Flat pedals win medals, but clipless is champion for the climbs. The pedal debate will never be settled, despite engineers and product designers attempting to fuse best of best of both – with indifferent results.

To combine the bail-out safety and preloading properties of a flat pedal, with the efficiency and rock garden rolling stability of clips, isn’t easy. The idea of using magnets as a substitute for the cleat interface is not new, but the latest Magped Sport2 pedals promise to avoid many of the design’s potential flaws.

The Austrian pedal brand has been refining its interpretation of a magnetized flat pedal and the Sport2 claims to be a superior hybrid mountain bike pedal.

Read more: the best flat pedals 

Magped has made its Sport2 pedals lighter and stronger, shaping to 104mmx92mm, with a height of 18mm. Pedal weight depends on the magnet strength selected, with Magped claiming a range of 420- to 458g per pedal.

You ride these Sport2 pedals with conventional clipless SPD shoes, replacing the cleats with a shoe plate, that contacts those powerful neodymium magnets on the pedals. Magped will provide magnets with up to 38kg of pulling strength, making it very unlikely that a rider will get bounced off the pedals, even when rolling at speed through a long rock garden or over a rooty section of trail.

Flat pedal crash safety

The theory is that if you do scorpion, the bike won’t follow you, as your shoes and the Sport2 pedals will separate, in the manner that conventional flats do.

Some of the fundamental issues with magnet pedals remain. These Sport2’s are single-sided and the magnet is mounted in one half of the pedal cage, which could make it counterintuitive to reengage. Magped does market an Enduro style pedal too, which features double-sided magnets.

There are also the issues of debris wearing down the magnetic surface, especially if you ride in muddy conditions, and a lack of traction pins. Whereas a conventional mountain bike flat pedal has ten or more pins per pedal, these Sport2’s only present six.

For those riders who believe in the concept, these Sport2 pedals are now available in dark grey, orange, green and pink, spinning on chromoly axles.