A four-sided cage does one thing better than any other clipless design: it lets you clip in without looking down, no matter how caked your soles are. That's the whole argument for the Crank Brothers Candy 2, a small-platform mountain and gravel pedal built around the same open Eggbeater-style mechanism the brand is known for. Push down and forward or down and back, and the spring wings rotate to catch your cleat from any of four angles. When you've just run a muddy cyclocross barrier or hiked a technical section on foot, that forgiving entry is the difference between rolling away clean and fumbling at the pedal.

What separates the 2 from the cheaper composite Candy 1 is the body.

Crank Brothers builds the Candy 2 around a 6061-T6 aluminum platform, which stands up to rock and root strikes better than plastic and gives the small cage a bit more rigidity underfoot. The wings that actually grab your cleat are stamped steel, and the whole assembly spins on a chromoly steel spindle. The open, wing-based design is the reason these shed mud so well — there's simply nowhere for debris to pack in and block engagement.

Internals are where your money goes on this one. The pedal runs an outboard Enduro cartridge bearing paired with an inboard Igus glide bearing, both sitting behind a double-seal system that keeps grit and water out of the mechanism. That combination is what lets these keep spinning smoothly through wet, sloppy seasons without developing play early. Note that there's no spring-tension adjustment here — engagement tension is fixed — so if you want to dial in a lighter or firmer clip, that's not a feature the Candy platform offers.... Read More