Look Keo Classic 3 Plus pedals review

Sitting near the bottom of Look’s road pedal range the Look Keo Classic 3 Plus pedals offer the same look and feel as its pricier carbon designs, but with a composite plastic pedal body. 

What does the Plus mean? Like Look’s more expensive models, the pedal has stainless steel inserts in its top surface, which the standard Keo Classic 3 lacks. You pay an extra £15 for these, but they should help increase your pedals’ longevity. Look says that they increment pedal stiffness and hence power transfer too.

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The Look Keo Classic 3 Plus pedals are the same size as the £79 Keo 2 Max, but the contact surface across the middle of the platform is a little shorter front to back: Look says its area is 500mm2 as against 600mm2. Both pedal models have more or less the same stack heights of 11.5mm for the pedal, 17.8mm for the pedal plus cleat.

Does the lower surface area make much difference? Probably not unless you’re a racer, in which case you’ll probably want to go for Look’s pricier, more aero pedals like the Keo Blade Carbon Ceramic, weighing 232g a pair. I’d expect that most carbon soled cycling shoes would be stiff enough that any difference in performance would be minimal.

At 278g a pair, the Look Keo Classic 3 Plus pedals weigh a bit more than the Keo 2 Max, which we weighed at 252g a pair. Their raw steel pedal spindles look a bit less flashy than the black ones on the Keo 2 Max too. Again, neither is going to make a material difference.

The retention system looks more-or-less identical to the pricier pedals, with two sturdy stainless steel springs and an adjustable release tension between 8 and 12Nm. It uses the same Look cleats too, weighing 66g a pair including bolts. Clipping in and out is easy and the Look cleats are a bit narrower than Shimano pedals, so they don’t protrude over the edges of your cycling shoes so much, making for a more polished look off the bike.

Price-wise the Look Keo Classic 3 Plus pedals are £11 less than Shimano’s equivalent entry level RS550 composite body pedals. They’re lighter too by 42g. You need to shell out £115 at full retail price for Shimano 105 carbon pedals, to match the Look pedals in weight.

Look’s bearings have a reputation for longevity; I’ve ridden multiple pairs of the Keo 2 Max and Keo Blade pedals over thousands of miles without any issues and I'd expect the same to be true of the Classic 3 Plus. All Look’s pedals roll off the same production lines in Nevers, France, where Look has sophisticated quality controls to make sure they’re assembled correctly.

For lower priced pedals, with added durability from the stainless steel inserts, the Look Keo Classic 3 Plus pedals are hard to fault.