MTB Clipless Pedals - Which Brand is Right For You? (Our Top Picks!) [Video]

Overview

When the first "platform style" clipless pedals came on the market in the early 90s, it took the industry by storm. No longer forced to use unstable road clip-ins, riders could now get the foot support and confidence needed for more technical and aggressive trails. Fast forward to 2018 and more brands than ever have jumped into the clipless pedal game, all looking to pull lifelong customers away from the likes of Shimano and Crank Brothers. Don't get us wrong, Shimano and Crank Brothers make some seriously awesome pedals, but brands like Time, HT, and iSSi, now all have comparable offerings with similar if not the same technology. In this review, we take an in-depth look at what these pedals have in common as well as what separates them. Enjoy!

Crank Brothers Egg Beater Pedals

The Crank Brothers Egg Beater Pedals are designed to be a lightweight and minimal XT/Trail pedal that is great for beginners and super easy to get in and out of. The Egg Beaters are dual sided and utilize the Crank Brothers cleat interface as well. As mentioned, these are perfect for riders just getting into clipless pedals and those on a budget.

• Price: $53.99
• Weight: 290gs
• Cleat Interface: Crank Brothers Brass
• Spindle Material: Chromoly Steel

Crank Brothers Candy Pedals

The Crank Brothers Candy Pedals give riders a slightly larger platform than that of the Egg Beaters while still remaining light and versatile. They have the same 4-sided entry and are excellent at shedding mud. Perfect for riders who do a little bit of everything. 

• Price: $50 - $150
• Weight: 325gs
• Cleat Interface: Crank Brothers Brass
• Spindle Material: Chromoly Steel

Crank Brothers Mallet E Pedals

Just like the other Crank Brothers pedals, the Mallet Enduro pedals clear mud very well and offers tons of stability for rough and rocky descents. Even better, the Mallet E allows you to adjust the pedal pins for more or less grip depending on your riding style. Although you cannot adjust the spindle spring, adjusting the amount of contact between your shoe and the platform will directly affect how easy it is to clip in and out. Easily one of the most popular Crank Brothers pedals on the market today and one that is widely popular amongst riders at our shop.  

• Price: $152
• Weight: 419gs
• Cleat Interface: Crank Brothers Brass
• Spindle Material: Chromoly Steel

Shimano XT M8020 Trail Pedals

The Shimano Deore XT M8020 SPD pedals are built to last. Featuring an aluminum pedal body, these things can take a serious beating and keep coming back for more. Although the actual body of the pedal is smaller than others, the XT M8020 still feel super solid and supportive while riding. While they don't offer the best grip when unclipped when compared to say the Mallet Enduro pedal with the large platform, when it comes to performance and reliability the Shimano XT M8020 is tough to beat. 

• Price: $82
• Weight: 408g
• Cleat Interface: SPD
• Spindle Material: Chromoly Steel

iSSi Trail II Pedal

Featuring the same SPD interface as the Shimano pedals, the iSSi Trail II pedals are fully serviceable, strong, and come in multiple spindle lengths. Even better is the number of colors they come in. Everything from neon yellow to hot pink if that's what you're into. When it comes to cleat retention, the iSSi trail pedals keep you locked in and confident even in the sketchiest of sections. 

• Price: $105
• Weight: 406g
• Cleat Interface: SPD
• Spindle Material: Chromoly Steel 

Time Speciale 12 Pedals

If your a fan of the Crank Brothers Mallet E but hate the rolling spindle, the Time Speciale are going to be perfect for you. Additionally, it features adjustable spring tension giving you the best of Crank Brothers and Shimano pedals. Although these pedals are more popular in Europe, the design and build quality are on point with some of the best. 

• Price: $297
• Weight: 404g
• Cleat Interface: Time ATAC
• Spindle Material: Hollow Steel

HT X2 Pedals

The HT Components X2 pedals were built with one thing in mind, performance. Designed and tested for World Cup DH Champ Aaron Gwin, the X2 pedals offer a wide range of tension adjustments to ensure that your ride is dialed and comfortable. Removal traction pads offer even more grip and stability if needed. Considering these things were designed and tested by Aaron Gwinn, it is safe to say that you're going to stay locked in no matter how crazy the ride gets.

• Price: $166
• Weight: 460g
• Cleat Interface: HT
• Spindle Material: CNC machined cr-moly

If you're one strange human and would like to read a transcript of the video above, continue reading below!

What's up guys? I'm Jeff the founder of Worldwide Cyclery and I'm here to tell you about all the different types of clipless pedals: which one's best and the pros and cons to each of them. Alright so you've probably heard the debate of Shimano pedals versus Crankbrothers pedals and maybe you've heard about some other pedals out there like time or HT. So what I have here is sort of the four most popular/common mountain bike clipless pedal types and what I'm saying clipless I'm talking about pedals that you clip into - long story behind why the term is clipless but we do have a video of flats versus clip lists where I explain that you can check that out as well we're going to go over the different types right here and sort of how they're different between each other so if you're considering clipless pedals and you've got all these different options to buy you're probably realizing you've got Crankbrothers and you've got Shimano and then you've got a couple other smaller brands as well so Crankbrothers is my personal favorite it's what I really enjoy this is my bike right here I run the mallet ease on there Crankbrothers versus Shimano versus time versus HT a lot of it does boil down to personal preference so it's good to test these things out but if you don't want to buy all these and testing yourself I can give you some of the pros and cons of each of them right now so Crankbrothers they use the same I guess you could call it a you know clip mechanism in all of their pedals and the difference between their different models is the eggbeater which this is just as simple as it gets right so this is what you're going to see on a cross-country bike it's ultra lightweight it has zero platform at all the cleat just goes boom right in there and clips in so the purpose behind the eggbeater pedal obviously they named it eggbeater because it looks like an eggbeater is weight so you don't have any platform so you might get that kind of icy feeling I would never ride these things I don't ride cross-country I'm not really that consumer concerned about weight I like a little bit more stability and I tend to do or trail and duro downhill riding so I don't ride eggbeaters but you see these on cross-country bikes all over the place and a ton of World Cup racers that do cross-country run egg beaters a little more platform or the Crankbrothers candy and an again this doesn't have pins or anything but because it has a little more platform a little more contact point on your shoe so you have a little more stability with the candy and then you have the mallet e they also make a mallet D H this is the pedal that I run and I prefer because you can actually adjust these pins right here and it gives you a lot of stability so we also have a really long in-depth video on how to set up Crankbrothers pedals properly so there's a lot of different adjustments you can make to these things to sort of optimize how they feel and how easy it is to get in and get out so pros and cons of the Crankbrothers pedal design one of the pros it clears mud super well so if you get mud packed in here and you go to stuff that cleat in there the mud then just sheds right out of the bottom so that is a huge pro versus something like a Shimano SPD style pedal or even a time pedal or even an HT pedal so these clear mud the best of all of them time probably being the second men HT then Shimano that's a huge pro to the Crankbrothers cons you can't adjust how tight the spring is that is something people complain about because uncha mono and on all these ones time as well in HT you can actually adjust that spring tension and once you click in that spring tension determines like how locked in you are Crankbrothers have a little bit more float over Shimano and you can also adjust the float depending on which cleat you put on which chute that's a cool pro to it but the con you can't actually adjust that spring I don't necessarily think you need that a lot of that you can adjust by how much contact you have with your shoe to this to this platform around it you obviously don't have that ability with the eggbeater pedal so it is kind of a con you're stuck with the the spring Crankbrothers gives you and how tight and or loose that thing is again these are my personal favorites and a lot of people ride these I have no idea the actual statistic between how many people that rod clipless are using Crankbrothers & Shimano and these other brands but I can tell you it is widely Crankbrothers & Shimano and then a small percentage of everything else probably Shimano SPD being the biggest I would assume but Crankbrothers is a huge contender there and in my personal favorite so that's kind of the rundown of the crank brothers pedal system I guess we could talk about one last con to these things this whole mechanism does roll in here and this is sort of a pro-ana con depending on the way you look at it so if you go to clip into this pedal you can actually roll your foot at it and it'll roll the whole mechanism and clip onto that cleat and if that works that's awesome and it's a good feature you don't have to be have like a perfect entrance to it you can actually roll on forward or roll on backwards and it sort of makes it easier to get into that thing the downside to it is if you come in and you do that you can sometimes not actually catch that cleat on there and it just rolls right off right so that rolling issue if it doesn't catch the cleat it's kind of annoying and you're not going to have that with any of these because none of these pedals have a rolling sort of cleat mechanism like that it does happen to me when I ride every now and then I'll go to clip in and it'll roll off and some people hate that about Crankbrothers I've gotten used to it and I feel really confident getting in and getting out of these things and on the downhill World Cup circuit where a lot of riders are riding clipped in these days the vast majority of them are using Crankbrothers in my opinion I think it's because it's easier to get in and out of these than any other clipless pedal and the adjustability with the pins is awesome so again a lot of that's personal preference but that's sort of some of the pros and cons to these the next thing up is the Shimano pedal so this cleat design SPD Shimano pedaling dynamics I believe it is Shimano licenses this to a whole ton of other brands so here's an example of a brand that uses the SPD system it's EC they make awesome pedals a lot of different variances is sort of a trail model which is similar to the Shimano one but the SPD system it'll always disclose if it's SPD because they're obviously licensing the design from Shimano and this has been around for ages and Shimano makes these without a platform at all they make them with a platform like this which is sort of their trail model and then make them with a larger platform there st. and I think they have like a BMX version as well that's got an even bigger platform but they all use the SPD system the SPD system you can adjust to the tension of the spring right there and that's how tight or loose it's going to be when you go to clip into that thing and clip out of that thing so that is a nice feature right because if you're sort of a beginner on clipless pedals you can loosen that spring a lot and it makes it really easy to get out of that thing in a pinch or if you kind of forget and you have a panic attack you need to yank the cleat out of there and it's pretty loose it'll actually yank right out of there so that is an advantage to all these systems whereas the Crankbrothers doesn't have that adjustment right there so aside from that with a Shimano pedals they don't clear mud all that well you can see you know you enter the pedal this way if there's a bunch of mud packed in here it's gonna smash into the spring and kind of clog right here it doesn't roll obviously so it's not the best at clearing mud a lot of people still use these in the mud and it doesn't really cause a problem I mean that's that's up for debate depends on the mud some mud will just like push right through and it's slippery other but it's like much more clay and plate OE and might clog those things more but that's sort of a pros and cons of Shimano they don't quite have as much float as a Crankbrothers pedal would or a time pedal would and that's something some people either dislike or they really like I remember arguing with a friend in the early days saying oh I love Crankbrothers because they actually have a little float and I feel kind of like comfortable because I could move my foot a little and I thought you know if I'm moving my body around I could kind of adjust my feet I really like that he's like I hate that I want to feel locked in if I'm clipped in so it was clearly just a difference of opinion not one's better than the other it's just a little bit of a preference yeah well you know that's just like your opinion man but if you want a little bit more float go Crankbrothers if you want to feel a little more locked in go Shimano SPD version and again you don't need to bash mono pedal you just need to buy something with the SPD design and that's kind of I think probably the hands-down the most popular design out there I don't know if Crankbrothers has overtaken it or not it seems half in half at least in the US where I'm at and from what I see but I have no idea which one has more market share but those are by far and away the two most popular clipless systems the other two that are gaining popularity and kind of from smaller brands are time and HT so time you can tell it's actually very similar to Crankbrothers it has that you know a spring right here and has you can just look the way that there's those two bars on the top it's pretty similar to a Crankbrothers pedal the difference here though is it doesn't roll so if you hate that Crankbrothers roll but you like the other features of Crankbrothers this could be a win-win for you the other thing is the word competes of Shimano is it has an adjustable spring tension so it's kind of the best of both worlds time has not had a huge amount of traction in the mountain bike world they're more known for their rode pedals but these these could probably very well be much more popular in Europe than they are in the states you rarely ever see these in the states but an awesome pedal you actually see them more often in at BMX races like if I go to a BMX race out here locally time is a pretty popular pedal you almost never see Crankbrothers you see time and Shimano because BMX racing they want to lock down that cleat super tight because they're yanking on it so hard and when you can adjust that and make the spring super tight BMX racers love that that amount of adjustability so time has a really awesome platform design they're not as popular in the US but a really good thing to consider if you want to be able to adjust that tension and you want sort of that same float and awesome like entry and exit as you have with Crankbrothers so definitely a cool pedal next up is HT so HT is is probably more famous for their flat pedals they make amazing super thin lightweight flat pedals and this x2 pedal I'm not exactly sure on the development but I think it had a lot to do with one of their riders Aaron Gwin which is one of the best downhill racers in the world he rides these things and from what I recall he's had a lot of input developing these things you see these a lot in a downhill World Cup world it's it's kind of more like a Shimano than probably the other ones here you can adjust spring tension on them it's got sort of that bar mechanism looking thing that the Crankbrothers and the time have but then the front of it or actually that's the back of it is a little bit more like the Shimano pedal the way it clips in so these things in my experience and probably every customer we've sold these to and every one of my friends that's use these says my god I cannot get in or out of these pedals they're very hard to use they're very stiff very tight don't have a ton of float and if that's the feeling you're looking for you'll love these things which is why they're popular among really talented Pro downhill racers because they want something that locks them in tight those guys ride bikes for living they're super talented at getting their foot in and out of their pedals so those guys love them you might hate them if you're just starting out with clipless pedals do not try these if you're very versed in them and you've been running them a while and you're considering them and you're looking for that tight feel where you can adjust with the pins and it feels nice and locked in you might really like these so a lot of the a lot of it does boil back down to personal preference but these ones are definitely the two most popular Crankbrothers in shrewe mono and then from what I can think of I think time and HT are probably the next two runners up at least as of right now these ones are gaining popularity and pretty common in the mountain bike world but let us know in the comments do you guys use any of these do you have another type of clipless pedal that you use that you like or do you just hate clipless pedals and ride flats hit that subscribe button and we'll see you guys in the next one