frame design, but it’s a good start point.

Merida also offers a couple of Race entry-level aluminium road bikes.

The Scultura is the lightweight road bike in Merida’s range, the high-end models being among the very lightest production bikes out there. Merida offers the Scultura in both rim brake and disc brake versions, and in carbon fibre and aluminium.

The entry-level model is the £700 Scultura 100 (above; across Merida’s range, if the model name has three digits the frame is aluminium, if it has four digits the frame is carbon fibre), and even at this price you get a full-carbon fork. This bike is built up with Shimano’s 8-speed Claris groupset. It’s available in both standard and women’s ‘Juliet’ versions.

The top-level aluminium model with rim brakes is the £1,000 Scultura 400 with an impressive Shimano 105 groupset. It is also available in a women’s version.

Merida offers Scultura Disc models built around a triple butted 6066 aluminium frame, each with a full carbon fork. The cheapest of them is the £900 Scultura Disc 200 (above) comes with a 9-speed Shimano Sora groupset and Promax Decode R cable-operated disc brakes.

The Scultura Disc 500 (£1,650) has Shimano’s second tier Ultegra groupset, including the hydraulic disc brakes.

Pay more and you can have a carbon fibre frame. The cheapest of these models is the £1,700 Scultura 4000 (above) which, like the Scultura 400, is Shimano 105-based. It too is available in a women’s version.

The higher level Sculturas (Limited and above) have a CF4 frame that’s built to a more aggressive geometry than the CF2 frame of the lower priced models. In other words, your riding position is a little lower and more stretched out, the goal being increased speed.

The Scultura 8000-E (above, £5,000) is kitted out with Shimano’s Ultegra components with superb Di2 electronic shifting. For this sort of money you get very good wheels too: Vision 40 SC with 40mm deep carbon rims.

As a brand with a strong mountain bike heritage, Merida is firmly committed to disc brakes and first added them to the Scultura in 2016.

The Merida Scultura Disc 6000 is no longer available but there’s a Scultura Disc 5000 (above) at £2,200. It’s built to a geometry that’s slightly more relaxed than that of the top-level Scultura Disc Team (£8,000) and the carbon fibre layup is different, but this is still very much a performance orientated bike featuring a down tube shaped for aerodynamic efficiency and aluminium disc cooling fins around the chainstay to shift heat away from the rear brake.

The Scultura Disc 5000 is built up with a Shimano Ultegra (mechanical) groupset, including hydraulic disc brakes.