Originally Posted by
ColinL
Post of the year candidate!
Excellent information, excellent pics. Hell-- you made me want to buy a Reverb.
Heh. I would say don't get one unless you are either confident in your own mechanical abilities, or have a shop you trust. As said, the newest revisions seem to be working solid, and they are coming stock on more and more bikes. I'm okay with the idea of having to maintain/rebuild mine if/when it needs it, because I like the function of it so damn well. I have the parts, tools, and SRAM makes the information to do so readily available on the service section of their site.
At this point, the newest crop of dropper posts are ALL suspect. Most have been either sucky from the get-go, or haven't been out long enough to see how they do in the long term. You can find bad reviews and info out there about any of the posts, so go for what fits you budget and what's in stock!
The Specy Command Post newest version seems to be doing well, and I've heard decent things about the basic dropper from Giant as well.
I'd not touch a Kronolog with a ten foot pole. The couple DSP posts I've had my hands on all felt and worked like crap. The Fox DOSS lever seems klunky and cludgy, and the very exposed actuation mechanism seems...a really dumb way to go about things. The Kind Shock offerings seem hit or miss. I've heard a lot of good AND bad about the LEV. Thompson looks to be pretty nice, and they are supposedly working on a "stealth" model, though they have said they don't think they'll be able to make it as reliable as there regular version.
Methinks a lot of the dropper problems are from companies rusing to get something out there, and not really getting all the bugs worked out. Hell, they have improved a lot in the last few years. Another couple years and they'll be more and more standard OEM spec on full bikes, reliability will have improved and costs will have dropped for the aftermarket models. Hell, you have a company like Giant which has always been somewhat slow to pick up changes (rather than doing their own thing) already with a post out there.
IMO, the most set and forget is the Gravity Dropper. The rest all seem a bit more finicky. YMMV.