Review: Islabikes Cnoc 16

By Barney

My eldest daughter is 3 – and she’s pretty tall for her age. She’s pretty good on her balance bike, but it’s… a little small nowadays. So when the chance came up to test an Islabike, we jumped at it.

I decided on the Cnoc 16 with 16 inch wheels (a similarly-speeced Cnoc 14 is available) solely because I wanted something that was – perhaps on the large size, but also something she’d be able to grow in to. And at the rate she’s growing, I wanted something to last. I needn’t have worried – at 107cm tall she fits the Cnoc pretty well, all told, and is comfortably above the minimum recommended 104cm height recommendation for the 16in model.

It’s a great looking thing from the box – I selected the Pink bike, which is actually a sort of rich light purple to these eyes. You can order optional extras, like matching water bottles (although there’s nowhere to put them on the frame), and personalised decals too. It came pretty well set up – I didn’t have to do much fettling at all to have a fully functioning bike on my hands (and a hyperactive-with-excitement daughter).

It’s a light bike – 13.5lbs – which stands in stark contrast to many other bikes targetted at the same age range, many of which are very much heavier. This is helped by an 7005 T6 aluminium frame, and intelligent speccing. As this is essentially a starter bike (it’s certainly Eliza’s first taste of pedals) you don’t need a hugely heavy, arguably over sprung but certainly cool-looking fork, v-brakes provide more than adequate stopping on the decent aluminium rims, and the bike runs a single gear. I can see the value in this, too. Let’s let the kid sort out the whole alien action of pedalling first, before distracting them with extra things to click and move.

The saddle is a good-looking scaled down number, the cranks are good and short, the chain guard (fully floating) needs no tools to fit and remove. The gear fitted to the bike does seem initially a little tall, but it’s hard to tell – this is Eliza’s first go with pedals after all, and she needs a bit of encouragement not to back pedal all the time.

The BB did seem slightly tall initially. With the saddle so her feet were on the floor and she felt confortable, Eliza couldn’t rotate the pedals past their highest point. This was solved by raising the saddle slightly. Pedalling was then more intuitive, at the expense of easy foot-down placement. This is probably the only issue with sizing up on the larger bike – likely this problem wouldn’t exist on the Cnoc 14 for Eliza, as the BB is correspondingly lower.

I didn’t go for stabilizers, as I was hoping that her previous experience on balance bikes would stand her in good stead, but I think they may be a temporary future purchase. The position (upright) and characteristics are so different from Eliza’s balance bike that she needs a little more encouragement. To be honest (it’s my first time at this) I wasn’t sure what to expect. She’s certainly very keen to ride it, which is a good thing, but I think that she’s a little frustrated that she can’t just get up and go like she could on the balance bike. Mind you, Eliza was expecting that she’d instantly be able to pedal it off into the sunset (daddy does, why can’t I?) which I knew she’d have to work on.

The brakes are very good too – especially coming from her balance bike, which was hopeless in the braking department. These stop the bike beautifully, the levers are easily small enough for her hands, and the tyres (Kenda jobs) are excellent all-round rubber, suitable for roads and (gentle) singletrack alike. There’s room for more aggressive rubber, too, if you’ve got a daredevil.

Sadly the appalling weather over the past few weeks have tempered her riding somewhat, although she’s keen to get out whenever she can. But when the weather clears up again, I can see many more trips to the moors on the calendar. Riding with your kids is ace.

Overall: this is an excellent introduction to the world of pedals. Eliza is extremely enamoured with the colour (the most important thing) and her dad likes the spec and the weight. It’s not the cheapest, granted, but it’s a light, quality bike with great quality kit. And resale value on these things is terrific, apparently. Recommended.

Review Info

Barney Marsh

Barney Marsh takes the word ‘career’ literally, veering wildly across the road of his life, as thoroughly in control as a goldfish on the dashboard of a motorhome. He’s been, with varying degrees of success, a scientist, teacher, shop assistant, binman and, for one memorable day, a hospital laundry worker. These days, he’s a dad, husband, guitarist, and writer, also with varying degrees of success. He sometimes takes photographs. Some of them are acceptable. Occasionally he rides bikes to cast the rest of his life into sharp relief. Or just to ride through puddles. Sometimes he writes about them. Bikes, not puddles. He is a writer of rongs, a stealer of souls and a polisher of turds. He isn’t nearly as clever or as funny as he thinks he is.

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