Aero vs endurance

Geometry and positioning go hand in hand but in terms of aerodynamics the elephant in the room is the rider. If you were to take an endurance bike, with a ho hum upright fit, slap some aero bars on without adjusting the fit at all, simply moving your arms in front of your body would reduce your coefficient of drag (bike+rider) by a larger amount than the difference in drag between a typical endurance frame and aero frame minus rider in a wind tunnel. The aerodynamic qualities of the frame (disregarding geometry+rider+fit) are small in comparison to everything else (geometry+rider+fit).

They can label it aero for whatever reason they want but at the end of the day it's kind of a mix - the frame is aerodynamic, the geometry lends to a more aggressively tucked position, and at that point it's not really an either-or kind of thing, more of a both.

But all that said there's a bit of wiggle room in terms of fit between an aero frame so ideally get the one you'd be more comfortable on amd if you want to experiment with the other side of things you can always slam your endurance bike or put a stem with a positive rise on the aero bike, that kind of thing

/r/cycling Thread