It’s been a good few months since I bought these but better late than never in the old reviewing stakes, I guess. So here’s my 6 month review of my newish Superstar Components Nano pedals in grey. I got them before Christmas in a special offer, for the valuetastic price of just £25.81. Down from the usual selling price of £36.99.
My existing ‘flat’ mountain biking pedals were a small lightweight pair from Wellgo (M142). At the time I bought these as my only pedals and I chose to favour lightweight over grip and control because most of what I was riding was more ‘Cross Country’ oriented. Of course then I finally went and bought myself some SPD shoes and pedals and these quickly became my ‘go to’ option for the easy, fast XC stuff; leaving my flat pedals for the more technical riding. That’s when I soon came to the conclusion that I could now make my flat, ‘gnarly’ option more aggressive.
Pedals is one of those categories in mountain biking where you definitely have plenty of buying choice. Personally I had had my eyes on the Superstar Nanos for a good while, with the Shimano Saint pedals being my alternative choice. So when the Nanos came up on offer it was just a case of deciding on which colour would go best on MuddyGoose. Blue, grey, black; all of these would go well with my colour scheme. I finally decided on matching the colour of my new pedals to my existing Superstar IO chainring, so Gunmetal Grey it is.
My first impressions was that they were very nicely packaged; I’d have been quite pleased to open them on Christmas Day for instance. And they appear to be really well made too. My secondary first impression, if such a thing exists, was that they are on the huge side of large. Sure they’re quite low profile but the actual platform size that you plant your feet onto is massive. Great if you need a huge platform for your cumbersome size 13s but a bit overkill for the likes of me with my diminutive size 8s.
Some people think mountain bikes look the part with huge pedals bolted onto either side but to be honest I think something a little less, is more in this category. So for me as well as being platform overkill, I think they look a little over large, but that of course is just my opinion and it may be that you have another! My final ‘size gripe’ with regard to these pedals is that I can’t pass a chainring over them. With my single ring setup I like to be able to quickly and easily switch my chainring from 36T to 32T and vise versa. With my old pedals it was easy but with these I now have the additional step of removing my drive-side pedal.
Fitting is nice and easy; they actually supply them in plastic bags labelled ‘L’ and ‘R’, so you really shouldn’t struggle to work out which one goes on which side. They also have hex bolt fitting at the end of the axles which is my personal preference for fitting and removing pedals.
So how do they perform then? Pretty good. I certainly have no complaints; I can’t say I’ve noticed any occasion yet where my feet have been bounced off, but then I’ve not done a great deal of intense mountain biking since fitting them either. I cannot comment on reliability as they are really too new for that to be an issue. They do have replaceable pins which is nice; you don’t want to have to throw away a good pair of well loved pedals just because a few pins have worn down or snapped off. I also understand that the bearings are serviceable too which is nice to know for future.
For my purposes I think if I were to order pedals again, then I would probably go for something a little smaller. Just because of the chaining fitting issue but apart from that I’m perfectly happy with them as pedals and I’m sure I will get many well planted miles of mountain biking out of them.
SPOKE REVOLUTIONS 
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