One look at this new dropper lever and you’ll see there’s everything you’d expect from a Hope component. It’s a shiny, feature-packed, CNC aluminium product that’s made in the UK and comes in a range of funky colours.

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Like the best remotes on the market, Hope’s lever rotates on a sealed bearing for a smoother, more precise action, and this also helps ensure the mechanism stays tight and waggle-free for longer. Extra special details include an adjustable paddle position that changes the amount of force needed to actuate the post as well by up to 20%. Increasing leverage provides a lighter action and more travel on each thumb press, and decreasing leverage provides a quicker, snappier action with less travel.

What’s cool about this design (other than how useful it is for adjusting thumb feel) is that it can also perfectly fine tune exactly where you want the knurled lever to sit under the grip. There’s also a ‘reach’ adjuster to tune how far out the lever blade sits at the start of the stroke. This is needed as the super-clean direct mount fixing only works with SRAM’s Matchmaker, or Hope’s brake levers, and there’s no band on the handlebars to adjust rotational position.

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Hope’s lever is really nicely shaped with no sharp edges and can pretty much replicate a shifter, which makes total sense in terms of balancing thumb feel with a regular gear paddle on the opposite side of the bars. 

I fitted Hope’s lever to replace a One Up gen 2 dropper remote that has an overly sharp edge sticking out like a triangle towards the thumb, and also sits too close to the underside of the grip. With One Up’s lever, I’ve frequently caught and hurt my left thumb knuckle on the pointy edge when riding.

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Hope’s lever was a cinch to adjust into a comfortable and accessible position. Aside from the improved ergonomics, the icing on the cake is the potential for extra leverage that brings a noticeably smoother action, and also being able to tune lever force and paddle placement exactly as preferred.