Specialized Diverge 4: First ride review of the brand's most versatile bike

Specialized has updated its Diverge gravel bike, moving away from its STR rear suspension system and toward a more neutral but compliant frame design.

First seen at Unbound Gravel in May, the bike retains its Future Shock 3.0, with 20 mm of travel stored in the steerer tube, while the seat post is designed to deflect backward over the roughest terrain. This post creates a balanced bump dampening without adding the weight and moving parts of the Future Shock Rear suspension system as seen in the STR models.

While the bike is clearly designed to emphasize comfort and compliance over true racing construction and spec, it is modern in its 50mm tyre clearance, it remains decently light weight, and handled very well on the mix of the roads and light trails of Phoenix, Arizona, where I had my first ride of the new bike.

“We engineered this bike with input from racers, adventure riders, and scientists. It’s the most versatile Diverge ever,” says Luke Callahan, Specialized lead engineer for the new bike.

Of course, that statement isn’t anything new. Specialized has always positioned the Diverge as the do-it-all machine. However, by shedding weight, retaining rear compliance, and boosting the tyre clearance by three millimeters in the front and rear, the new Diverge certainly seems like it is keeping pace with the other options from the big brands.

While the changes may seem small, they showcase where the market is headed in the coming years.

While a full review will follow once we have more first-hand experience, here are some of the most intriguing aspects on paper:

Tweaking compliance

The Diverge 4 seems to be two steps forward and one step back when it comes to the balancing act of addressing the need for compliance while keeping the weight down and the handling responsive.

The step back, in my opinion, is losing the Future Shock Rear. It was by far the most hyped design element of the previous iteration of the Diverge, but also its most controversial. Rear suspension is gone entirely, with the seat stay, seat tube, and top tube coming together in a way that looks in line with the brands tendency to build around slightly dropped seat stays and a traditional seat clamp.

The first step forward, as a way to address rear-end compliance, is the addition of the Roval Terra seat post. The offering from Specialized’s sub-brand is a compliant seat-post that provides a small, but significant, 18mm of rear deflection. Pair that post with the front Future Shock and the bike offers 20mm of “suspension” to smooth out most bumps and imperfections found on most gravel roads.

The second step forward is the significant increase in tyre clearance. The posted clearance for the bike is 50mm in the front and the rear, however, Specialized suggests that a 2.2 tyre could fit in the frame just fine. We will get into the downstream effects of this clearance in the next section, but the increase in clearance is a welcome addition to a bike that prides itself on versatility.

Building geometry around the modern trends

The Diverge 4 takes an off-road-riding first approach with a geometry that design around big tyres, comfort and stable handling over rough terrain.

Most notably, the front end is slacker and the reach is longer than its predecessors, gearing the steering more towards the mountain bike side of things. This encourages riders to run shorter stems to balance out a shallower head tube angle that provides that smooth, stable platform.

At the rear, Specialized has lengthened the chainstay to improve clearance and balance weight distribution. In gravel bike design, chainstay length is a major point of division: brands like Ventum and Pivot prioritise keeping the chainstay as short as possible, even with slack geometry, while others, like Allied, take a more flexible approach. With a 430 mm chainstay, the Specialized Diverge falls into the latter camp.

From my initial rides with 45mm tyres, the bike doesn’t feel unwieldy by any means. The balanced feeling of the height is quite nice to have on the road especially when you want a predictable feeling even if the steering is generally slower.

Lastly, the Diverge has lowered its bottom bracket. On some bikes, this can be a big adjustment, but with the bike built around bigger tyres, this move to lower the bottom bracket is more of a corrective move toward keeping the same stand over height than any progressive change in frame geography.

Pricing and build specifications

The Diverge 4 comes in eight different build specs, ranging from the top flight Diverge Pro LTD ($10,499/£8,499), with its bright red paint job that Matt Beers and Sofia Gomez-Villafane have been riding this summer, down to the aluminum Diverge E5 model ($2,099/£1,999).

We are currently testing the second highest spec, which is the Diverge Pro. Priced at $7,999/£6,999 the bike comes stock with new SRAM Rival AXS XPLR groupset complete with a Quarq power meter, a 40t chainring and Roval Terra CL wheels wrapped in 45mm Specialized Tracer tyres.

One area where the bike hasn’t adjusted to the latest trends yet is in the crank arm length, which still is the 172.5 for size 54 and 56 bikes, with 52cm frames equipped with 170mm cranks and 58cm are 175mm.

We are eager to get more time on this bike as it looks like a significant upgrade to the Diverge line. Now, more than previous editions, it seems to meet the market where it's going rather than chasing unique attributes that don’t produce enough benefits. We are particularly excited to get the front end lower with a shorter, negative angle stem, and try bigger tyres to really see how versatile the bike can be.