Bianchi Arcadex review: How stiff should your gravel bike be?

It’s a strange beast, the Bianchi Arcadex. It is perhaps the stiffest gravel bike I’ve ever ridden. It has design cues straight off the most hard-edged aero road frames. Bianchi uses the word “sculpted” to describe its various shapes and edges and references “high-speed bikepacking” as a potential use case. It looks like it wants to be aggressive and it rides like it wants to go fast, but the fit is incredibly short, with front-center figures two to three centimeters shorter than equivalent bikes from other brands, so the overall effect is that of an angular supercar that’s just been run headfirst into a wall. I do not love the Bianchi Arcadex. You can probably tell. Which is a bit sad for me, personally, as Bianchi has historically made a number of my Top Ten Best Bikes — the Specialissima remains almost untouchably good, and the gravel-lite Impulso doesn’t leave much to complain about. But with this one, the mark was missed. Our Field Test group bike tests are by no means paid events, but they’re still