Today, premium bike brand FACTOR has made its debut in the world of mountain biking with the launch of the new LANDO. It's an uncompromising cross country thoroughbred available as both a hardtail or full suspension and Factor's sister brand, Black Inc, handles componentry on both bikes.

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The LANDO XC is the full suspension bike in the lineup, that's designed around a 100-120mm travel fork with 115mm or 100mm of squish at the rear, adjustable by opting for either a shock with a 45mm or 40mm stroke. That rear suspension is a ‘faux-bar’ design activated by Factor’s own design single-pivot linkage and the frame with the included hardware is claimed to tip the scales at 2.1kg. 

Torsional stiffness was key in Factor's thinking when designing the LANDO XC and as such, the designers have chosen to mount the shock vertically, concentrating forces around the bottom bracket and allowing for weight savings elsewhere. The bike then makes use of a split seat tube which means that a monobox chainstay connection could be employed, boosting torsional stiffness and further reducing weight, says Factor. Also in a name of weight savings, the brand has binned excess pivots and has opted for flex stays.

The LANDO XC makes use of a one-piece carbon rocker and the shock and lower swing arm pivots have been mounted as wide as Factor thinks is possible in a bid to ensure the simplest, lightest and strongest use of available frame material.

This bike then gets a 67° head angle and a 75.5 effective seat tube angle which remains across the size range.

As for the LANDO HT, it's specced with a 110mm of suspension travel at the front while also being available with Blank Inc's fully rigid fork. Its frame draws inspiration from Factor's Famed road and gravel bikes, with the frame's tube shaping sharing bits from the OSTRO VAM. This bike also benefits from dropped seat stays with a kink in order to offer a touch of vertical compliance.

In keeping with the theme of compliance, the hard tail's top tube is wide and flat to encourage flex under heavier impacts. Then, there's boost spacing and clearance for up to a 2.4" tyre.

Both bikes get threaded bottom brackets and internal cable routing.

Factor has taking full advantage of its sister brand and has used its components to complete the bikes. There's a one-piece bar and stem offering a width of 760mm with an 8° backsweep and stem lengths of 60-90mm. The bikes then roll on Blank Inc's TWENTY SEVEN wheels, featuring a 27mm internal width and it's said that they weigh just 1459g per pair. Those come sorted with CeramicSpeed bearings, sapim straight pull CX-Ray and CX-Sprint spokes and a Ni-Cr axle. Of course, they're 29".

The rest of the spec looks pretty similar across both bikes. There are DT Swiss FT232 One forks (and a DT Swiss r323 One shock on the LANDO XC),  SRAM XX1 groupsets, and Goodyear Peak 29x2.25" tyres.

Prices for the Factor LANDO XC and HT are £7,000 and £5,400.

• factorbikes.com

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