Cannondale Topstone105 and Cannondale TopstoneSora Compared.Gravel Bike to Travel bike modification.

my name is Joery from better to be outsidebetter to be outside is a program that talks about traveling cycling food andwe do product reviews so if you're new to this channel please subscribe to ourchannel and we'll keep you updated every week with new content.

So today we'rehaving a product review we're gonna talk about our bicyclesit's a these are Cannondale gravel bikes this is the top stone in 105 Shimanoversion so why did we choose these bikes to travel first of all they're reallygood value if you look at the soraa version they go about 1, 250 us thisversion is about 1715 us one of the things we like about these bikes is thatit's a race bike format but it's really sturdy so there's really thick tires soif you go into a pothole or something if you would have smaller tires forgetabout it you'll get a blowout straightaway and with these ones you canjust it just smooths out the path a lot there's a pretty good wheels on there aswell it's an aluminum frame with a carbon fork we like to have an aluminumframe because these things will go into airplanes they go into boats maybe ontop of buses we need something which is a little bit less fragile than carbonfibre so what did we modify on the bikes to convert it into a travel bike firstof all I changed the the bar tape here this was a generic bar tape we change itfor the brook leather bar tape I don't wear gloves so it's nice to havethe feeling of a natural product and then for as for the paddles wechoose a two-sided system so we can just if we go a little bit just around wherewe where we are we can just put normal shoes on it and once we start on thebike for like a bike trip we we definitely use the clipless so it's agood good thing to have both of them the gearing on the top stone originally wasit's a it's a two-speed system in the front it's pretty good because it's at30 as smallest and then you have a 40 big blade herethe back we changed into a 40 there was a 34 we were able to do it withoutchanging the the chain and with the rear derailleur so it's it was just an easyconversion this is definitely a must if you go cycling to change the cassette tosomething bigger we go up really steep hills and with a lot of weight you youdefinitely need the smallest gear you can get the saddle is another thing thatI changed I just took this saddle from my other bike it's sli Italia it workspretty well for me so I don't change something which is a it's good as forthe rack well we have the tubas rack here we chose the the version where wecan put the bags a little bit lower so we can put like a backpack on the back Iwill show you later tubas is a German brand they're steel racks so if there'ssomething happening to them you can be welded there's a 10 year warranty alsoon these I used to be racks on my previous bike trips and I had them onone bike trip for two and a half years there was no problem at all so this issomething I would recommend to everybody and then we have I have on the on thefront here this is a my quick-release system for the early prom bag there ishere a quad lock system to put my phone this is a relevant design little it's alittle front to back and it's really handy for all kinds of stuff which youliter pretty quick so I have some money in here I have my my glasses in here nowat the time that the corona virus I have the mask which I put in here as well andhand sanitizer so stuff which is really handy which is it just kind of quicklycloses here there's a magnetic little system here to hold it to hold it downI have little I have a little bag here normally my tripod fits perfectly inhere so this is for me a really really nice way to keep my tripod or our waterbottle system I have normally a normal bottle in here but this is a bottlewhich is really fantastic system at a company is called fit lock so you canjust magnetically hold it here normally if I would have a normal bottle in hereI had to pull it up so with this bag it's impossible so this is really goodsystem you just click it in here and it works really fantastic so on the backhere we have like a little Evoque little bag it works really well this is where Ihave the spare tires my little tool baggies in the back here so this is thefirst impression of the topstone 105 will show you some pictures on how thebike moves in different conditions what I really like about the bike is reallyall-round bike in the Netherlands I went with a friend of mine we went tosome single trails so we rode up to the single trails and then on the singletrails it handled really really amazingly well but just going there andgoing back there you have the advantage of having like a race a race bike formatso you go a lot quicker towards it you go maybe a little bit less control onthe single trails but it works really really well so for us it's a reallyreally nice all-round bike and modified like this we can travel with it so thisis the top stone in Sora version so what's the difference between the 105and the Sora well obviously the group set is Sora and not 105 so what doesthat mean the breaks are mechanical disc brakes as for a travel bike I think it'smaybe an advantage I don't know how to bleed and upkeep a system and hydraulicsystem and this is just a wire so that would be definitely an advantage whentraveling I didn't get the Sora bike because they didn't have it in my sizeif not I would have gone for for this and maybe modify it a little bit withthe price difference there's a you can modify it a little bit more towards atravel bike the other differences this is a mind speed system the disadvantageof the 9 speed system is that we could only get a 36 cog in the back for thisso this is not as comfortable riding up a mountain as the 105 and the otherdifference is the wheels are better quality on the 105 on the 105 topstoneso the modifications on the on this bike is well as you can see obviously we havethe leather Brooks bar tape we have the typical classical b-17sbrutes saddle this is a women's specific saddle we did a separate review on bothof these items I'll like put a link here below so you can just have a look at atthis review other modifications on this bike to make it into a travel bike wellthese are the same we have the same paddles which we changed there's a twolock systems here we also put a Brighton computer on here there is a GoPro mounton here this is a really nice way to document some of our travels it gives areally nice point of view of how we're traveling we're having here like alittle bell we use it to communicate with each other just to know like areyou still in the back are you farther ahead or look here there is somethingjust a little bell is a really really a nice little feature and these are littlegroup bags christina has on her back so we're theseare just like the daily little things we put in here we'll show you in anothervideo exactly what is in our bags we'll do an update on on the bikes maybe in acouple of months when our easier trip is over just to see okay how did theyhandle with all the abuse it it took.