New bike time, But what? £500 Budget

So after my adventure last week I was convinced that my 16 inch MTB finally wasn’t a do it all bike, and with my ever increasing distance and commute,I would like a road /cx bike preferably the cx though(i know not much differance but i’msure someone willtellmethe opposite.)

I ride a 54cm Road frame, but want the bike to be capable of doing light off road work quickly.

My budget is £500 price tag as i’d be getting it through http://www.bike2workscheme.co.uk/index.php/partner and done really want to spend more than that on my second bike.

what should i look out for as this will be my first en devour away from the MTB is it possible to get something relatively good for this price.

I don’t know much about CX bikes and the prices but £600 gets you a pretty good starter road bike and £800 would get you a very good starter road bike…

2nd hand croix de fers tend to go for 650-700 and they are pretty good fun off road, plus they keep their price quite well if you decide to sell, which a new £500 bike is unlikely to do.

If you do go for a road bike rather than a CX bike, these two are good value for money. There is a fair bit of competition at that price point though so its actually pretty hard to buy a bad bike for £500.

http://www.wiggle.co.uk/moser-bikes-speed-sora-2013
http://www.wiggle.co.uk/battaglin-s11-sora-2013

Well, here’s a left field / out of the box suggestion.

C2W is less attractive than it was. Say your £500 voucher actually costs you £450 over 3 years (incl final payment). Also – importantly – note that you are tied to RRPs and approved suppliers.

I’d guess that you may be able to get a better bike for £450 discounted / from wherever you fancy and most especially second hand. Someone will be alone in a sec to flame my maths, but I’m sure the last time I looked – its in that ballpark.

Well the calculator says £500 bike would end up costing around £340, with
12 payments of £28.33p where does the final payment come in to it.the point of going for the bike to work scheme is i cant affored to buy one outright.

Depending on how you implement the scheme length of lease and tax rate then it can actually be as cheap 1/3 of the cost…