Just been in a bikeshop and was blown away by the starter/good mountain bikes. My son want’s to pick it up again next year and the £700 bikes seem great value. We just had a peek at the Whyte, Trek and dale.
When I think what £899 bought me in 1998.

Not even looked at Giants and my mate will do one of those at shop cost.

I was expecting a thread about super market bikes, it tell you something about this sport when £700 is considered cheap.

Sure aint cheap to me!

http://www.decathlon.co.uk/rockrider-53-2012-id_8206682.html

I was expecting a thread about super market bikes, it tell you something about this sport when £700 is considered cheap.

^^^^
THIS!

I though everything in the cycling world was overpriced?

Cheap bikes may be good, expensive ones are better.

Er, have a read of this.

Cycle Active’s review of Decathlon’s £300 road bike.

Italian made frame with carbon fork, Shimano gears, decent wheels.
They seem to like it. 😀

Same cost as most people spend on a TV. Don’t think its that bad.

I was expecting a thread about super market bikes

Me too. Not one of my bikes are worth that much!

Giant reval ltd are worth a look too ,sub £600 bracket .

I keep getting really tempted to get one of those Decathlon ones just to use as a commuter.

I’m tempted to get one to replace the 1996 Trek 1400 I spent about £500 restoring.

Frankly, it’d be a far better bike. 😐

Same cost as most people spend on a TV.

You are kidding my rear mech [X0]cost more than my TV [ by about 10 p]

700quid is not a lot.
I’ve just seen a bmw for £41k outside a dealer, it’s a 2 litre diesel.
It’ll be worth half that in 4 or 5 years.
How much is a 4 or 5 year hardrock now?

I didn’t think £700 was a lot either. In 1998 £899 bought me STX, V brakes, Indy forks and heavy old Kalloy finishing kit. I thought that if I ever bought another off the peg bike I’d ‘have’ to spend thousands, but some of those were easilly good enough for a bit of XC around Woburn.

And

STX, V brakes, Indy forks and heavy old Kalloy finishing kit

wasn’t? 😉

a £700 bike will last a good few years, it’s cheaper than gym membership.

People laugh at me when I turn up at events with ££££’s worth of bike, yet drive a £300 car (wheels on my race bike cost that alone!). Priorities right?

Been looking at £800 bikes and the likes of Genesis and even Saracen are knocking out some cracking bikes

I’ll happily spend money on my bikes, yet struggle to spend on cars, that said my ’98 Golf GTi has cost me less than £200 (including Mot cost not including tax and insurance) to run in the last 28k miles and 2yrs. 2 tyres, a battery, and rear pads.

Oh and I spend more time on a bike than I do in a car 😀

£700 – 70pints and 70 packs of fags

or

about a year in a DL gym or the like

or

Less than 3 weeks of tuition fees at university

It’s depressingly little these days. My rigid stx specced £450 1994 mtb purchase would be about £700 now taking into account inflation so that makes sense.

Cheaper bikes have always been pretty capable, I reckon.
I had a 1992 Marin Palisades and a 2001 Rockhopper that were both very, very decent bikes.

Much better in the real world than the far more expensive Orange Clockwork that I had in between.

Oh wow was thinking about getting a winter training bike and that Decathlon B’Twin is looking very very tempting!

I always get this in work: it cost HOW much!
From the people who will happily spend £150 every weekend on the lash.

Rusty Spanner – Member
Er, have a read of this.

Cycle Active’s review of Decathlon’s £300 road bike.

Italian made frame with carbon fork, Shimano gears, decent wheels.
They seem to like it.

Can you stop posting that please? I’ve been trying to buy one for ages and they keeps going out of stock as soon as they come in!

a £700 bike will last a good few years, it’s cheaper than gym membership.

My gym is £11/ month rising to £16 after a year. That’s almost exactly 4 years worth, without spending a single penny on maintaining the bike. You need to get your facts right. 😉

Just saying, like 🙂

I’ve got a silly-trick retro Explosif that owes me a three figure sum less than that too. It is a lot of money. And, just like that expensive BMW mentioned above, it’ll depreciate a lot in a year too.

I do know what everyone’s getting at with regard to cost and value if the £700 bike, but to think that’s cheap is really quite snobby….. It would take me about a year to save up for that bike.
🙂

I do know what everyone’s getting at with regard to cost and value if the £700 bike, but to think that’s cheap is really quite snobby….. It would take me about a year to save up for that bike.

No, that’s not snobby, it’s merely relative to your income and disposable cash.

How much would you advise a newbie who wanted to buy a new MTB to spend as a minimum?

Obviously there are some great bargains here and there, but you need to know a bit to spot them.

I think it’d be hard to buy a decent MTB for much less than £700.

£500 price point always used to the big test in the mags, as serious entry level MTB’s. But that was 10 years ago, so £700 isn’t massive I guess.

When you look at slightly higher up the food chain, at 1k bikes it gets really confusing on spec & what to expect.

…..£700 bike…
…It would take me about a year to save up for that bike

less than the price of a cup of coffee/day 😆

top quality trolling.

Pah, 700 quid, you need to spend that much at least on wheels alone. Everyone knows you need to spend several thousand to get anything half decent 🙂

This is a great value bike;

http://www.saracen.co.uk/bikes/sport-mtb/tufftrax-comp-disc

That Saracen does look nice for £400.

I was expecting a thread about super market bikes, it tell you something about this sport when £700 is considered cheap.

Price of entry to similar ‘lifestyle’ sports is usually same or higher, so not bad really is it? Wind/Kite Surfing easily £1000 minimum to get started if you buy new. Snowboarding skiing isn’t cheap either.

I started out on a rigid, canti-braked Kona Fire Mountain in ’95 for what I seem to remember being about £500. Inflation adjusted that’s £750 and you’d get a suss fork that works and disc brakes. Where’s the problem?

I was expecting a thread about super market bikes, it tell you something about this sport when £700 is considered cheap.

-1, it is quite cheep if you look at anything comparable. And less than a PS3 and a TV. The only cheep sports are stuff like jumpers for goalposts football.

The only difference between MTB and a lot of other comparably expensive sports is the availability of good 2nd hand kit. Yes there’s some good stuff out there for sale, but there’s a lot of worn out crap as well. Whereas when I was into sailing you could pretty much tell any adult newcomer to spend £500-£600 on ~20yr old a Laser (plus a wetsuit, bouyancy aid and some gloves) and they’d be set untill the weather got cold and they needed warmer kit. MTB’s seem to have a much shorter usefull life before they become uneconomic, you couldn’t tell a newbie to go on ebay and buy any 10yr old bike they fancy the looks of.

The Triban’s a lovely bike btw. Wheels are a bit weak despite being heavy, and the brakes lack power but for £300? Ridiculously good.

And as for cheap mtbs, you can go a lot cheaper than £700 and still get something very decent. My first bike when i got back into riding was a £300 Carrera Kraken and of course, it was heavy and some parts were a bit ropey but it still worked very well. With a fork and tyre swap it was fab, and I was still using the frame til recently.

Decathlon also have excellent inexpensive mtbs.

PP – what gym are you with? I wouldn’t say that is an average gym price. That is very cheap gym membership.

At uni I paid £16/month student rate. Upon getting into the real world, there was a gym near my work that did reduced rates for companies if enough people joined & I think that was £23/month – in 2001.
When I moved to nr Peterborough I struggled to find gym membership below £35. Even the council gym scheme is £36/month or so.

There is a dirt cheap local gym, but I paid up for a month & only went once as the equipment was so rubbish. And by rubbish, I mean virtually unusable.

A mate of mine bought a £450 Diamondback last yr & while there are a few dodgy bits on it, it is generally a perfectly decent bike.

Paid less than £500 for my Claud Butler Cape Wrath in 2005 I believe it was.

Full Deore drivetrain, Truvativ, Bontrager and Tioga finishing kit, Rockshox Judy forks and Tioga tyres. Full Deore and branded finishing kit, that, was a great deal and it was a great bike. Even raced on it!

Don’t think you can get stuff like that these days unless you buy direct like On-One or Canyon etc.

I reckon bike ranges are cyclical and some years its the entry level bikes that represent best value for money and other years its the next level up, perhaps some years the level beyond that – but there it stops

in years gone by we’ve has total shocker group sets (plastic coated steel anyone?) on £500 quid bikes and then lovely alloy lx stuff that weighs less than xt the next year

i’m sure its all clever marketing and we are in a recession (really?) so there it is….

If price is an issue – buy a good 2nd hand bike. You know how quickly they depreciate in value when they leave the shop floor. You can find 2nd hand am bikes in as new condition for a fraction of their cost new if you keep your eyes peeled.

If you look around you can get all sorts of cheap bargains. I got a 2011 GT Avalanche 3.0 at the start of the year for £250!