i must be a glutton for punishment as i always spout on about the pointlessness of magazine bike test then carry on reading them.
anyway, to the test in question. just been looking through januarys what mountain bike, in big bold letters on the front "great £1000 bikes", so i turn to the test which is for "trail full-suss £1000-£1200".
voodoo canzo@£1200 vs carrera banshee@£1000 vs giant trance@£995 vs lapierre spicy @£1800. er wtf? £1800? and the winner is the spicy... well i was shell shocked didn't see that coming!
i quite liked the look of the trance until it got beaten by a bike twice the price.... like i said... pointless.
You didn't read the article's introduction, then?
The Spicy was there as a "control bike". They wanted to compare (comparatively) budget full suspension bikes against a bike that had to make fewer compromises when it came to its spec.
+1 what Chris said. They wanted to see if bikes for roughly £1000 could compete with their benchmark alp bike.
I kinda see what Stuart is on about. The Voodoo is over the budget, or the caption should have been 'Great £1200 bikes'.
Bit like having a beauty contest for mingers and then having a Miss World type as a 'control' to show the others shortcomings...
Or their more recent XC / Race Bikes...
... and the winner is the Scott Spark (IIRC)
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Ohh - but we didn't bother comparing against our reigning Bike of the Year, the Giant Anthem X
I've cancelled my subs to MBR as it was starting to get silly....
this month they reviewed saddles and the Spesh Phenom got 7/10 and there was loads they moaned about, whereas last yr it got 9/10 and was joint recommended with a Bontrager Inform.
A while back as well they reviewed trail packs and had the same Vaude bag in there that I own. It had loads of features that another bag being tested also had (like a waterproof cover), but these weren't mentioned on the Vaude bag and the other bag (think it was a Deuter) was praised for having all these great features.
no i didn't read the introduction, looking at the contenders i didn't bother wasting my time reading the test, a test for £1000-£1200 bikes should be exactly that, if there is a control bike involved it doesn't need to be commented on but in this case it is included in the test and is given their star rating.
people just browsing the magazine, like me this morning, will see the lapierre come out on top. this might have something to do with the full page ad on page 25 for the "new for 2010" lapierre spicy 216!
like rkk01 said, wmb class the anthem x1 as their bike of the year so why isn't that the control bike to which all others are compared?
maybe i'm taking it to seriously and should just use wmb to look at the airbrushed and artificially lighted action shots whilst i'm sitting on the bog!
while i'm ranting. £995 (giant) buys 2.5 stars, £1800 (lapirre) buys 3.5 stars, that's a lot of wonga for the extra star.
and
if the lapierre is the control bike why didn't it get 5 stars? or was that being judged against another control bike? do you think they actually went to the alps?