Viewing 22 posts - 41 through 62 (of 62 total)
  • mtb reviews in magazines
  • Northwind
    Full Member

    OTOH Pinkbike have had some features that absolutely stank of “paid for”- to the extent that if they weren’t taking money for it, they must be absolute mugs. Like that one where they “reached out” to Mavic to explain why everything that wasn’t UST was rubbish.

    trauty
    Free Member

    thanks folks. best tread ever. really great responses that actually made me re-evaluate some of my thoughts!
    the star system in mags – frankly its been so many years of mtb development from all brands , that it is simply not possible these days to rate a bike just 2 stars. Market competition pushed every mtb brand really hard to deliver decent bike TBH. I owned 3 bikes so far and currently have a bike that I demo tried like 4 years ago. Its 26er , its short reach for modern standard(more like medium size these days despite its large ) and it rides amazingly but I bet S Jones would moan about it . haha

    whatnobeer
    Free Member

    I find Pinkbike generally come up with a much better review, they did a piece on the Mattoc pro and it was excellent, they had 3 riders of different skills from average weekend warrior to full on badass and they went through the fork bit by bit comparing them to the Pike and 36 as they went. Exemplary review. I do own a Mattoc so could be considered biased but also it’s fitted to a Transition covert which they weren’t to fussed on so there!

    /hijack

    Just read that as I’ve spotted a Mattoc near me on Pinkbike. How do you rate it?

    Fresh Goods Friday 696: The Middling Edition

    Fresh Goods Friday 696: The Middlin...
    Latest Singletrack Videos
    chakaping
    Free Member

    Steve Jones was right about frame length though! The industry is finally getting it now. He’s like the opposite of the boy who cried wolf.

    Watching Chipps at the GT7, he’s definitely not a riding god. He’s alright though. In fact he’s probably massively, usefully representative of Joe Average MTB Enthusiast.

    He’s honest about his limitations as a rider in his reviews, which is unusual in the MTB press. And he’s a talented writer, which helps.

    Pinkbike do put some good reviews out, so do NSMB. The latter will often get a writer to review a bike and he/she will led it out to a more gnarly rider for a second opinion.

    Approaching the subject of reviews from a different angle. Do you want to buy a bike to continue riding at the level you already are? Or to go faster? If the latter, then feedback from faster riders is surely valuable?

    GHill
    Full Member

    I’m not a fan of star ratings in reviews. More subjective than the rest of the words and all a bit arbitrary (when exactly does a 3.5 star turn into a 4 star?). I just need to know what the reviewer thought was good about the product, and what could be better.

    Funnily enough, the mags I buy take that approach to reviews.

    gofasterstripes
    Free Member

    It’s a different market, but here’s Linus explaining why they don’t want to review things that “suck and are cheap” or that “makes no sense and nobody should buy it”

    [video]https://youtu.be/sph6cjJeRdI[/video]

    It’s somewhat the same with MTB, no doubt.

    Euro
    Free Member

    As hinted at earlier, maybe have each bike tested by a couple of riders of varying skills/backgrounds? Since a lot of today’s bikes are so versatile and can be used for xc – dh why not have a xc minceball test it for that kind of riding and a dh gnarball for the other?

    Never really bought mags unless i needed socks that were too small, but I know of a mag tester who would talk about railing berms and all the other buzz words but wouldn’t come out with us when he was back home as the trails we rode were too hard (they’re just trails btw). Nice guy mind you but all talk. Think he’s moved on to something else bike related now.

    hora
    Free Member

    Alot of mags are killing themselves. Very successful advertising sales with squeezed actual content. A viscious cycle, they chase ad dollar to supliment following sales which drives more people away?

    konanige
    Full Member

    So after reading through this thread I get the impression that most of us don’t trust the ‘establishment’ with their reviews, so does this mean that there is a need for a forum section where real people in the real world can review their bikes warts an all. Maybe we could get a better impression of how bikes are in the long term, how parts last etcetera.

    I know I would say in a review that I loved my bike but some parts have had some ‘issues’ and its a bit of a marmite bike with different sizing but it makes up for all my lack of skill and makes me smile when I ride it, which at the end of the day is what we all want is it not, maybe a real world review could help someone buy the right bike or stop them making a mistake.

    hora
    Free Member

    Mtbr reviews used to be ace for that but they had a cleanup and deleted aload.

    In there you could spot a common theme or issue

    johnnyboy666
    Free Member

    @ whatnobeer I’m very pleased with mine although this time of year the full sus has only been out a few times round the local area. I had a Lyrik RC2L with the DH damper mod before and they are noticeably better, much more than I expected. Stiffness is hard to gauge as the fork is much more active but for me I wouldn’t say there is any real differences. The HBO is awesome and totally works but the best thing is the how they take big hits. For big square edge hits they are phenomenal compared to the Lyriks. I was happy with my Lyriks but I saw the Mattocs for £400 and my brother happened to need a new set of forks but needed a 1 1/8 steerer which my Lyriks happened to be. So I sold the Lyriks to him and that was it only cost me a few hundred for a new fork. I expected to get a lighter fork but wasn’t really expecting the better performance that I got.

    @Northwind I did read the UST article but if it’s the “to the point” one then it was PB asking a Mavic dude about them. It seemed ok to me?

    mikewsmith
    Free Member

    I think it read the same one, the bit you don’t get is how the conversation started

    Rickos
    Free Member

    The benefit the testers have is that they ride lots of different bikes, so they can start to see the wheat from the chaff no matter what their riding skill. You’ll still get personal preferences in that though, so the reviews that state the riders preferences are extra helpful.

    If you’ve only ever ridden one bike you might think it’s brilliant and that’s fine, but you need to ride lots to be able to make comparisons and suss out good and bad traits.

    Euro
    Free Member

    so does this mean that there is a need for a forum section where real people in the real world can review their bikes warts an all.

    It’s an interesting idea but i don’t know if it would prove useful in any way. Speaking for myself, i can ride a bike to a decent standard but i’ve not ridden that many, so what i consider good could well be not so good in relation to other similar bikes out there. Also i’m not fussy about things so if the suspension is ‘off’ i’d probably not even notice unless it was so badly out that it caused a real issue. My reviews would be pretty much useless to anyone but myself 😀

    On the flip side you’ve guys who ridden loads of different bikes, but aren’t really that skilled or fast. They know the buzz words and what each knob or dial does but simply don’t push a bike enough to find out what it’s really like. Their reviews would sound impressive but be pretty useless too 😀

    I do recall buying a mag (mbuk i think) and found it very odd that they had long term tests (1 year or so) but had changed most of the parts from the original bike. How do you test the longevity of something if it’s lying in a cupboard?

    Maybe an independent testing facility would work for bikes with trusted riders/reviewers – like a Which? kinda thing? Or just ask your mates, that’s what i do when it’s ‘new bike time’ 😀 The way the mags currently do it is pretty poor imo.

    mikewsmith
    Free Member

    Maybe an independent testing facility would work for bikes with trusted riders/reviewers – like a Which? kinda thing? Or just ask your mates as that’s what i do when it’s ‘new bike time’

    Sounds just a bit well dull and pointless, who trusts who, how do you get trusted, why are people going to give you bikes?

    Anyway I’ll read reviews, read between the lines and then if I’m interested I’ll get on one and try it out. For me that is the only opinion that is worth listening too.
    Where reviews come in handy is when they pass on facts that the spec/geometry sheet doesnt tell you.

    chakaping
    Free Member

    It’s an interesting idea but i don’t know if it would prove useful in any way.

    +1

    I take most recommendations on here with a pinch of salt unless I’m familiar enough with the poster’s history/experience to trust them.

    And I’ve been riding 20-odd years but feel like its only recently that I’ve finally grasped what makes a bike work for me – so be careful with anything I write!

    johnnyboy666
    Free Member

    The problem is the reviews could be a lot better in mags without too much effort. Ideally just have your review broken down into characteristics and do it that way. ie damping: we rode a really fast section with smaller bumps then a slower section with bigger drops and hits. The results we found were etc. etc. More of a step by step critique. Have a couple of riders do the tests together, they have plenty of testers so could get 2 or 3 peoples thoughts on the same test.and for things like stifness etc, they suggested they had a twist rig in the Fox 36 bit so show us the results.

    Finally instead of a final star rating why not give a rating on stuff like Damping, Weight, adjustability etc and then give an overall rating and conclusion based on those. For example “fork X overall gets 8 out 10 and won our test, whilst not quite as stiff as X it’s combo of light weight and excellent damping and adjustability make it our pick for X purpose. However it’s limitations were X and if you wanted to wanted to do bigger stuff etc then you might find X fork would still be a better choice.

    I guess just a more detailed review and justifications for the comments made. The testers do need to be competent riders and I have to say, from some of the bizarre poses certain reviewers manage to contort themselves into on the front cover I do have my doubts about how competent they all are. At the end of the day if they were that good then surely they would be racing and not writing?

    Rorschach
    Free Member

    You could weight each category by a multiplication factor and then divide that number by a timed circuit around a test loop (with a median target time decided by multiple runs of people with varying skills and hair colours) whilst allowing for changing conditions which you could call z and then plot on a bell curve of nominal normalized values.
    You could then interpret the results via pictograms and a powerpoint presentation that you could download via an app for your Iphone.
    .
    .
    Or you could just do what everyone does and buy the pretty coloured one that matches your rucksack.

    johnnyboy666
    Free Member

    Ideally you would be able to download the whole lot into a a spreadsheet so you could really analyse that data! Naturally colours and aesthetics would be the most weighted catagory.

    Rorschach
    Free Member

    We may mock…..there is a ‘european’ (ok…German iirc) magazine that actually does this 😥

    joeegg
    Free Member

    Years ago i was at a testing weekend for a manufacturers two new models.
    It was in southern Europe and there were UK and European journalists present.
    I’d had a chance to ride one of the new models for a few days and found the suspension not working at all on downhill runs.This was swapped out to non standard expensive parts for the journos as the manufacturer was concerned about receiving a bad review with the production parts.
    One of the other models,a hardtail, was never ridden at all.It stayed in the van all weekend.A few months later i read a review of it written by one of the journalists that had attended the test.

    whatnobeer
    Free Member

    Cheers Jb. I was looking at second hand Pikes to replace the 2014 Revs on my Norco Sighht but Mattoc Pros can be had pretty cheap on CRC at the moment and there’s a nearly new set close to me on Pinkbike.

    I had Lyriks on my old Fluid LT and they were my favourite fork I’ve ridden. It’s good to know these are better.

Viewing 22 posts - 41 through 62 (of 62 total)

The topic ‘mtb reviews in magazines’ is closed to new replies.