I have the older shorter travel one – excellent allrounder for UK riding. Considering price / performance I doubt you could find better as a one-bike solution. Maestro at 115 is witchcraft – rides way bigger than it should, although I guess this longer travel version would ride quite differently.

Wheels are mediocre but that’s just industry standard – I’ve never seen a good pair of wheels on a retail bike for the pricepoint.

I ended up going back to two bikes because I wanted something bigger for the Alps, and an anthem is better for me for most MTBing I do. But you could ride almost anything in the UK on the trance.

I wrote a long post about my journey of comparing it to an Occam LT from Sigma at slightly better spec, then STW lost it.  I went for the Occam for the more trail focused stability and what I think is a higher grade of frame.  This vid should help you decide/justify the Trance, but I think you enjoy that Trance a lot:

Any other feedback appreciated

Apologies, I can’t find your link to the one you’re thinking of. Can you repost?

I’ve just checked my email and we bought a Giant Trance 29 2 2020 for my son based on the fact that it seemed very similar to the outstanding Anthem 27.5 that he had previously.
It was ok, but no more than that. Felt quite heavy and clunky with cheap heavy parts on it. He did survive some fairly steep stuff in the Alps so not too bad, but nowhere near as good as the Anthem it replaced.

Based on my carbon occam, I’d be tempted to go with what Kryton says. Though I appreciate your option is both newer and bigger travel than what I’m describing

HTH

I’d get the Pedalon one, used the saved cash for some lighter wheels, and take advantage of the buy-now-pay-in-12-months option and put the £1649 to earn some interest in the highest rate ISA I could find for a year.

I’ve got a trance x3 and love it

Solid frame build

Nice geo

Meastro suspension works very well

It’s on the porky side even after swapping out the own brand wheels which had a cùp n cone front hub but not rear maybe a covid supply thing

It pedals really well but goes down as good as anything I’ve ridden

I did swap the tektro brakes for the cheap merlin trp evo brakes

The dps shock was functional but not fantastic so splashed on a ohlins ttx2 air