As per the title,

I have just returned a banana balance bike to Amazon as the headset setup was SH!t.

I figure i need to spend a bit more than £35 to get something half decent.

I have been looking at a halfords one for about £70 and a Specialized one which is £120 which is good but a bit expensive.

Any reccomendations…

I was going to suggest something until I saw your budget – my Daughter turns 2 next month, I’m getting her an Islabikes balance bike for a crazy £150.

Unfortunately as someone said to me despite the fact they’re tiny and don’t have a drive-train they’re still bikes so you need to spend a decent amount to get a good one – I’ve had 2 Spesh’s for my Son and theyve been good, but the Islabikes is only £30 more and someone will always buy it off you once it’s been grown out of for a decent percentage of what it cost.

My 2.5 yr old has a Stomp Stompee which you can get for about £50 new. Its great, the brake works really well for kids skids, and he goes round our local pump track on it no problem. The headset arrangement isn’t that good though so it might not be to your liking although its better than the Halfords 35 quid one that we initially got for him

Ridgeback Scoots are £50 in my LBS at the moment (half price). Does the job nicely and has a brake too

Another vote for ridgeback scoot.
My lad had one, very nicely made and i sold it for about £10 less than I paid for it so clearly a decent 2nd hand market.

Bought the eldest a Spesh Hotwalk and it’s ace. Just about to start the youngest on it as well, so pretty good value for money. Will either hand it down to someone else or sell. Looks like they hold value pretty well.

If I was doing it again, though….

Just bought our 2 yr old a second hand Kokua jumper balance bike

http://www.likeabike.co.uk/m3b0s337p8/LIKEaBIKE-Jumper

I’d say it equal to an Islabike, same price, no brake (optional extra), lighter and it has suspension (gimmick in a balance bike?).

He’s currently out in the back garden pottering round on it.

As they don’t have the same well know status and cult following as Islabikes you can pick the up on ebay for a bit less than the Rothans go for.

Edit: Looked at the early riders too, nice bikes and in the Islabike/Kokua quality and price bracket. But I think they are not as good for young(~2yrs)/small kids, maybe for 3 yrs upwards.

I might buy the early rider for me 🙂

Just bought a Frog Bikes Tadpole for my 2 year old boy. It compares well to the Islabikes Rothan my daughter had.

That early rider is lovely, I’ve seen them in the flesh – the downside is that the seat is very high compared to the Isla and some of the others without the tradition triangle frames.

See how here in this pic, there’s a little bit more the seat could go down but it’s below the level of the rear tyre already, only a factor if your kids are still very small – and as my Wife keeps telling me she’s not really big enough yet – but I can’t wait 😉

This little guy sold me on the Kokua….

[video]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ga72-ASP1uM[/video]

Actually I was looking either for Kokua, Rothan or Frog tadpole to come up locally/at the right price.

Don’t underestimate the effect of weight. It’s a lot for a little person to cart about, and you’ll end up carrying it at some point!

I made a decent weight saving on the wee fella’s Islabike, cutting down that long seat post and using an alu BMX post for a fiver. It also gives more ground clearance when they progress to the bumps.

The Speccy HotWalk I had has now seen out 5 very careless owners (3 of mine) – can thoroughly recommend them. Plus Slime or Slime tubes.

We tried a few and ended up with a strider. The standard one is good but we got the limited edition aluminium one. Weight is everything at that age and the striders are sill light. Whatever you do don’t buy one of the kiddimoto wooden ones. My daughter shook hers apart on the pump tracks and skate parks but admittedly they are not designed for that.

Good point about weight, especially the carrying part!
Hotwalk is light. Early Rider is ridiculously so.

The wee fella from Mark’s video is Jackson Goldstone, he has come a long way since the balance bike. Here’s an awesome and sad video all at the same time:

[video]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Wfwq42HOWw[/video]

Cool. The kids got skillz 😀

Puky.

I’ve got a Hotwalk for sale. Keep meaning to get it in the Classified’s.

My lad loved it, and jumped on the pedal bike easily. They really are great.

Decathlon one has been good for us, adjustable, light, only issue is the brake is a right hand lever for a rear brake, which might cause issues when they move to a pedal bike.

My 2 and a bit year old has had a strider since he was about 18 months old (the one that comes with two seats, one of which is extra low profile). It’s good – but lack of a brake is now something I think is not great and I were to do it again, I’d get one that you can at least add a brake to later…

The Decathlon ones I find (and he seems to when he buzzes about the store on them when we go in) are too wide at the back meaning smaller ones struggle to push properly. The brake is on the correct side for the French, I suspect that’s why (over here they put the brakes on the wrong side even on adult bikes, RHS for the back LHS for the front 😯 ). They’re a funny bunch.

OP ive got a spesh one that my son used till he outgrew it. My wife reversed over the handlebars as the kids left it lying in the driveway. You are welcome to it (you pay postage) but it will need a new set of bars and the headset feels a bit loose so will need adjustment. Its straight otherwise.
I was going to fix it myself but never got round it as the kids moved on to larger bikes. been in the shed for a few years

Both our lads have used a Skuut (Kiddimoto). It’s pretty light, has solid wheels (which I thought may be safer), and has lasted them both OK.

We have a kokua jumper and its passed through a couple of our kids. It’s really light and well built. No complaints here although neither of ours turned out like the wee lad in the video!

My two year old was too small for many of the models in the market that seemed to have quite big wheels. I eventually found a Norco one that was small enough, but to be honest he didn’t really engage with it until he was 3.

I’m selling a girls cubie if your interested

It seems the discussion moved on from Islabikes without the point really being made that if your cashflow can cope it’s likely to be the cheapest option long term. I think we lost £20 on ours buying new and selling on ebay – if you buy s/h (you can pick up some in mint condition you’d find it hard to tell the difference – sadly none of the bikes we sell are like that!) then you can probably sell for the same as you paid, or possibly even make a profit.

Depends how long you think your child will be on the balance bike before progressing onto a proper bike. My daughter was on it for literally a few months, so i’d say save your cash and get a cheap one. I got one for about £20 off Amazon, a plywood one. Did the job in getting her on a proper bike then got her a Frog.

Thanks for the offers on the 2nd hand ones. It is a b’day present so i’m going to get a shiny one.

Still not sure which one to get might look at the Scoot.

We got my boy a Stryder for his 2nd birthday and its been brilliant ,agree with p-jayon the early rider one of his mates got and it will be a while before he can get on it as the seat is quite high .

There’s a cool looking little Mongoose BMX esque one in Halfords for £54 with the extra 10% off at the moment.

Either that or a Frog Tadpole, they’re awesome, come in loads of colours and are bomb / small child proof. They also have tiny standover and a cool coloured spoke by the valve on each wheel

The Scoot gets my vote, nice little bikes plus you can upgrade to decent v brakes although the boys always used their shoes to slow down….budget for new shoes.

I defaulted to the Islabikes Rothan for our little dude – he’s not that fussed about riding it yet, he’s more interested in the bolts on it!

It seems to be a well made little thing, but they’re not cheap.

We got our 2 yr old the frog tadpole, really good bike flies along on it and just starting to learn to use the brake on it. Nice touch on it that the bars only twist to a certain point so that when they crash the don’t get hurt by them.

Our little girl is too small for a balance bike at the mo, but I’ve been looking.

I really wanna get her one of these:

An Early Rider Bonsai…

but have seen some reviews of the bonded tube holding the seatpost coming loose.
And I’m not sure I wanna spend that much on one!

Any one that has a rear brake.

If you can get the Ridgeback Scoot for £50-something its a bargain. At £75 it was well worth the money last April, it’s been great for my lad for the year. A mate’s son has the Islabike; it’s a bit lighter and has a headset that stops the bars spinning, but otherwise I couldn’t tell the difference. The Scoot was light enough that my son at 2 1/4 could pick it up himself, which is all that matters.

I second the comment get one with a rear brake, it means I’ve been teaching the son to use it prior to getting him a pedal bike on which he won’t have a choice.

Worked fine on some rocky trails in the Peak District last week:

Both of mine started with Zoom balance bikes, which are fab. The eldest has now progressed onto an Early Rider 16″ pedal job, which is awesome (and didn’t need stabilisers, just got on and went for it!)

[url=https://flic.kr/p/GXAv8w]21st May 2016[/url] by Rob Sutherland, on Flickr

[url=https://flic.kr/p/FNAg4z]30th April 2016[/url] by Rob Sutherland, on Flickr

We got a used Rothan – I think from on here – for in the region of £50. It was a bit scuffed up, not that it mattered.

He absolutely loved it and it did the trick – when we moved onto the Cnoc a few months ago he was riding that within 2 hours, and now is obsessed with it. If his sister uses the Rothan, even if we didn’t get anything for it after she was done with it I wouldn’t be bothered, but in all likelihood we’ll get almost as much if not the whole amount we paid for it in the first place. 🙂

You don’t need a brake on a balance bike. That’s what feet are for. It’s just something else to confuse. But it al depends on how old the kid is. Both of mine have started on their balance bikes at about 1.5 years so they probably wouldn’t understand what a brake did anyway.