Currently without a mountainbike… Fancy something new. What suggestions have you got? Preferences:

Full sus, dropper post, 140mm ish travel, probably 29 (but not totally opposed to 27.5), size medium, complete bike (don’t want to build myself), would prefer Shimano over sram, max budget £2.5k ish….

#recommendwhatyouhave

Evol 29 Deore

(I have the GX one though, nowt wrong with it btw.)

Interesting hadn’t considered those. Seems like a good build for the money. Not currently in stock despite the “buy now” description on website 🙁

Loads of stuff probably hits close to that. But a split on more burly sort of stuff and pure trail bike.

More burly / enduro sort of geometry but trail bike travel (actually things I’m looking at):

Norco Optic
Bird Aether 9 or 7
Sonder Evol
Nukeproof Reactor 290 / 275
Vitus Escarpe
Specialized Status 140
Saracen Ariel 30

Bit more trail:

Sonder Cortex
Specialized Stumpjumper
Trek Fuel Ex AL
Santa Cruz Hightower AL
Boardman MTR
Giant Trance

Some of the above in budget, some probably over budget. Stock is up and down for each.

I love building bikes and have built a few over lockdown – you need to know your standards / be happy to search around for stuff right now. In November I built a SC 5010 up for a mate – all brand new stuff for £4.1k. An equivalent factory build would have been at least £6k I’d say – but that was pre-brexit VAT and Duty nonsense which has made things even harder.

Get yourself off to a Demo Day pal…………

Might be a good time of year to see if any shops have ex demo models for sale . Alpine at glentress always seem to have a few for sale.

Absolutely heaps of stuff on the Pinkbike classifieds just now.