Around 12 months ago we spent some quality trail time on KTM’s curvy carbon hardtail; the Myroon. It was solidly built, great to look at and delivered a ride that could be described as ‘no BS’, in an entirely complimentary way. Now a full season later we have the Phinx on test; an alloy framed 29er dually with 100mm of travel at both ends.

Cozmic (or should that be Cosmic?) may be an appropriate name for this bike. Polygon has a relatively new presence in Australia and for many riders the brand will be as foreign as a visitor from another cosmos. The Cozmic isn’t here to introduce foreign ideas or intergalactic concepts though.

Trek’s Fuel EX range must surely be one of the most versatile and well respected bikes of the last five years. It almost single handedly relaunched Trek into the dual suspension market and through its numerous iterations has gained widespread critical acclaim across the world, as well as selling a hell of a lot of bikes for the Wisconsin brand.

In the ongoing debate created by the proliferation of ‘new’ wheel sizes, there’s often a discussion of lap times, typically accompanied by the comment; ‘I rode my local track on my new 27.5/29er and I was blah blah minutes faster than on my 26er, so the big wheels are definitely better and I’ll never ride kiddie wheels again’.

Malvern Star, Speedwell, Apollo; they are all household names in the Aussie burbs. Back in the day my mate Dave used to sneak out on his dad’s neon-fade Apollo Kosciusko, taking extra precautions to ensure that the old man wouldn’t find out.

Morewood; hailing from South Africa, it’s one of those enigmatic bike brands which few people have seen, even fewer have ridden, and yet they have an almost mythical reputation for stunning looks and equally stunning performance. I well remember the first time I ran into a guy with a Morewood Izimu out on the trail and had a pedal around; the lateral stiffness was in a class of its own, and was a real eye opener.

Zesty: spirited; displaying animation, vigour or liveliness. It’s hard to imagine a more appropriate name for Lapierre’s 140mm travel, do everything trail bike.

Avanti have been in and out of the dual suspension bike game a few times over the years. After a noteworthy absence the New Zealand based brand stepped back into the bouncy game in 2011 with the 135mm travel trail-oriented Torrent and 100mm travel Vapour cross-country bike. Both were designed from the ground up by Avanti and garnered rave reviews.

Fifteen hundred bucks can buy you a fair bit of fun. That’s a big bar tab from few post ride beers and schnitzels for you and your mates, or maybe a couple of years’ worth of marathon race entry fees. That’s all well and good I hear you say, but what if you don’t have a bike to ride in order to earn that cold beer and crunchy chicken goodness, and you’re not inclined to run 100km with a numberplate zip-tied to your handlebar moustache? Hmm. BH Bikes reckon they’ve got a pretty good solution for you.

Few bikes in the modern era have been more responsible for changing the fortunes of a bike company than Trek’s ABP-equipped Fuel EX series. Before its inception in 2008, Trek’s focus had been primarily on road bikes and XC hardtails for almost a decade, to the extent that the performance of its dual suspension offerings were considered by many to be well off the mark.

It’s said that sex sells and with that in mind, there’s a fair chance that Intense is going to sell truckloads of the Carbine 275 (at long as interest rates remain low and lenders easy to come by, in any case). Draw up a checklist of all the desirable features that you’d like on a modern long-travel trail bike – make it a long and uncompromising list – and there’s a pretty good chance that the Intense Carbine 275 will tick every box.

The Merida Big Ninety-Nine – let’s just call it the BNN from now on – is Merida’s first go at a dual suspension 29er. Merida produces more high-quality bikes than anyone else on the planet, the majority being bikes branded other than Merida, so you’d expect the BNN to be a well-constructed machine, although you could say it’s a year or two late to the 29er party.

Dreams are a funny thing. We know they’re not a part of ‘real’ life, but we all have them just the same. Perhaps a large part of the attraction is that we can play them out in our minds countless times, and every one of those times everything will be perfect.

Of late there’s been an overwhelming focus on new wheel sizes. It’s enough to have you thinking that any 26-inch wheeled bike is inherently and unavoidably inferior. Forums are loaded with talk of new 29-inch and 650B bikes, along with a good deal of bemoaning directed at brands that haven’t released a model to suit one of these new-school wheel sizes.

Us dirty mountain bikers have a lot to thank our smooth-legged roadie cousins for. Sure, we could live without their seemingly genetic ability to look like they don’t enjoy riding their bikes, or the fact that we seem invisible to them when we pass on the black top.

For several years Scott’s Genius all-mountain bike has cut one of the most distinctive silhouettes on the MTB scene; its dramatically sloped seat tube and rear-mounted pull shock could not be mistaken for anything else. For 2013 the Genius hasn’t just had a facelift; it’s undergone major reconstructive surgery as if it was entering some witness protection program, and is now all but unrecognisable when compared to its former self.