Argon 18 made no bones about its intentions for the newly revived Nitrogen platform, stating its goal was to “create the world’s fastest road bike." It certainly looks fast and benefits from all the design traits characteristic of the modern aero road bike recipe. It’s been roughly a decade since Argon last slapped the Nitrogen moniker on a bike, and back in 2014, the Nitrogen represented the cutting edge in aero road bike technology, utilising dropped seatstays, kammtail tubes, and a fairly deep head tube. The new Nitrogen usurps the Sum Pro as Argon 18’s dedicated aero race bike range, claiming to be some 24 watts faster at 45km/h. The designers approached the Nitrogen project differently, focusing on a holistic approach that takes the rider, components, and frame into account as a system rather than individual components. The notion behind this approach, it says, is that the bike is aero where it counts – in the real world, not just in wind-tunnel tests and CFD modelling studies.The bike is available in two grades: the Nitrogen Pro and the Nitrogen pictured here, the latter of which utilises the same frame architecture, cockpit, and aero bottle cages but is fabricated from standard modulus carbon fibre and specced with less-fancy parts. The result, however, is still an alarmingly fast machine that delivers a solid combination of speed and comfort.I tested the bike over most of December, using the Festive 500 as my motivation to unearth any weaknesses and learn what makes it tick, not forgetting whether it’s something that can be used all-year round as a training and racing bike.
