Hot tech from Sea Otter 2024: New helmets, radical road bikes and more

Sea Otter is a festival of everything bike related with hundreds of brands taking to the Laguna Seca race circuit just outside Monterey in California to showcase their latest and greatest products.

The event is also often seen as a barometer for the cycling industry, giving an insight into the overall stability of the market and any coming trends. With this in mind, we hunted out some of the hottest tech from day one of the event.

Read more: Time claims new XPro 12 SL is 'lightest road pedal on the market'

POC releases the Procen Air helmet

After gaining much attention during the early season, with both the men’s and women’s EF-Education teams racing to a handful of victories wearing it, POC's time trial-esque Procen Air helmet has been officially released.

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The Procen Air is POC's latest time trial-inspired road helmet

The Procen Air builds on the existing Procen TT helmet, optimising it for use in the peloton. Although similar in silhouette to the Procen TT, the Procen Air doesn’t drop so low around the rider's jaw.

• Read more: Unreleased POC helmet worn by entire EF Education-Cannondale team at Brugge-De Panne

This is to allow riders to hear the environment around them. In the press release for the helmet, POC says: “In a peloton, hearing is often a cyclist's first warning system. A racer's spatial awareness depends on their ability to perceive sound, especially when other riders are coming up from behind them, outside the range of their peripheral vision. As such, the point where the helmet covers the ears has been highly tuned to provide optimal aerodynamic performance and sound.”

Sava Dream Maker

German bike brand Sava caught our attention with its radical Dream Maker road bike. The bike has a striking integrated cockpit that is a single piece with the fork.

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The guy's at Sava had this striking, fully integrated fork and cockpit on display

It is not just a space-age aesthetic with the brand saying that the design creates a very still front end as well as reducing the frontal area of the bike. The fork itself has a profile that is claimed to shield the rider's legs from oncoming airflow in an attempt to increase the aerodynamic performance of the bike.

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The fork aims to shelter the rider's legs from the wind in an attempt to increase aerodynamic efficiency

Pinarello’s mountain bikes worthy of world champions

Over at the Pinarello stand, both the Dogma XC and Dogma XC hardtail were on display. These bikes are currently not yet available for purchase however, they have been ridden by both Tom Pidcock and Pauline Ferrand-Prevot to World Championship victories.

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Pinarello showed off the Dogma XC in a production-ready build

The Dogma XC bikes on display feature a build different to that used by the Ineos Grenadiers off-road riders, signifying a production build spec. The bikes mix SRAM’s XX SL AXS drivetrain with Shimano XTR brakes and swap out the SR Suntour suspension favoured by Ineos for Fox’s newly released Factory 32 fork.

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The Dogma XC hardtail was also on display with its asymmetric seatstays

Zipp's lightest disc wheel, the Super 9

Fresh for Sea Otter is Zipp’s brand new Super 9 disc wheelset. This represents the brand's lightest disc wheel, coming in at under 1kg.

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The new Super 9 comes in at 999 grams and has been optimised for use with a 28m tubeless tyre

The Super 9 reflects the shift across the industry to wider tyres, with the new wheel being designed around optimal performance with a 28mm width tyre. A 23mm internal rim width is matched to a 30.4mm external rim width, with the Super 9 continuing the brand's move to solely hookless rims. Interestingly, as standard, the new Super 9 comes with a TyreWiz 2.0 tyre pressure sensor.

ENVE Fray

Having been released last week, the ENVE Fray is a bike designed for "real riders" who are not necessarily pros. The Fray has been built with a longer head tube than typical, allowing riders to find a comfortable fit without the need for tons of spacers under the stem.

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Enve had its latest release on display in the shape of the Fray 'all road' bike

At the ENVE stand, they also had on display the ENVE/Classified collaboration that uses Classified’s two-speed internal hub gear to bring a two-by range of gears to a one-by configuration. A small shifter mounted on the left-hand drop can change the ratio of the internal hub between a 1:1 or a 1:0.7 ratio.

• Read more: ENVE introduces the Fray, a new adventure-capable road bike

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A small button mounted on the left drop operates the Classified internal hub gears

Look power meter pedals

Look recently released the Keo Blade Power pedals which are noteworthy for having an identical silhouette to their non-power siblings. The engineers at Look have managed to nestle all of the electronics and battery inside a standard-size pedal body. This is possible in part thanks to the use of a rechargeable battery rather than the more common coin cells other manufacturers use.

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Look had its new Keo Blade Power on display with the pedal taking the exact same form as the standard Keo Blade

Having the same stack as the standard pedals allows riders to swap between standard and power meter-equipped pedals without the need to adjust their saddle height to compensate. For riders with multiple bikes, this makes using the power meter pedals considerably less hassle.

• Read more: Look reveals KEO Blade and X-Track power meter pedals

Hiplok 1000 series lock

It's not just bikes that are on display at Sea Otter, with UK brand Hiplok showcasing its new 1000 series lock. Using a graphene composite material called Ferosafe, the 1000 series is claimed to “turn angle grinder cutting discs to dust”.

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The 1000 series of locks use a gaphene composite to resist attempts to cut the lock with an angle grinder

The 1000 series comes with the highest Sold Secure diamond rating which can be a requirement from some bike insurers. At the Hiplok stand, it had an example of a lock that had been cut with an angle grinder before the cutting disc had worn down.

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Hiplok had a lock on display that had stood up to an angle grinder attack

We are out at Sea Otter all weekend, so make sure to head to the tech section of the GCN website to keep up to date with all the latest news from the event.