There are advantages to starting late on design. You can examine the work of your predecessors and improve on it. While Look was the first company to debut a clipless mtb pedal in the 80's, their design pretty much lost all market share after Shimano debuted the SPD. Look bagged their initial design and designed a pedal that worked like a Shimano SPD. After years of companies, including Look, trying to improve the SPD, Time debuted a new design that chipped away at Shimano's lock on mountain bike pedals. Crank Brothers later chipped away some more.

Now Look is back to take their rightful place in the pedal mix. They've created a new external spring carbon fiber MTB pedal where the cleat doesn't touch the pedal body at all. The shoe lugs rest on the pedal platform for stability. Even with great flow-through designs, there is always a point where gunk build-up blocks cleat engagement because the retention system partially depends on the pedal body to hold the cleat in place. The Look Quartz doesn't need to rest the cleat on the pedal because the pedal sides hold the shoe so well. Because the design doesn't need cleat contact, the carbon Quartz pedal body has been reduced under the cleat area so the mud on the pedal gets pushed down and out through the pedal as one engages. This could well be the pedal for dedicated mudders.

Look has also addressed the issue of engagement -- a large portion of clipless pedals must be engaged toe-first, whereas the Look Quartz pedal can be toe or heel-first. Having a choice means you get your food in quickly no matter how your shoe hits the pedal. Faster engagement means easier escape and less fumbling when getting restarted.

Another issue with external spring pedals is that the springs can't be adjusted. While you can't adjust the springs on the Quartz either, you can adjust the float resistance. Look sends shims along with the cleats. The shims work in two different ways. One is used if shoe lugs are too thick for making cleat engagement possible, the shims raise the cleat off the sole moving it closer to the spring. The shims also help "personalize" the float by decreasing float resistance. The more shims, the more-free the float will be. Without any shims, the force needed to engage the cleat in the springs is greater than Crank Brothers and pretty close to Time's ATAC.

The Look Quartz Carbon Chromoly Pedal has an injection-molded carbon pedal body. The body runs on two sets of bearings, a set of balls on the inside and needle bearings on the outside. The bearings run on a chromoly steel axle. The stack height is 12mm. There is float of plus or minus 3 degrees. The pedal comes with two cleats, one that releases at 15 degrees and one that releases at 20 degrees. The cleat position has lateral adjustability of +/- 15mm. In addition to the two different cleats, there are six shims to customize the float resistance; two 2mm, two 1mm, and two .5mm. The distance from the crankarm to the center of the pedal is 53mm (same as Look road pedals). The pedal is black with silver springs and black bump stop rings with a two-year warranty. The weight is 115g/pedal. System weight for two pedals, cleats and mounting hardware is 278g.