WHEELTOP GeX First Ride on a Gloria Titanium Allroad by Ride With Roy
A shakedown ride on the Gloria Allroad
This article is based on a video by Ride With Roy (and Wendy). After finishing the build of his Gloria Allroad, Roy takes the bike out for a shakedown ride: a bumpy canal towpath, a trip over to Girton Sailing Club and back, and a steep hill near home. It is his first time riding a 1x drivetrain, and the shifting is handled by the WHEELTOP GeX.
Most of his riding is on the road, maybe 80 or 90 percent, but he and Wendy like to turn onto tracks and towpaths when something looks interesting. The Allroad is meant for that mix.
How the GeX is set up
The GeX is WHEELTOP's 1x system. One thing that makes setup look harder than it is is that you can run it with cassettes across a wide range of speeds. He has heard of up to 14-speed, and he thinks the low end is three, and you choose the speed in the app. Poorly translated instructions have not helped that reputation, though they are getting better. On this build he felt comfortable setting the GeX up, and once you know what you are doing, he does not find it difficult.
He fitted a SRAM Eagle 12-speed 11-50 cassette. He had worried that a 1x would leave big jumps between gears, based on what he had read and heard from other people. With a larger cassette like this, he could not really notice a difference in spacing. The jumps felt fine to him.
Shifting on the ride
On the bumpy towpath, nothing fell off, and the GeX was working flawlessly. Later he calls it superb. He is still getting used to which paddles shift which way, because he set this bike up differently from his other one. He may change it so both bikes feel the same, and he may start with a layout more like SRAM, one side for up and one for down. The WHEELTOP app lets you rearrange the buttons.
He left the shifting on the standard setting, which he finds plenty fast. He can run through the cassette in seconds. There is a sport mode in the app if someone wants a snappier shift. It uses more battery, which is a good reason not to use it unless you really want it.
He also likes that if a 14-speed cassette comes along later, the system is already ready for it.
Gearing on the hill
A morning test in the wrong gear had his legs spinning, so he was hopeful about the low gear for the ride home. Near the end, about 62 miles in with a mile to go, he climbed his 12% local hill in the lowest gear and made it up, with tired legs. He thinks he might have struggled without that low gear. On the way out, coming down the big hill from home, the high gear also felt fine.
He sums up the 1x setup with no complaints, and he is glad he chose it. The titanium bike has that buttery smoothness, and he heard no noise from anything on that mixed-terrain day.
A couple of niggles
The niggles are small. Setup has a reputation for being fiddly, and the instructions have been poorly translated, though both are improving. His own button layout was not very intuitive, which is why he plans to reconfigure it. That is a setting choice, not a hardware fault.
Glad he went 1x
After a mixed-terrain day that included towpaths, a 22.3-mile ride out with a young rider named Mitch, and that steep hill home, he is really happy with how the bike rides and calls the WHEELTOP GeX superb. As far as 1x gearing and spacing go, he has no complaints.
This article is based on Ride With Roy (and Wendy)'s video. Watch the original video above, published 12 May 2026.
