Commencal Meta HT Origin, what do you think guys ?

http://www.chainreactioncycles.com/commencal-meta-ht-am-origin-bike-2016/rp-prod137025?gclid=Cj0KEQjwjem-BRC_isGJlJ-0h-MBEiQAbCimWOMdiYQ-XMojZpc1PS_Xc_8vxhtv-I33_W2ZxSc_et8aAqQY8P8HAQ&gclsrc=aw.ds

Feeling the potential love for sticking my Charge Cooker up for sale and having a bit more ‘trailsy’ HT instead for winter/some day to day use.

Looking around lots and whilst some of the bits hanging off it are not amazing, tehy’re decent enough at the budget and if buying new, i can’t see how i could get ‘better’ in a 650b/29 for what i was thinking?

Any better options/ideas you can think of ? Budget is about the asking price of £750 really, i’m assuming i can get £300-350 for the Cooker.

Without knowing your current spec, I can’t comment as to whether it would be an improvement or not.

However having ridden the Meta HT it wouldn’t be my first choice for a hardtail, its flippin stiff and not brilliantly spec’d. In my opinion, the forks are crap, the wheels are crap and I hate SRAM anyway, certainly the cheaper old stuff. Riding it, it just felt dead and lethargic – I like messing about on BMX tracks and doing skids and wheelies – This just felt hard work, I certainly wouldn’t want to use it on any longer trail type rides….

Not exactly a glowing reference lol.

The cooker is just a generic 2×10 running old 2011 or so Reba dual air 100mm, Formula Mega brakes and a Deore crankset, WTB wheels/rims on one set and Pro2 evo front on the trail set with a crappy rear Bontrager. Nothign at all wrong with it as such, just quite XC/on top of bars type riding style and thought i’d try a bit ‘newer’ geometry to match the Process 153 a bit more. It gets a little weird swapping between the 2.

IMO then you end up with two similar bikes and only end up using one. I’ve done that many times…normally resulting in riding the sh1t one all the time and never using the big bike. If you fancy a change from the cooker then look to get something totally different from your Kona

I’ve looked at the Commencal website a number of times (my brother has a V3 Meta AM) and come close but the spec on those HT’s (and the cheaper F/S) aren’t great at all – whats the point if you end up upgrading everything. If I were looking to spend that sort of money, I’d have a punt on one of those Alpkit Sonders…the 650b trail bikes. Was very tempted by one of those and they get good reviews…

All good points flange.

I have what I believe is the 29er version of this bike, not exactly the same but most of the spec looks pretty similar albeit with a 120mm suntour raidon air fork. To be perfectly honest I bought it direct from Commencal for about £550 in their end of year sale with the intention of using it as a family bike for gravel tracks, holidays, towing the kids trailer etc. I’ve ended up doing something like 600 miles on it and absolutely love it. So much so I am considering swapping all the bits off anther bike and building it up into something half decent with 130mm forks and a dropper.

Despite the poverty spec, (ISIS BB, X5, low quality wheels etc), it all works brilliantly and other than a new BB I’ve not had to replace anything, (Im 6’5 and about 15 stone). Geometry wise it’s nothing like the long low slack mantra that everyone bangs on about but I find the handling is great, the front end however is quite slack and its just one of those bikes that is more fun to ride than the sum of its parts. I’m actually pretty gutted Commencal have discontinued the 29er version otherwise I would have just bought another frame.