Anyone know if these are a decent bike ? I have been looking at a radon vaillant on bike discount
It comes with full dura ace and mavic cosmic elite wheels for £2150 which seems a bargain
Is this the case or would I be daft to spend this much on a radon Instead of a canyon or Italian brand
Any advice ?

I hadn’t heard of the brand before you referenced it so I’ve just been to have a look. They are another German direct to consumer brand in the same mould as Canyon I guess, maybe not quite so direct (if they are also selling through Bike Discount), but direct enough to explain the amazing value they can offer.

There are a couple ways of looking at this. First is that you couldn’t buy the groupset, wheels and finishing kit for the price they are asking for the whole bike (even when you can by the groupset at a 40% discount currently!) So if nothing else, you buy the bike, run it for a year, decide the frame is not for you and swap it out for something else and you would still be ahead.

The other perspective is that if you want the value but are concerned about the quality/provenance/reputation/performance etc, then you can get almost as much value from the Canyon brand. I don’t think you can buy the exact same bike from them as I suspect the equivalent frame would be the less expensive CF SL rather than the CF SLX and they don’t seem to offer the former with the DA groupset. But with an Ultegra groupset it retails for even less than the Radon, at £1899 and this is for a frame that still weighs less than 1kg!

If you went up to the top spec frame, the CF SLX which is the same frame Nairo Quintana used to win the Giro D’Italia recently, then the cost goes up to £3200 for the same spec but you’re getting a bike pretty close to what the pro’s ride and which pro’s do ride all season, so the provenance and quality is pretty much assured.

The only problem with buying bikes like this is getting them to fit. You’re very much at the mercy of the fit guides they offer. Canyon’s is very good as it uses a whole range of measurements; I haven’t seen if Radon do the same.

To illustrate the point about fit, one of the younger hot shots in our club just bought a Canyon CF SLX recently. He’s first to the top on all the climbs but the other day on a ride he was struggling to maintain the pace on the flat. Riding behind him I noticed his saddle was about 1.5cm too high; his legs were at full extension and his lower back was rocking from side to side on each down stroke. The bike is the right size, but the set up was all wrong.

If you’re going down the route of mail order bikes, it’s well worth paying a bike shop to do a set up with you. After the guy lowered his saddle, suddenly he can more easily maintain the flat road pace. On the climbs, out of the saddle, it wasn’t holding him back.

Finaly words on the Radon (or indeed the Canyon); you will be taking a gamble that you’ll buy something you don’t like the ‘feel’ of or can’t get to fit properly. That may well be a risk with any bike you buy from an LBS that doesn’t start with a fitting and then a test ride, but you’re support with buying from the LBS is better all round.

A lot of people will know what kind of ‘ride quality’ they want from a frame and a lot of other people won’t think that important to them at all. There’s no right or wrong, it’s just what you want, or, perhaps more frequently, it’s the approval of others you want. That’s also understandable.

In general cheaper cabon frames will ride more harshly than more expensive carbon frames simply because it takes a lot more know how and application to maintain stiffness, strength and comfort than to just build something strong and stiff. So the Radon may end up being a harsher ride relative to other bikes but then a) you might have nothing to compare it to and b) you might not care anyway because you’re young and haven’t accumulated enough back injuries to worry!

The brand is only as important as you want it to be. It’s always been important to me but to the extent that brand has no bearing on ride quality (there are plenty of example of high value brand frames being harsh to ride, Neil Pryde is a good example) the only part of your decision making that should be influenced by brand is the heart. The head will have nothing to do with it.

Which is not to say it’s not important because it is. There is so much passion tied up with riding bikes for a lot of people that the inspiration of being on something like a top end Colnago, Pinarello, De Rosa et al, will indeed make you go faster. Motivation is a key ingredient to speed, just not for everyone.

Hope this (essay) helps.

Thanks for that and yes mail order seems risky in regards to size although looking at the radon geometry
I’m confident I could get a decent fit. I’m probably gonna go with a wilier gtr ultegra (full ultegra from bike discount )
Mainly because it looks v nice IMO and I like the idea of owning a wilier instead of a canyon or ribble etc
The spec and price of the radon just got me thinking and it looks pretty good too