Ridiculous Bike Magazine Reviews…….

Was flicking through a copy of a well known MTB mag today whilst at a friends house, and, well, lets just say, i can see why no one bothers to read magazines that do bike tests anymore!

They were comparing “enduro” bikes (bang-on-trend there) and one bike in the test was slated for having a “old skool” steep & narrow cockpit setup, verses the other bikes much more “enduro” setup.

Hmm, thinks I, really? So i scoot to the “info” table at the end of the review and, oh yeah,wow, i can see what they mean:

Bike A (old skool) Bar width 740mm, 66.7 head angle
Bike B (enduro) Bar width 750mm, 66.5 head angle

Seriously? They can tell the difference? Wow, they really must be pretty dam awesome riders 🙄

MBr review reads as the commy V4 seem to have too many faults yet the score is “8/10”

Rival Bikeradar sings its praises.

That’s class. The glory days of insane MBR reviews seem to be past though. “We fitted a 140mm fork to the Inbred, which is too long. It rode like the fork was too long, so we’re marking it down so the Orange can win”.

There was a Bikeradar one recently that said something like “The handling is great out of the box” then later in the review “We tipped all the internals out of the shock and fork into the bin, and got TF to totally replace everything, and now we have something we can live with”. Really?

Guy Kesteven seems to be on a mission to outlaw bars less than 780mm even for trail riding. Interesting that Jared Graves chooses 740mm bars and Jerome Clementz 750mm, but what do they know.

Stems too long at 80mm, bars too narrow at 700mm, flexy cranks, all that kind of crap that stopped me reading the reviews.

Loved (huh) the line in Singletrack where the idiot (yes, you are!) said people used to follow him on his Yeti so they could laugh at the back end noodling around. Idiot, it was your arse they were laughing at.

I read a review on a site today that said a pretty sorted looking disc road bike with 32s can match a lightweight 29er in the woods, or something like that. I took it as miscommunication of enthusiastic riding but I get the impression some want to believe its possible. Reading stuff literally.

I think all Bike magazine reviews need to be taking with a very large pinch of salt. They make a lot of their money through advertising. The only way to keep that cash flow is to ensure a favourable review for their clients products.

When it comes to bike reviews and especially anything relating to how the suspension works I like to think the reviewer is giving an accurate description of how the bike felt to them….it’s just that they have no understanding of why it felt that way.

I mostly gave up reading reviews a good decade ago for this reason.

I still occasionally read them and within a few paragraphs my urine is boiling.

How people get paid to do a job so badly is beyond me.

You manage.

Compare that to the car mags. I get Top Gear every month and having tried many hatchbacks recently due to changing cars found that what they described was pretty much correct for all the cars we tried.

All the bike reviews you’ll ever need here –
http://sonic.net/~ckelly/Seekay/bike_review.htm

You all actually read the text? I just look at the pictures.

The trouble is, it’s incredibly subjective. That’s one reason we’re obsessed with weight and other measurables, you can’t say categorically “this bike is better than this bike”, only “I like this bike more” so we look for objective measurements even when they’re not much use.

(flameproof suit on) I reckon Steve Jones actually got this better than most reviewers. Sure, it’s hard to actually follow what he’s saying but he tries to capture feel and character as much as 11% moar stiffz. He’ll talk about chainstay length, head angles, all that but if a bike doesn’t inspire him it doesn’t get a good review. Trouble with that is, it might inspire him but not you. But at least it’s getting to the real point of things.

Surely most magazines buy most of their reviews from third parties, don’t they?

I stopped reading mags a while ago.

Do they still devote a little paragraph to counting the bottle cage mounts?

That was the best bit!

Northwind – Member

The trouble is, it’s incredibly subjective.

Some is for sure – but they often get basic stuff wrong, and they should be making it as objective as possible.

Always good when from the outside of the magazine it looks like it was a test, but on reading the article you realise it’s just the press release and bumpf that you could read on the Wiggle/CRC/Merlin item description.

Does Specialized still always get 10 out of 10 every single time in MBR?

Does Specialized still always get 10 out of 10 every single time in MBR?

Depends if they buy a full page ad or not.

I stopped reading mags a while ago

I stopped buying dirt going on a year ago after I pulled out a few old copies from under a bed and was gobsmacked at the difference in everything – weight/thickness/content etc etc. It was insulting.

MBR – I flick through in WHSmiths but then they seal their mag now to and ad a small bribe in there to trick you into buying a duff advertising pamphlet.

I’ve read some howlers, MBR always seemed to be on a mission to either prove the lightest, shortest travel bike was always the best – unless an Orange 5 was involved, then that won every time.

I read a mixed review once, all sorts of different genres/marketing brackets (take your pick) anyway, to level the playing field they chose to ditch the supplied tyres and fit a control tyre – something narrow and fast rolling from memory, certainly nothing more than 2.1 wide… unsurprisingly they bikes that were designed and built for that sort of tyre did best, they actually wrote words along the lines of “the big 6″ trail bike continues to disappoint – it really hasn’t got the grip to make use of it’s travel so renders itself an expensive, overly heavy, point and squirt machine”.

@P-Jay, that one was genius.

Another highlight was that “£3000 trailbike review” where they took a £3000 Orange Five, put something like £400’s worth of upgrades on it, then gave it bonus points specifically for the stuff it wouldn’t have had if it were in budget.

Meanwhile, an under-budget bike (Lapierre?) got points off because they thought it needed £10 worth of new brake pads

I found an old mag in my desk drawer…

Bet no-one can guess the bikes!

These will be completely wrong but to get the ball rolling.

Top: Giant Anthem
Bottom: Commencal Meta

Oh, good game!

Top: Spec Epic ?
Bottom: SC Bronson ?

Bottom: SC Bronson

Spot on! 🙂

What do I win?! The price gave it away. Plus they would be pushing the Nomad for Enduro I would think.

I’ll send you the mag 😆

First one could be any number of short travel fs bikes couldn’t it!

Think it was mbr that did some really random tests and comparisons.
We test 6 bikes for mud clearance
Head to head, two bikes that share the same front tyre (and nothing else)

Bronson was the obvious guess with enduro and price, but yeah other one could be anything, reckon most bike reviews conclusion could be tricky to guess.

I tend to think the online mags do a better job of reviewing than the paper ones, but even then you have to take them with a pinch of salt.

I was after a new bike recently and the Mondraker Foxy was the top contender. I wasn’t going to buy it without a test ride, as I don’t trust the reviews at all, but read them anyway.

Bike radar has drunk the forward geometry koolaid and was frothing at the mouth about how great it is:

http://www.bikeradar.com/mtb/gear/category/bikes/mountain-bikes/full-suspension/product/review-mondraker-foxy-r-14-48298/

Pinkbike were less complementary and slagged off the narrow bar and they couldn’t get used to the handling.

http://www.pinkbike.com/news/mondraker-foxy-carbon-xr-review-2015.html

Vital couldn’t get on with it and felt the bike was too long. Queue a whole bunch of fanboys defending the bike in the comments.

http://www.vitalmtb.com/product/guide/Bikes,3/Mondraker/Foxy-Carbon-RR,14525

Enduro MTB actually did a long term test and found the headset fell apart in 5 minutes and the bearings didn’t last.

http://enduro-mtb.com/en/long-term-test-bikes-2014/

What did I learn from the reviews? Not much except the foxy is probably the only bike around that you are actually better sizing down on. Oh and the bearings are not great.

In the end the bearing issue put me off and I ended up with a bird aeris, which I test rode and loved.

Moral of the story? Get a test ride when buying a new bike and ignore the magazines.

Also I think most of the English mags take it in turns to throw darts on a board to decide how they are going to review a bike, apart from their favourites.

THere seems to be a trend at the moment in 1 magazine that says Santa Cruz has to win. It doesnt how much more expensive it is or to match the price the spec is not that far off a halfords special

I’ve taken magazine reviews with a pinch of salt since my motorbiking years. Back then it was all, for example, “the meaty midrange of the ZX6R stomps all over the GSXR600 between 6 and 8000rpm” blah blah blah. They were both 600cc supersports bikes weighing pretty much the same – go and ride one, find out which fits you best and looks best in the flesh. Same for MTB. Marginal differences over-exaggerated in magazines. All perfectly capable of performing the task they were designed to do. IMO!

Singletrack seems to be describing character and feel more than obsessing over angles stem lengths and tyres.

MBR hasve swallowed their own bull and the marketing zeitgeist bs too and now can’t cope with anything not on trend. God forbid a bike that isn’t an Xc whippet come with a 70mm stem or a 67.5 degree head angle! They seem obsessed with top trumps type scoring and petty elements of the spec that are a matter of personal taste and not in anyway fundamental.

I’ve taken magazine reviews with a pinch of salt

The problem is alot of readers and bikeshop customers take what they are told because they think someone who works in the bike industry is going to have more knowledge than they are.

I was pointing out 5k bikes to Mrshora and the fact that within a couple of years the kit on them might be obsolete or worth less than 50% and she said ‘why do people buy them over 2k bikes then’?! Hard to explain.

hora – Member

I was pointing out 5k bikes to Mrshora and the fact that within a couple of years the kit on them might be obsolete or worth less than 50% and she said ‘why do people buy them over 2k bikes then’?! Hard to explain.

You’re not supposed to tell wives how much bikes cost, dammit. You’ll blow everyone’s cover.

It was at the Steel City DH- I was pointing out all the SC’s!!

The background is that I’d just bought a new commy frame that she clocked and when I saw all the fancy SC’s I thought…..heres a chance to buy some browny-points back

Abit like you’ve been caught sleeping with another woman and you respond ‘look its not exactly an expensive hooker is it’?

Loved (huh) the line in Singletrack where the idiot (yes, you are!) said people used to follow him on his Yeti so they could laugh at the back end noodling around. Idiot, it was your arse they were laughing at.

Well that was me and in a classic case of misquoting, what I actually said was both Danny Milner (MBR) and Robin Weaver (MBUK) kept dropping back to watch the flex in the back end of that Yeti (with the carbon flexy link in the chain stays that lead to an unsurprisingly flexy rear end). It happened. It really did, while riding the Passporte du Soleil together a few years ago. I got the the end and was really quite proud of the fact I not only kept up with the pair of them but on some of the DH sections I passed them. Turned out they were just dropping back to have a laugh 🙂 I’m testing the updated version of the same bike now, without the daft carbon flexy links. It’s much nicer 🙂

‘laterally stiff yet vertically compliant’

Mark your review on the Intense Tracer 275 – you slagged off my lovely Ardent tyres 😀

Don’t remember reviewing that bike. When was that? 🙂