Depends on your trails and your tolerance for a beating.

If your local rides are mostly singletrack, fire road, and moderate trail with the occasional rough section, the DV9 is more bike than most people think — light, fast, and engaging. You'll feel every rock, but that's part of the appeal.

If you ride genuinely chunky terrain, do drops or jumps, or just want to go fast on rough descents without thinking about every line, the Ripley V5 will make you faster and less tired. It also opens up terrain the DV9 can't realistically handle.

It's substantial. The DV9 Deore is $2,999. The Ripley Deore is $4,999 — a $2,000 gap before you climb the build ladder. The Ripley's higher builds (XT, GX Transmission) sit at $7,249, and the XTR is $9,999.

For that money you're getting a Fox Float Factory rear shock, a 140 mm Fox 34 fork, the DW-link suspension platform, a heavier and more capable carbon frame, and the STOW internal storage. Whether that's worth $2,000 depends entirely on whether you'll use the rear travel.

Yes, with caveats. Reviewers consistently describe it as "surprisingly capable" on black-diamond terrain — the slack-for-a-hardtail 66.5° HTA and 120 mm Fox 34 fork punch above what you'd expect from a pure XC bike.

But it's still a hardtail. It demands a smooth rider who actively unweights through rough sections. Push it past its comfort zone and it gets sketchy — quickly. The stock Maxxis Recon Race tires make this worse; most reviewers swap to grippier rubber (DHR II, Forekaster, Romero) immediately.

130 mm rear / 140 mm front — both up 10 mm from the V4. The fork is a Fox 34 across all builds (Factory or SL trim depending on price), and the rear shock is a Fox Float Factory.

That puts it in the modern short-travel-trail bracket — more capable than an XC bike, less travel than an enduro bike like the Ripmo (145/160). The frame itself is shared with the Ripmo, so you can convert it later by swapping the fork, shock, and linkage.

DV9 MD: 435 mm reach, 622 mm stack, 66.5° HTA, 425 mm chainstays, 1,145 mm wheelbase.

Ripley MD: 460 mm reach, 619 mm stack, 64.9° HTA, 436 mm chainstays, 1,211 mm wheelbase.

Translated: the Ripley is 25 mm longer in the cockpit, 1.6° slacker up front, and rides on a wheelbase 66 mm longer. The DV9 is the more upright, more agile bike at low speeds; the Ripley is the more stable, more planted bike at speed. Neither is wrong — they're optimized for different things.

Not from Ibis. The current V2 lineup is a single Deore-equipped build at $2,999. Frameset is sold separately if you want to spec your own.

That said, the frame officially supports up to 140 mm of fork travel — "overforking" is a documented option that several reviewers mention. Going to a 140 mm fork slackens the head angle and bumps capability for rougher terrain, at some cost to XC liveliness. If you want a more aggressive hardtail out of the box, look at the Yeti ARC instead.

DV9: Frame officially clears 2.6" tires, but the Fox 34 Step-Cast fork is limited to 2.4". Practically, you're running 2.4" front and rear, with room to go wider in back if you upgrade the fork.

Ripley V5: Roughly 61 mm clearance — more than enough for any 2.4" or 2.5" tire. Stock spec is a Maxxis Minion DHR II up front and a faster-rolling Rekon out back, which most reviewers find well-matched to the bike's character.

Both are excellent on this front. Ibis offers a lifetime frame warranty on both, both use a threaded bottom bracket (no creaking press-fit), and both are UDH compatible for future drivetrain swaps.

The Ripley adds the STOW internal storage system (rattle-free, water-sealed, with included Cotopaxi bags) and the Ripmo-convertible chassis — meaning if you eventually want a longer-travel bike, you only need to buy a fork, shock, and rocker link, not a new frame. That's a meaningful long-term value lever the DV9 doesn't offer.