[Closed] Now I'm not normally one for MBR Specialized bashing but WTF

My wife bought me MBR to read on the plane when going on holiday. I just threw it straight in the bin.

Maybe it'd be better in mud with more specific tyres though?

And I think they test bikes in the Surrey Hills, which must have had a long, dry autumn this year.

They mark bikes against their competitors, so for a 650b+ bike it's a 9/10 bike. In the same way if they review a £400 hardtail and give it 10/10 it's not as good as a 10/10 £4k enduro bike. It's all relative.

As in how is a bike that's not good in what we ride in 3/4 of the year a 9/10???

Because the tyre choice says very little about the bike itself? 😕

Maybe Munrobiker.....that makes more sense!

Butcher, their comment is about the 650+ eh system rather than that tyre though mate?

They mark bikes against their competitors, so for a 650b+ bike it's a 9/10 bike. In the same way if they review a £400 hardtail and give it 10/10 it's not as good as a 10/10 £4k enduro bike. It's all relative.

Realistically I dont think that can be the case. Otherwise if jones sent them a bike it would have to be a 10/10 as its pretty much unique. Bikes need to be judged against their peers yes, but tyre size cant be a decider as to who its peers are.

EDIT : Not that it matters as + bikes will be gone in a couple of years anyway.

Double post.

My wife bought me MBR to read on the plane when going on holiday. I just threw it straight in the bin.

[img] [/img]

I stand corrected, after reading the review I can see the tyre size is the main selling point of the bike. But to be fair, a good bike is a good bike, surely. And every bike is a compromise in some way.

True that every bike is a comprise, my suggestion is being compromised is mud, ruts and standing water docents make a 9/10 bike or concept!

float sketchily on top of mud and standing water

They float on water? Must have been doing about sixty!

Bought MBR x2 ( yes I didn't learn on the first issue) for a couple of trips and the amount of contradiction within the mag is unreal. The journalism is so poor. The reviews are pinch of salt stuff. Someone wrote about plastic bits in bottom brackets and their answer was it was all about being cheap and all high quality bb's have no sleeves, such as Kings. Well, my King has a sleeve for the BB not to creak on the bearing and nothing to do with being cheap. I remember the times of the Spesh 'best bikes' sponsorship years ago and didn't think it still happened even though they are noticed. Spesh bikes for the money seem to be the worst for hiding cheap components, such as headsets, BB's, cranks, Stems etc , yet somehow they still think they are best.

I love how they have a bike in to test, change the bars, stem, and tyres, for control test reasons, then slag off the bar width, stem length, and tyres for being wrong.

A riding mate used to buy it and would follow some of the spannering articles. He would get himself into all sorts of problems then give me a call to help out. He learned his lesson and cancelled his subscription. I then recommended he buy the Park Tools Big Blue Book. Not had to help out since.

I'm just back from a day at BPW on a 6Fattie. It was fun.

(More detailed review to follow )

I'm the only fattie in Wales cap'n.

Surely they should be testing it as it comes out of the box? Testing something like a mountain bike is always going to be subjective.

The problem with bikes is there are so many niches and sub genres that it becomes impossible to compare like for like.

As Albert Einstine sad, if you judge a fish by it's ability to climb a tree, it will live it's whole life believing it's incompetent.

So reading the subtext it's a 9/10 in terms of fat bikes but as an all purpose work horse it falls short? That's kinda obvious really.

Wmb tested it against the normal wheeled version. Fat thing got 9/10, normal 8/10 from memory. They defo do compare against peers and mark as such.

bike magazine in purely subjective, inconsistent and often contradictory in the same review, shocker. i've given up putting any store in them. they're ok to judge if something is a dog as most will agree, but trying to get any real insight out of most bike review (same as cars and many other consumer items)

Yeh I'd agree, and if a certain manufacturer pays them a lot for advertising space on thier pages.. They have to watch what they say!

Leaving aside the pros and cons of MBR can I ask a question about the 6Fattie, as it's quite high up on my "next bike" list.

I read the same article and saw the comments about the bike's bad points. Is this likely to be solely down to the tyres on it, ie is it easily fixed?

Apologies if it's a bit of a dumb question but before shelling out a lot of money on a bike I want to be quite sure I'm getting something good, and by "good" I mean it has to compensate for my skills deficiencies!!

Kenny, ever ridden the claggy, sandy, clay mixed slop around Bike Park Wales? Well, suffice to say the 6Fattie I was on today was better on that terrain than on anything firmer like some of the harder pack stuff. Tons of grip.

As above, review inbound!

As a general rule, fatter tyres will "float" across certain consistencies of mud more than a traditional, thinner tyre. It should therefore come as no surprise that this behaviour is exacerbated when tyres are getting to 3", 4" and 5". Hit a puddle with a fatbike and you [i]will[/i] feel the deceleration caused by the tyre displacement.

The only way you can hope to counter this is by adopting a very aggressive tread pattern like a Surly Nate or Bud. Unfortunately, these are also much slower rolling than less aggressive treads so you may have to work a bit harder to gain speed. And we've yet to see a B+ tyre with that sort of tread.

Of course, in other conditions, the float of the flatter tyre will actually cause faster rolling as the weight of the bike and rider doesn't eat into the ground so much.

So - you have to weigh up both of the above, plus the additional grip and comfort of the fatter, lower pressure tyre in order to work out what is best for you.

Personally, already having a 4" fatbike, I've gone for a frame that will take B+ and/or 29er wheels and will use whatever is most appropriate for the ride/conditions I am likely to encounter.

I'm lucky enough to have access to a few bikes - all of which are great - but the OnOne Fatty with 80mm tubeless Nextie rims a Bud and a Floater is a pretty good all rounder.
Stunningly capable and grin-tastic fun.
One thing I've found it doesn't do well is steps - repeated hits with no damping isn't great.

Perhaps there could be specialised fatty wet tyres to displace water and prevent floating/aqua plane like this

[img] [/img]

Enduro magazine online has a review of the 6fattie v 650b stumpy also this month and it's free!
Interesting reading too, completely different to the usual mags.
I've cancelled my mbr subscription as it just repeats it's self year in year out, same old rides, same old bikes.....boring.

Thanks for the replies above. Am definitely edging more and more towards a 6 Fattie or something similar.

Not overly fussed about how fast I'm going (other than once a year at the Puff) but wanting a bike that I can ride all day and will cope with everything the Scottish landscape puts in its way. Which can be just about anything.

Am definitely edging more and more towards a 6 Fattie or something similar.

I assume you are using edging in the context of moving closer slowly, rather than stopping yourself ejaculating to increase the pleasure.

Quarrel, I refuse to answer that question on the grounds I may incriminate myself. 🙂

jonk - Member

My wife bought me MBR to read on the plane when going on holiday. I just threw it straight in the bin.

Jonk, I now want to know where you were flying too? What DID you read on the plane? Did you have another bike mag? Your wife's timing was impeccable since there are no bins on the plane she must have handed it to you at the precise moment the trolley dolly was passing by? Why didn't you offer it to someone else as these mags cost almost as much as a fiver? How was your holiday in the end?

I truly respect you for making a stand but all these questions need answering.

[quote=bigblackheinoustoe ]

jonk - Member
My wife bought me MBR to read on the plane when going on holiday. I just threw it straight in the bin.

See "bought it to read on the plane" isn't the same as "bought it on the plane to read"

chakaping - Member
And I think they test bikes in the Surrey Hills

All "their" trails have gone now.

(yes there are loads of others in the hills but they were involved in these, one in particular with their name on it. All gone)

I think I know the solution to all of this 2.1 Ardents- better still a 1.9 fire xc pro 🙂

Doesn't MBR stand for Mikesinyard Bum Rimmers?

Doesn't MBR stand for Mikesinyard Bum Rimmers?

Oh, it must have been the other type of edging then.

captainflasheart "review inbound"

Milo fan? 😉

Its not just bike mags, but most trade mags in general.

If you piss off the people who supply you with exclusive kit that the other mag doesn't have, then they'll take that kit elsewhere. You'll lose your exclusive, and perhaps some of your readership.

Heck, the majority of journalism works this way too. Write something bad about Cameron / Obama? Expect to get your press pass revoked, and no more "unnamed officials" giving you exclusives.

Simple economics. Stick to Singletrack mag, at least they have decent features. 😀

They might have really, really liked it in the dry though - so if they've made it clear that it aquaplanes in the wet I'm not sure I have a problem with a high score myself.

Surely even a fatty tyre doesn't truly aquaplane at bike speeds?

Just a question, not arguing. 🙂

I'm sure it doesn't, just a turn of phrase.

Ah, gotcha. I see. 🙂

All bike mags are books of adverts. I quit buying them years ago as I got sick of reading the bullshit - if you want real reviews, ask someone on here or look on the net... it's free 🙂

Both What Mountain Bike and Enduro Mag had similar conclusions - that it's a bloody good bike, but one very apparent characteristic of a plus tyre is the sensitivity to pressure. I'd venture a guess that the MBR test (not read it but will grab a copy later to have a look) was on dryish terrain, which may be more forgiving to tyre setup, but then in the wet mud, this amplified the tyre pressure issue.

As for a high score but a limitation on one thing, I don't see the issue. There are other places to ride than muddy bits of the UK, so you can't base test scores on that!

I also question the classic STW conspiracy of ads influencing reviews. If that was the case, all the other brands would stop advertising due to favour going to one brand. Unless that one brand spends more than all others combined, the financial operation of the mag would be impossible. Its advertising, not copy sales, that delivers profitability in newsstand based print media, hence as Mark Alker himself stated, Singletrack took a new focus to try and get sub's rather than be reliant on ads to offset the costs of a newsstand focused mag.

Somewhere I've still got a scan of the review they did on the first gravity dropper in 2005.

They gave it 6/10 on the basis that although it worked really well, they couldn't see the point 😆

I haven't bought an MBR in years and can't even be bothered to skim through it in tescos now.

if you want real reviews, ask someone on here or look on the net... it's free

And just as unreliable and biased as a mag review. 😉