Gravel Bike = Touring bike + marketing.
There are only a few geometries that really work, as a result a gravel bike's geometry is close to a mid-90s MTB with some tweaks for drop bars.
I don't really have much against them, its a different way back to the sensible go-anywhere / do-anything sort of bike that does nothing badly. Early-mid 90s rigid MTBs were the same.
1x is a gimmick as rightly pointed out upthread. Replace 7-9 widely-spaced sprockets with 11-13 thin, tetchy tolerance-sensitive ones, plus horrible chainlines for extra wear? No thanks.
There are only a few geometries that really work, as a result a gravel bike's geometry is close to a mid-90s MTB with some tweaks for drop bars.
I don't really have much against them, its a different way back to the sensible go-anywhere / do-anything sort of bike that does nothing badly. Early-mid 90s rigid MTBs were the same.
1x is a gimmick as rightly pointed out upthread. Replace 7-9 widely-spaced sprockets with 11-13 thin, tetchy tolerance-sensitive ones, plus horrible chainlines for extra wear? No thanks.