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 full road bikes cycle 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.

Scultura​
Merida Scultura 100 2019 (1)
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.

Read our complete guide to Shimano’s groupsets.

Merida Scultura 4000 2019 (1)
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.

We reviewed the 2016 version of the Merida Scultura 6000 (above, now £2,200) and said: “Overall the Scultura comes down to an awesome frameset, a pretty decent groupset, and average components.”

We also reviewed the 2017 Merida Scultura 7000-E (above) and called it a “lightweight and efficient road bike that offers fast responses and an excellent ride quality”.

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.

Merida Scultura 8000-E 2019 (1)
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.

We reviewed the 2017 version of the Merida Scultura Disc 6000 (above), and we absolutely loved it. We called it “an efficient and reactive road bike that offers an excellent ride quality and the reassurance of hydro disc brakes”.

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.

Buy if: You want a performance-minded road bike and your focus is on light weight.

Reacto
The Scultura (above) has some aerodynamic features but it’s the Reacto that’s the real aero option in Merida’s road bike range, and the carbon fibre models had a major redesign for 2018. The Reacto is now available in both disc brake and rim brake models, each in two different geometries.

Merida says that the new Reacto is more aerodynamically efficient than the previous version by about eight watts at 45km/h. That equates to around 5%. Merida also claims that the difference in aero efficiency between the rim brake and disc models is less than one watt at that speed.

The aero improvement has been achieved by slimming down the tube shapes, introducing a lower seatstay/ seat tube connection and modifying the seatstays to have a larger bend towards the cassette. A one piece cockpit with integrated features has also been added.

Merida says that the weight of the Reacto (rim brake) frame, fork, seatpost, seatpost clamp and headset has come down from 2,046g to 1,695.5g, and that the new version is more comfortable than before.