Depends what you want to ride of course but the Hoy Bikes from Evans are great too.

Similar to Isla nicer colours, v similar spec and cheaper.

We have a couple of 24″s, they are great and light. The kids are ripping down the singletrack on them.

I bought a second hand Scott and Spesh as a test.

The suss on the spesh never moved and it was crazy heavy.
The scott was okay but I would 1*’d it and put in regular shifters if we’d kept it but I gave them the choice and they both chose the lighter Hoys.
We also demo’s a Cannondale – I think it was made of lead.

The one thing I will change on the Hoy’s is some proper off road tyres for winter and disc brake mounts would be good for the splodge season.

Good luck.

Well on purely visuals I have shown minivader the options… Surprisingly enough he has chosen the Scott spark he. So will be giving the lbs a call and seeing if they can get one in for a test ride…

Ade9933

The 16″ hoy is £30 more expensive than the equivalent Islabike

Don’t know about prices as I don’t live in the UK anymore but…..

My 8 yr old is riding a Spesh Hotrock 20″ with tyres upgraded. He as no issues riding it other than the smaller wheels on log rolls. He can keep up with pretty much anyone in his age range and a good number of adults. He stacked it recently on one of our local trails and a couple of guys roiled past moaning about kids on “their” trails. I suggested he try to catch em up after he’d picked himself up, 200 metres later he was buzzing their back wheel! Weights obviously not too bad and he gets some movement from the crappy suspension fork.

My older girl (9)is on a 24″ Cannondale which is about to go on a diet. It’s 12kg but I reckon I can lose a heap of weight. Got some Stans Crests and my old XTR group for it, aiming for well under 9kg.

Oldest daughter is 11 and rides a 26″ Trek which is 15kg!!!! Again it’s on a diet, much easier here as I’m sure we’ve all got loads of old 26″ stuff in the spares shed. Stans wheels again and a 1x XT group paired with a Reba. I reckon I can get sub 10kg easy enough?

It’s definitely harder with the smaller bikes to find ways to lose weight!

Ive just weighed on accurate scales the carrera abyss 24 it was 11.02kg against an isla beinn 24 stated weight of 8.82kg (not weighed one tho) so thats 2.2kg difference or 4 1/2 pounds. So for me as i need to buy 2 I’ll go for 2 at the same price of one isla and they will get used to the extra weight. Its still lighter than many of the 20″ bikes anyway

Just weighed our beinn small 20 and with conti mtb tyres its 9.5kg so id guess that the stated weight of the 24 at 8.82kg is very optimistic

My lad has been testing out his new ‘snotter’ it’s an ASDA/Wherever special, a hand me down from my sister, just to keep him going until Xmas when Santa will being him his new bike.

He loves the gears, loves the suspension and is more than happy with his big heavy donkey lol.

Interesting on some of the weights.

Trying to get a decent quote for posting his Ridgeback MX16 now. Paisley Freight are currently winning at £22.50 (which is more than I budgeted for ! But I did get a decent price for the bike)

The Scott Scale 24″ we have is 12.25kg, which I’m guessing is stock, however I bought it used so I can’t be sure.

Bars and post look good places to save a fair amount of weight too.

The Islabikes are light-ish but a Beinn 24 certainly isn’t 8.82kg. I just made youngest his first 26er with my own custom steel frame – it was more than a pound lighter than the 24″ Beinn (both bikes weighed on same scale – that was 26″ wheels, discs and a sus fork).

In fairness the 26 wheels cost the same as an Islabike but he’ll be using them for a lot of years (they’ll get swapped onto bigger bikes).