Tested : Pete’s Hope Tech 4 E4 Brake Review.

·Tuesday 14 March 2023

Latest in a long line of well-loved brakes, the Hope Tech 4 E4 should be a strong contender for you hard-earned when it comes to bike anchors.

UK made usually means that standing up well to some terrible weather and performing well when everything else starts going wrong. Have the Hope Tech 4 E4 brakes cut the mustard? Find out in Pete’s full review below.

Photos by Pete Scullion.

Key features:

Hinged clamp
Shifter integration improved
Tool free bite point and reach adjustments
Hybrid piston design
CNC’d one piece caliper
Compatible with a wider range of current shifter options
Black or Silver with colour accent options of; Black, silver, purple, red, blue, or orange.
Standard or braided hose
Rotors sold separately
£215.00 (standard hose), £225.00 (braided hose) per brake
HopeTech.com

The Tech 4 E4 combo from Hope features a number of tweaks over their outgoing offerings, aimed at increasing power whilst increasing reliability and lowering hand fatigue for the rider. They’re certainly not cheap, but Hope has a reputation for making kit that just works.

At the lever end, you get a familiar silhouette to the previous lever but internally there’s new sealing, the main pivot is a roller bearing and the lever shape has been updated to be more ergonomic. The hinged clamp also aids installation and removal, whilst the lever also sports better shifter integration too.

The piston is a single piece CNC offering with stainless steel pistons sporting a phenolic insert. All this combines to offer smoother action, less maintenance and better operation at higher temperatures.

Getting these fitted couldn’t have been easier. Fitting a front brake isn’t hard, we all know that, but getting a rear brake routed internally often results in a bleed, and depending on the model of brake, you can have a whale of a time trying to get bubbles out of the caliper. Opting to refit the hose after routing showed that the brake simply worked, without any sponginess. Amazing.

Once heat-cycled, these things are potent to say the least. The incredibly light and consistent feel you get from the lever takes some getting used to, as now all the resistance is in the hydraulic system. They do take some getting used to as a result.

Combined with Hope’s new racing compound pads, I would say these might even be too powerful in some instances. Even with a 180mm rotor front and rear. Thankfully, both lever adjusters for bite point and lever throw are tool-free, and chunky, notched efforts that mean you can get them fine tuned even with thick gloves or freezing hands.

You will eventually come to thoroughly appreciate the Tech 4 E4s ability to throw an anchor out and get you slowed down, once you’ve fine tuned your setup. Needing to brake less both in terms of frequency and in terms of effort to pull the levers means you can concentrate on just going fast.

Even after a winter of getting all manner of trail crap thrown at them, the pads have plenty of meat left on them and they’re running true and offer that unique brute force to slow your bike down. You even get that ticking cool from the two-piece rotors to remind you of the amount of heat generated on your descent.

What do we think?

Hope have done it again with the Tech 4 E4. A reliable set of brakes that are easy to service when they finally do need it, are easy to install, and offer unreasonable amounts of power in pretty much any condition. They will just take some getting used to.