Most trail, enduro and electric mountain bikes come fitted with full width bars, usually with a good shape and a reasonably low weight. With this in mind, if you’re going to make a genuinely purposeful upgrade then a pricey, premium spec carbon bar needs to make a noticeable difference. The best mountain bike handlebars should improve the bike’s overall ride quality as well as trimming some weight. If they look slick, then that’s an added bonus too.

• Best mountain bike stems: reviewed and rated by experts

According to our scales, the Deity carbon Skywire is now 7g lighter, and the overall weight is competitive for a composite bar that’s 800mm wide. You could save a few grams by cutting it down, and Deity does make this easier by adding 5mm cut marks to either end of the bar. Fitting the stem to this bar is also pretty easy, and you don’t have to over torque the bolts because it has a textured, non-slip surface at the stem clamp area. However, this has been removed from the control centres, which is probably a good thing because we always found the sharp edge on the lock-on collars would often mark the carbon surface.

• Best mountain bike handlebars: steer with confidence and precision

The Skywire has a 9° backsweep and 5° upsweep and is offered in 15mm and 25mm rise. On our test bike, we tipped the bar slightly forward to knock off a bit of the rake and add some height, because even the 25mm option does come up a bit shallow.

• Best mountain bike grips: lock-on grips for all preferences

The centre bulge is quite short on this bar, so in theory it should have a good amount of resilience, but it actually feels pretty wooden compared to the Race Face SixC, and obviously the One Up alloy. Steering is direct, but on a stiff frame with a big Fox 38 fork it’s not the most comfortable, and cutting the bar down will make it feel worse.

The Deity Skywire carbon bar sports bold graphics