T3 Awards 2020: Whyte S-150C RS V2 reaches the mountain bike peak, leaves the rest trailing

It's a 29er… but only when you want it to be

T3 Awards 2020: Whyte S-150C RS V2 is our #1 mountain bike
(Image credit: Whyte)

The last winner on day 1 of T3 Awards 2020 week is the best mountain bike of the year. Described by us as a 'shape-shifting trail slayer', it's the Whyte S-150C RS V2. 

It's technically a trail bike rather than an enduro bike, which is good since, having posted 22 T3 Awards related stories today, we now know more than we really wanted to about endurance. It's a tough way to make a living.

Britain's finest artisan MTB enterprise, Whyte has long forged a reputation for building innovative mountain bikes. They're regular award winners – hopefully the infamously weighty T3 Awards trophy won't cause their special cabinet to collapse.

The S-150C is the pick of their 2020 range and the finest mountain bike you can buy right now. It's a cutting-edge trail bike that's perfectly balanced and very well specced for its price, with a splendid 150mm RockShock Pike Select fork twinned with a RockShox Deluxe Select, RT Debonair shock. 

The 12-speed transmission is courtesy of SRAM's GX Eagle, while Code 4 four-pot brakes provide plenty of stopping power. The S-150C can run on either 29-inch or 27.5-inch wheels but comes with a 29-inch wheelset as standard.

For taking on trails, there's nothing better; that's why for us the Whyte is 2020's finest MTB. In fact, with its uncanny wheel-switching abilities, it's almost the best two MTBs of 2020…

• Read about the other winners at the T3 Awards 2020

• Find out what won the T3 Award for 2020's top road bike

Duncan Bell

Duncan is the former lifestyle editor of T3 and has been writing about tech for almost 15 years. He has covered everything from smartphones to headphones, TV to AC and air fryers to the movies of James Bond and obscure anime. His current brief is everything to do with the home and kitchen, which is good because he is an excellent cook, if he says so himself. He also covers cycling and ebikes – like over-using italics, this is another passion of his. In his long and varied lifestyle-tech career he is one of the few people to have been a fitness editor despite being unfit and a cars editor for not one but two websites, despite being unable to drive. He also has about 400 vacuum cleaners, and is possibly the UK's leading expert on cordless vacuum cleaners, despite being decidedly messy. A cricket fan for over 30 years, he also recently become T3's cricket editor, writing about how to stream obscure T20 tournaments, and turning out some typically no-nonsense opinions on the world's top teams and players.

Before T3, Duncan was a music and film reviewer, worked for a magazine about gambling that employed a surprisingly large number of convicted criminals, and then a magazine called Bizarre that was essentially like a cross between Reddit and DeviantArt, before the invention of the internet. There was also a lengthy period where he essentially wrote all of T3 magazine every month for about 3 years. 

A broadcaster, raconteur and public speaker, Duncan used to be on telly loads, but an unfortunate incident put a stop to that, so he now largely contents himself with telling people, "I used to be on the TV, you know."