Mine came in today. After I think it took 5 days to work out the order and 2 weeks to ship the frame, including the paint. It shipped UPS, which was fast, >1 week including customs clearance. Duties were not prepaid, but weren't too bad. Parts of the ordering process were slower or more manual than I would like, but Alisa was great, and her information so far has been accurate.
Box amusingly was one of the ones that had a rectangle on the outside to imply there was a TV inside. Packing was simple packed in foam and bubble wrap. The UDH is very skeletonized. I had asked a few others how they felt about the quality of the metal parts, and they indicated that they were typical of a Chinese factory (read: not great), but these largely seem fine.
Overall, I am pretty happy, though if I were to do it again, I might stick with a simple gloss finish rather than try a gloss and a matte, as I suspect they added the gloss on top of the matte finish, so the frame is a bit heavier than if it were gloss or matte. I will scope this later, as I have one, and I am likely to take at least a month to finish the build. Preliminary impressions are below.
Simple shapes with round tubes. Nothing fancy or aero here. Slight hourglass on the HT.
The rear caliper mounts are finished, but not well. This is not quite flat. There is enough of what looks like a flat surface that I don't anticipate any problems, but noteworthy for the picky among us,
The paint is pretty even, though the carbon does show through slightly differently in different places. I think they added a tinting agent to mask some of the rough spots. Another reason why I suspect ordering a colored tint probably would have resulted in a similar weight.
The bearing seats are darn near perfect. I dropped a couple of Cane Creek Hellbender headset bearings (52mm 36/45 ) into these, and they were a perfect fit with a Deda 36 degree C ring.
Not minty fresh, but clean enough in terms of the seat tube.
Fork seems standard fare. Its a carbon tube bonded to the fork structure. At that joint is a little less clean, but it's cleaner than an Open or 3T Fork, but messier than the Enve ones I've handled. Nothing to worry about and the carbon tube is even thickness, at least up top.
Some weights:
The frame is 789g. This includes the four bottle cage bolts + both hangers. Weighed without bolts (which I think would be the standard thing? Not sure?), it would be about 780g. This is heavier than i was hoping, but not by a lot and still within expectations. I think I goofed with the paint selection in terms of weight. I think they did the whole frame in matte and then added the gloss on top. I probably would have been just as happy selecting one or the other and saving the weight--even though this will not be a weight weenie build as it's intended to be a test mule for my 3d printed headset covers and other products.
Seatpost weights are more or less right on target too given this is a 400mm seatpost. The hardware is heavy, and the only miss I see spec-wise on this frame is here. I am not a fan of the black oxide bolt used here. That coating resists rust as long as its exposed to lubrication. Stainless is the right choice here. I will replace it with Ti anyway, given I am a light rider.
The seatpost clamp I don't love in terms of it being small and the fillet is a smaller radius than I would like, but it's there.
Other than my own choices, I have very little to complain about with this transaction. It is pretty lightweight, and just based on this initial look it seems likely to be comparable to the Elilee Blize XXE, Seka Spear, and other premium Chinese frames. Yes, it's significantly heavier than something like the Scott Addict HMX SL or even the regular HMX, but right now don't have much to complain about.
