My daughters always had an isla bike which have been great but I do like the look of the Orbea MX 24 dirt or team. there are two models and I’m not actually sure what the difference is

https://www.orbea.com/gb-en/bicycles/kids/mx-kids

Team has a slightly better spec i.e. acera rear mech, and alu forks. Dirt has steel forks.

We have an MX20 dirt and it’s great, I recommended the MX24 dirt to a friend who got it for his son at Christmas and he loves it.

Not quite as light as the Isla, and you won’t get the same 2nd value but they are cracking little bikes with quite a low standover so good for smaller kids.

Just got my son the mx24 team, great little bike. Decent gear range, reasonable weight and tires are good too. Great value for money, he is flying along on it.

Orbea’s a cracking looking bike, and when you’re 8(ish) that’s the most important thing. We’ve had(and got) Islabikes and a mx 24, although the isla is (nominally) superior build, there’s absolutely nowt wrong with the orbea. Whatever you pick she’s getting a great bike!

the frog bikes look good too.

arhhh…can’t decide.

the Isla bikes have been ace but the Orbea & frog are £100 cheaper

but the Isla bikes do hold their value well

Got My daughter the Orbea MX Team 24 for Xmas. She was immediately at home on it and its so much better than the Specialised Hotrock XC we bought my Son.

The Orbea is light and well setup for a 8yr old. The main difference I could see between the Team and the Dirt was the Dirt had steel forks and the Team is Aluminium.

I just bought the Saracen Mantra 2.4. It’s hiding in the attic right now ahead of a Saturday birthday, but really pleased with it – air fork, disc brakes.

The only difference betwen the two Orbeas is one is rigid and one has the fork. LBS sells Orbea too but Lead times were longer than I wanted to risk ahead of Saturday.

The Orbeas seem a bit more “dedicated MTB” than the others which are all-rounders. Higher at the front for bouncy fork compatibility.

We went for a Hoy Bonaly 24 (having had Islabikes in 14 and 20). Love it, great bike; and I think it’s the lightest of the 24s, too.

Just got our boys new Orbea MX24 Trail bikes, which are the ones with the disc brakes and air forks. I’ve got the air fork set up with about 40psi, which seems to be working fine for them. The only thing I’ve changed is the chainring, as it comes with a metal bashguard, steel chainring and a seat tube mounted chain catcher. I ditched all that, and swapped in a couple of spare N/W chainrings I had in the spares bin – weight saving = 250g.

They are great bikes – our boys have been around the red trails at Dalbeattie, Glentress and Kirroughtree last week on them, and were loving them.

They might be slightly heavier than the equivalent Islabike, I’d like to check myself though against a Beinn 24. The price difference is considerable though (especially as our boys are twins and Islabike would not offer any discount, whereas the LBS gave me 10% off for buying two Orbeas).

Edit – I should say that I was comparing the Orbea 24 Trail against the Creig 24, not the Beinn.

I’d not considered a fork…I thought they might all be rubbish? so are the OK?

We’ve just got a Hoy for my eldest and I’d say it’s as good as if not better than the isla we moved from.

My son is off like a rocket at every opportunity, low weight really helps, with riding it and general moving it around

Got it at a great price S/H it’s got 3 more siblings to get through so depreciation isn’t a worry!

The fork is ok, nothing special. It’s an SR Suntour air fork with 63mm travel, but you don’t want too much on such a small frame. Islabikes come with a RST F1rst 60mm travel air fork.

I just set them up as you would any fork, and kept on letting air out until they could generate a small amount of sag just by being in a ready position.

how wide can you got tyre wise on the isla’s?

My boy has a frog 55 he’s 6. Its a good bike. Cant see how an equivalent Isla bike would be better except for a little lighter. Comes with slick and knobbly tyres and trigger shifters not grip shift which I think small hands find easier. You can try them in a shop too unlike the isla bikes which is a massive advantage imo.

http://www.saracen.co.uk/bikes/kids/junior

also this for a little more than the isla

Got my lad a 24″ Hoy at new year, have been very impressed with it 😀

My 6 year old son has a Frog 55, moving up from a Isla CNOC 14. It’s ok but does seem to weigh a lot for the size of bike it is.

If you want to ride single track then you need to consider the geometry.

The Orbea according to their website has a 387mm chainstay length.
Islabikes neglect to mention it on the Beinn 24 but from the photo’s it looks horrendous. Based on their listed 140mm cranks and experience (based on my kids 24er) I’d guess its around 420mm or even longer (which is the same as my T-130 27.5er.

What that means in practice is the Beinn going to be freakishly hard to manual (or even keep the front wheel up on drop offs)

Then the Orbea has disk mounts …
You can pull the Altus off and replace .. you can get short cranks etc. but you can’t change that chainstay length.

(By comparison with 24″ wheels a Transition ripcord has 381mm and the trailcraft frames 390mm)

If you expect to be riding trails as opposed to kids XC which is more like CX then I’d go with the geometry…

interesting.

does anyone know for sure about the length of the chainstays?

Just measured my daughter’s Beinn 24 and it’s 395mm.

Cheers mate.

Going to go Isla and possibly put on some bigger volume tyres.

Beinn 24 and Orbea MX24 two very different bikes. We’ve been dedicated Isla customers since the Rothan but when it came to moving up to 24 we reached a bit of a crossroads. The Beinn 24 is more of a hybrid bike in my opinion – fine for easy trails bit I wanted something that could handle more challenging trails. Isla reflect this in their categorisation – Beinn 24 described as ‘Multi-Purpose’, Creig 24 as a mountain bike. I was stumped by the £800 price tag of the Creig 24 so went for the MX24 Team which my son got for Xmas. I reckoned that at half the price of the Isla I could spend some of the difference on upgrades if need be.

Overall the MX24 is great and fantastic value – 10 speed Deore components can’t be faulted. The transformation in my son’s riding ability from the Beinn 20 was an eye-opener. On the less positive side it was a little weightier than I’d expected and he found the uphills pretty draggy. It was during a trip away when we packed his and my bike in the car I realised the wheels were the culprit. A second hand set of Crest 24’s, with Novatec hubs, setup with Tubeless Rocket Rons came up on this site and lopped a whopping 1.7kg off the stock wheel/tyre combination (hard to believe but true). Next I found a set of 2001 Rockshox Dual Air SIDs on Retrobike forum for 80 quid and adjusted the travel to 63mm – perfect for kids. By the time I’ve removed the bash ring I’ll have the weight down to under 10kg which is Creig 24 Pro territory (and they’re a silly £1500). Definitely recommend the MX24 if you want something that is more of a true mountain bike. You can’t beat Isla for resale though.

I have an Isla Beinn 26 for sale if you are interested. Let me know and I can give you the details, but it has hardly been used.

nparker – that’s a good point about the wheels, they’re pretty bombproof 36h rims, with PG spokes, although they are taped for tubeless. I’ve just popped some Rocket Rons on there for now (saving 0.6kg) and will see how they get on.

I’ll probably keep an eye open for some lighter wheels in due course, but the transformation in their riding moving from Beinn 20s has been incredible.

Got an MX24 Team for sale if that adds interest. It’s 2013 model with rigid forks and full deore 10spd drivetrain. Weighs in at 10.4kg. Been in loft for last 2 years, my son loved it and did loads on it. Proper mountain bike.
Will pop on classifieds soon but e-mail me if you want more details.

Have a look at the MX24. My lad has one the same spec as LD’s and it is a great piece of kit.

Got an MX24 Team for sale if that adds interest. It’s 2013 model with rigid forks and full deore 10spd drivetrain. Weighs in at 10.4kg. Been in loft for last 2 years, my son loved it and did loads on it. Proper mountain bike.
Will pop on classifieds soon but e-mail me if you want more details.

Does the 2013 have the rear disk mount ?

I’m following an older model on eBay but from the photo’s can’t see if the frame has the disk mount or not… and the idea would be to transfer from his current frame to a new frame with shorter chainstays….

If I can manage it though (£££) I’m also considering just going for a FS … and keep his current bike for racing XC (with rigid forks) and the new bike for harder core trails…

No disc mounts on 2013 model, front or rear.

Cheers LD, it didn’t look like the one I was following did but hard to be sure from the camera angle…

Feeling really thick now, I’ve looked again and there are disc mounts on the back but not on the fork. Apologies!

Got an MX24 Team for sale if that adds interest. It’s 2013 model with rigid forks and full deore 10spd drivetrain. Weighs in at 10.4kg. Been in loft for last 2 years, my son loved it and did loads on it. Proper mountain bike.
Will pop on classifieds soon but e-mail me if you want more details.

Big thanks to LD, his old mx24 team now has a very happy new owner in our house!

But to add something useful to the thread, if anybody is looking for another light weight 24″ bike option, we picked up a Dawes Academy 24 on Gumtree a few weeks ago for our other child. Even after we added 2 cheap but bigger more knobbly tyres, it also still weighs only 10.4kg. Nice bike and also without the Isla/Frog price premium 2nd hand.

Too soon to compare the 2 bikes together, but the kids are both over the moon with each of their bikes and really keen to get out on them, which is the most important thing.

We’ve just got my daughter an Orbea MX24 Trail. I’s lush, the forks can be tweaked to actual work and she flew round the Bluescar trail at Afan yesterday with so much confidence on the downs.
I’ll be getting a smaller chainring for her to boost the climbing potential, she just needs a bit more spinning potential on the longer climbs.
She thought it was light when she got it, which is what matters I guess.
I was thwarted on the Beinn24 bu not being about to get a big volume tyre in the back, loads of space in the forks but not in the frame.

There is now a Marin Bayview Disc 24″ for sale in the classifieds which my son loved but my daughter didn’t fit. 😉

Does anybody know the stand-over night if the Saracen Mantra 2.4?