Ceramic Speed bearings, an affordable Troy Lee Designs helmet, fancy Garmin scales, a Wizard Works bar bag and featherweight Tubolito inner tubes

As we near the start of spring in the northern hemisphere, the product launch Jack-in-the-box has been winding up with a sumptuous serving of content on BikeRadar.

Before we unveil a quintet of tasty tech trinkets, let’s take a look at this week’s site highlights.

Digital writer Jack Evans brought us an exciting look at Rane Roatta’s unique gravel race rig. The fruit seller uses a Cannondale Topstone Lefty with a conversation-starting 200mm stem and scantily narrow 26cm handlebars.

Editor-in-chief George Scott prowled the Strade Bianche start-pen and brought us a delicious round-up of the tech the pros were riding at this year’s race.

Jack Luke and Stan Portus reported from iceBike* North and shared their highlights in a tech gallery, including Knog’s new Blinder lights with a Tesla-inspired battery.

We also took a first look at the Shimano Cues U8000 11-speed groupset.

Our Bike of the Week was the Colnago V4Rs. Tom Boonen says the “old-school bike” is 2km/h slower than those Tadej Pogaçar’s rivals ride. The UAE Team Emirates star won Wednesday’s Paris-Nice on the V4Rs and Colnago invited Boonen to test ride it. Let us know in the comments who you think is right.

On the mountain bike front, Focus unveiled its Raven hardtail with a 120mm suspension fork and Thok released its new Gram carbon electric mountain bike. Audi also TT’d into the cycling world with a new electric mountain bike.

Now, let’s take a look at this week’s swag grab.

When Campagnolo announced its Ekar gravel groupset, the Italian brand introduced the ProTech bottom bracket system.

ProTech sees additional sealing and a sleeve connecting the cups to further protect against the dirt that’s more likely to work its way in with gravel riding.

Campagnolo says it plans to adopt this standard for all new products, moving away from Ultra-Torque.

You can’t officially run an Ultra-Torque bearing on a ProTech crank because Campagnolo says it won’t have sufficient sealing.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but I believe CeramicSpeed is the first brand to bring out an aftermarket option.

This bearing kit is designed to be used with the original Campagnolo bottom bracket cups and features CeramicSpeed’s coated bearings.

CeramicSpeed says this is a metallic layer that covers the bearing races, making them 75 per cent harder than steel. The brand claims this provides even lower friction, as well as being highly resistant to corrosion, to the point where CeramicSpeed offers a lifetime warranty on them.

This represents my first time venturing into the world of ceramic bearings and I’ll be interested to see how they fare on my Niner RLT 9 RDO.

The Flowline SE MIPS helmet is Troy Lee Designs’ new trail mountain bike helmet.

It takes design cues from the brand’s premium A3 helmet, with its use of dual-density EPS to handle high- and low-speed impacts, as well as the magnetic FidLock closure.

The Flowline SE MIPS uses a MIPS B32 system and a soft antimicrobial liner is sandwiched between the liner and your head.

There’s an adjustable, three-position screwless visor, as well as 14 ventilation ports to keep your head suitably cool.