First spy shots of finished Kinesis Aithein frame

Good news, affordable race bike frameset fans. The Kinesis Aithein, which we've been following with interest over the past few months, is now almost ready for shipping. The frames are expected to ship next month, with a price tag of £649.99 for the frame and fork.

Kinesis are one of the companies at the forefront of Aluminium manufacturing in the cycle industry. They've been pushing the development of new processes for forming alloy tubesets and their new superplastic forming (SPF) uses higher temperatures and lower pressures to allow thinner-walled constructions than hydroforming. Kinesis expect the final weight of the Aithein frame to be around 1,200g for a 56cm, light enough to build to the UCI weight limit without much bother.

We first caught up with Dom from Kinesis at the start of the year, when he showed us the prototypes for the Aithein, and Mat got to take a look at the final pre-production samples when he was out in Taipei last month. Now the frames are complete, with an anodised finish and laser-etched decals. They'll be available in black or gaudy orange.

Head tube is asymmetric with traditional external cable routing

It has an asymmetric seat tube too, and a BB386EVO bottom bracket shell

An Antigravity Seat Tube should help on the climbs, eh...

The die motif on the brake bridge was originally a joke, but made it through to production

Laser etched decals are fairly minimal and look smart