Peaty’s Monarch grips review: Fantastic control and comfort

Owned by downhill legend Steve Peat, Peaty’s Products has an excellent mountain bike equipment range, which includes its Monarch grips. The two grip designs share smart details, come in two sizes, and a bunch of colors. They’re packaged to be as planet-friendly as possible too, and are some of the best MTB grips I've ever tested.

Design and build

The Monarch grips come in two designs, knurled file pattern or mushroom ribbed. That only applies to the topside though as the underside of both grips has a siped bar design for finger grip and then a chevron ribbed thumb panel on the inboard section. There’s a half flange on the inboard edge, a bulged outside edge and the grips taper slightly from inside to outside.

They’re molded onto an 80 percent recycled ocean plastic core that taps securely onto the bar, locking in place with 3mm stainless steel bolted lock-rings with a slim rounded profile. The 20a durometer grip rubber is also molded onto the core asymmetrically so that it’s thicker on the rider-facing side.

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Both grip designs are available in ‘Thin’ (30-32mm) or ‘Thick’ (32-34mm) and black, red, mango, turquoise and slate grey colour options. You can accessorize them with coloured lock rings anodized in black, bourbon, emerald, gold, mango, navy, punch, red, silver, slate, turquoise and violet.

Peaty’s also uses recycled and recyclable cardboard packaging (including the grip plugs which are normally plastic) with wire and paper ties on the lock ring cards rather than zip-ties.

Performance

Grips are very much a personal thing but Peaty’s consulted over a 1,000 riders (including me) about their preferred designs before testing the most popular options. They then built their own 3D printing and molding setup to prototype various designs before settling on the final two designs.

Unsurprisingly, they feel like a ‘best of’ compilation of popular designs such as DMR’s Deathgrip, PNW’s Loam built onto the tapered, offset form of Ergon. Testing them back to back though, you appreciate the extra detailing of the Monarchs. These include the extra stability of the chevron thumb pad compared to a simpler mushroom section. The extra grip and firmer feedback from the finger bars being cut into the grip rather than sitting on top of a flexy base. The half-flange, grip taper and outside lip naturally position your hand really well with a neutral wrist angle and let you know when you’re getting to the edges. Laser-etched lock rings and printed logos on the grip faces and end pieces make accurate alignment easy too.

I normally prefer an aggressive grip pattern like the knurled design, but still chose them for wet weather or any other situation when maximum feedback and grip were the priority. I was surprised how much I liked the combination of comfortable topside cushioning and precise underside finger grip of the mushroom designs though. This means they became my go-to for long, rougher rides on both my XC and trail bikes where the extra comfort noticeably reduced buzz fatigue and softened baked ground, tight fork, or stiff wheel issues.

So far, they’re lasting really well too, with no tears or splits despite a couple of crashes. The thicker ends also protect carbon bar tips as well as anything your bike falls against.

Verdict

There are load of different grip options available, but for me the Peaty’s approach of trying everything and cherry-picking the best parts of each really works. The tapered, asymmetric design means even the thin knurled grips give super clean and precise feedback in all weathers without being bruising. Alternatively, the semi-mushroom design adds noticeable comfort without diluting bar control or compromising confident grip. The compound seems a great balance of tactile and tough so far, the pricing is reasonable and Peaty’s deserve credit for thinking eco where they can.