Buying a bike can be quite a big investment for many of us, and because of that we might turn to bike reviews to make sure we invest in the right one!
But are those reviews genuine?
Are they personal to the reviewer?
Do brands make one-off bikes for reviewers to gain a positive feedback?
In this edition of the GCN Tech Show, Alex and Si discuss how bike reviews could be ruining your decision to buy the right bike based on your requirements!
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00:00 GCN Tech Show – Headlines
00:36 Are bike reviews ruining bikes?
08:36 How do you buy the right bike?
12:07 Hot and spicy tech
12:10 The DARE VA-AFO
14:26 Filament Bikes
17:10 Release of Standert Pfadfinder
18:19 Assos x Boss clothing collaboration
19:58 New tyre pressure for bikes
22:32 #AD Win a Core Body Temperature Monitor
24:06 GCN Zwift Club Rides
25:13 Comments of the week
30:02 Bike vault
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47 Comments
Have you ever bought a bike because you watched or read a positive review of it? 💬🚲 Let us know 👇
Let's address the elephant in the room, by way of an illustration. You're given two watches to review, one Rolex the other Seiko, which are you likely to say is best and why? Most people will be swayed by the name Rolex, even if the other watch happens to be the superlative Grand Seiko Spring Drive. The same holds true with bikes.
So, I recently demoed a Van Rysel RCR Pro, which I was a little apprehensive about because I'd read about a "slightly numb ride" and "road buzz". Well my Decathlon store allowed me to have the bike for two weeks and I was just won over. It's lively, handles precisely, has great power transfer and the value for money is simply extraordinary. In the end I think they would have had to fight me to get it back. It has literally revitalised my cycling and I feel excited before every ride. Oh, and after every ride I turn back and give it that last lingering look. I suppose you could say I ended up buying the Seiko and I'm SO happy I did.
Don't Need NO Stinkin Reviews Period! Reviews!
Its funny you mention coffee machines because that is a rabbit hole I went down and my god it was confusing. Watching the reviews made it seem like a minefield. The issue is all the reviews are competing, they try to one up each other by including more detail and trying to exaggerate more issues. After making espresso each morning now for years I can clearly see that all of my concerns induced by reviews were nonsense. The end result is all about bean selection, preparation and your grinder. The most basic machine can make amazing coffee but any review that says meh, they are all basically the same isn't going to be considered as a serious source of information. It's the guy who measures temperature and finds OMG, this machine is off by 0.1 of a degree!, he will get the views and money.
I would love “reviews” on old bikes!! Please ride 10 years or older bikes! “Facebook marketplace” bikes! Rate them!!
1. Awesome
2. Recommend to a friend
3. Fun time no alcohol required
4. It’ll do
5. Dog poop
Re Bike Reviews; some are useful, some are not. The relevance often depends on whether the reviewer has the same use-case as the prospective buyer. i.e. if you are looking for a bike purely for racing purposes, a review based on a variety of general riding isn't overly helpful.
GCN may not do "reviews", but you 100% do ads for bike manufacturers. And 99% of the bikes you show are race orientated. Si thinks gravel bikes are to long and slack, because he is interested in racing as shown by his gravel world champs ride.
Not once have you shown a true touring bike or a gavel bike designed for, say, the GDMBR.
One of the biggest problems is that reviewers are dependent on the bike industry to give them bikes and they always get the top spec models. This makes us believe that these are the bikes we need. We need more reviews of low and mid range bikes.
37:59 I love how Shimano equip OSPW on Altus. I have the same on my Ridgeback hybrid. Just like Ceramic Speed but at a fraction the price 😅
Find a bike shop that will loan you the bike for a couple of days. And make your own mind up. Ideally after a fit.
I Have a Giant Fathom of 2017 vintage – All the so-called experts and experienced riders praise and bitch about various bikes – The difference between a 1 and 2 model and different years etc. – Chaps it's the components that make the difference. My Fathom frame is no different from a fathom 2 to a fathom 1 – All manufacturers knock out bikes cheaper with cheaper components, wake up chaps! – I love the frame geometry etc. – I upgraded to Shimano XT and a narrow wide tooth chain ring, never a chain drop! now I have an awesome bike! you get what you pay for! – I'm a Brit expat living in the Philippines, my Fathom is perfect for the condition of the roads here in the sticks, BTW I'm 71 and don't ride competitively; it’s my only transport, exercise and fun!
Before starting heat training, maybe suggest they see their Primary Care Physician or general practitioner. Unless you're in prime physical condition, you can kill yourself at the high temperatures and exertion they use. Better to see your med than to drop dead!
That Filament bike looks crap. It somehow reminds me of a clothing peg.🤔
Yes. There are a lot of misleading opinion even that of Tour magazine. Try to see things from market’s point of view. Reviewers’ ‘amplified’ opinion (through their exaggerated words) may lead to distorted opinion. You may want to emphasize on aftersales support, carbon quality construction (think Peak Torque), efficiency (not just some stiff aero bike with dummy rider that becomes the “holy grail”). Be objective, be clear, don’t exaggerate things.
25:09 Eating Cake in the Corner would be a great name for a band.
I recently built up a new bike, and the groupset I bought, Ltwoo R9 2×11, was chosen because of Trace Velo's review. The frame, Soma Fog Cutter, I found about because Path Less Pedalled has one that he's using for experiments. Really would have appreciated a review from him before I purchased it, but I am sure enjoying the shit out of the bike. Steel is real
Yes, Tour magazine has got more sophisticated but when they started measuring stuff, all they could measure was stiffness and weight. So they encouraged the manufacturers to make super-rigid frames that had no life. The French magazines derided the German bikes, preferring more compliant frames, and calling Tour’s favoured frames “rails”. Nowadays I think that Tour has the balance right, and does weed out the dangerous noodles that don’t have enough stiffness (and are liable to speed wobbles), or the ones that pass road bumps unfiltered to your behind.
My most trusted reviewer is David Arthur, Just Ride Bikes
99% of reviews aren't relative to me. I am 53 years old on a fitness journey. I have lost 37kg but still heavy in cycling terms. I can average 27 to 30 on most rides around 70 to 100km but will never be a racing snake again. The reviews just don't cover what the Joe Soap average cyclist needs. I generally find little no name channels of people that have actually owned the bike for a while to get a feel what the bike is really about. Otherwise it's like watching and advert for the latest M4 BMW when I need to buy a reliable and economical commuter vehicle.
J’ai pris un sl7 sworks parce qu’il est beau et il est vrai que les très bonnes critiques à son égard m’ont convaincu. Au final c’est le meilleur vélo que j’ai pu conduire donc les critiques étaient dans le vrai. De toutes manières tous les vélos sont bon ,ma femme a un orca 2024 et c’est un super vélo .
Heat traing im sitting in OZ Ueensland current temp 42c in the shade lol
In some german video i watched the other day a bike manufacturer talked quite openly about working on reaching higher results for the tour magazin reviews… He added that they had to discard some of the optimizations, but in the end tour magazins tests gave that company a goal to strive for… and therefore (in that particular case) fueled their ambition and pushed inovation there…
For the bike buyers, the 1st question must be: What is the use case? Then, and only then, read reviews that fit the use case and you'll get useful information.
Thanks for the 'Supernice', tech pals! I always look forward to Alex's forays into customization. I can't wait to see where he takes us next!
Ventete inflatable helmet from Switzerland got to be the greatest tech
A interesting and important thing you said here is that you don’t do bike reviews. The review space in general is littered with content that’s sponsored without being clearly labeled as such and sometimes even referred to as review. That’s really eroding the trust in actual reviews and making them more difficult to find.
Bike and product reviews need to be much more harsh – almost every product is given 4 stars or more, which makes the rating system worthless
The same testing/review/product development problem seems to happen also in the world of car tyres and especially winter tyres. It's basically impossible for a customer to try and compare many sets of tyres, so many tyresets are bought by feeling. Also the fact that tyre manufacturers have sent "tuned" or special versions of their tyres to the well established tests and comparisons to boost sales fraudulently. That was revealed some years ago in Finland at least. Hopefully Tour doesn't receive "test-special" bikes for their tests 😅
Bike reviews, worthless if the reviewer is sponsored by the manufacturer in any way. 😮
What is boring and exhausting about a lot of bike reviews is the current ranting about 'comfort' which mainly does not come from any 'invention' on the frame but simply from the fatter wheels and tires. So, why should you buy a world class frame for the price of a motorcycle? Most of us don't even have the legs nor the lungs to do justice to these undoubtedly fantastic bikes. Why not give more relevant information about frame build, like the influence of wheelbase, trail and bottom bracket stiffness on the way the bike reacts to power input? I own a lot of road bikes that have a wheelbase somewhere between 96 and 100 cm. I choose a ride many times based on different characteristics, but in the end all are nice rides and i never feel i take out a completely wrong choice for the occasion, all are good rides. So, why did I buy most of them? To be honest, the looks. Not price, not group sets, not particularly amazing wheels. It comes down to the love for beautiful things.
This reminds me of the story when people were asked what they would like in the mini and they said it would be nice if it were bigger and so the mini I knew of as a child in the 1970s disappeared and two decades later people asked why the mini was no longer being made. Be careful what you ask for; you might get it?
When I research my own bike purchase a few years ago I read many glowing reviews of carbon and XC bikes etc, but sensed something between the lines of these reviews and instead after much thought and a spreadsheet purchased a steel bike. In many things I tend to let time, measured in years and decades, prove the quality of a product and avoid anything that is spoken of as the next best thing or must have. I'm definitely not an early adopter. Regarding reviews I tend to click away if a reviewer is telling me things or measurements I can read in the product specification. What I want to know is how the product compares with a range of other similar products in terms of quality of build, fit for purpose, simplicity and cost of maintenance and repair, range of application and above all durability, durability, durability. Its now very difficult to find hiking boots without gortex and is non-hydraulic disc breaking disappearing?
Pot Kettle Black
I ride road, gravel, cross country mtb, cyclocross and fatbike. Yes I read reviews and decide what I might like, and then go to my local bike shop and buy what I can get there because I like the shop and trust their mechanical skills. So I buy from a bike shop I like, less than from a bike brand.
Never bought anything off a review, so many shillers out there just make own the opinion ridden great bikes that never get much coverage.
Well, these Reviews are all about these high end race bikes like Lab 71, S-Works…I will never achieve, because they are so expensive.
Most reviewers don't have the slightest clue what they're talking about. They've picked up a few phrases online and just churn them out to equally clueless viewers who, in turn, sagely proclaim their "knowledge" to their equally clueless mates.
7:55
I wouldnt say, Steering the industry
However, with as much Australian politeness as possible, cmon, were like your little brother
I would say that maybe y'all are a tad out of touch ? A little bit
There is absolutely a market for $10,000 bikes
It ain't most people.
I think your best videos are when y'all are, like the rest of us.. Poor 😂 jks jks, but when y'all ride stuff We actually ride. It's more relatable 🤷🏻♂️
I can't relate to 10,000 bikes, but I can relate to good tyres 🤷🏻♂️
Can't relate to riding the latest and great Orbea, Canyon or Cannondale but I can relate to riding a 7-10 year old Super bike, which has now dropped to a comfortable $800-1,500 .
I can relate to turning a Commuter bike into a Gravel shredding, keep the f*ck up slowpoke behemoth 🤷🏻♂️
Interesting topic. For most of us amateur riders, bike technology was practically completed years ago, while companies always focus on any innovation they’ve made just recently. Because of this gap, marketing can’t help but mislead consumers no matter what their actual needs are.
Hot desserts should be acceptable when heat training. Apple pie and custard, yum.
I think you're rather disingenuous here about your equipment spruiking. There won't be much new stuff on this channel that is just covered because you 'really rate it'. Not that there's anythingwrong with sponsorship , but really…
I generally assume that all tech knowledge is equivalent, ergo all mid to high end bikes will perform equally well with a relative tolerance range. So bike purchases are purely on aesthetics and perhaps brand intangibles such as heritage etc.
Seems to me that all the biggest road bike companies got pushed by racing to only offer carbon bikes. For me, that's my last choice of a bike material no matter how they are reviewed.
You can fix this by posting weekly reviews of bike reviews. Problem solved and new content hose created. Win-win.
I'm paraphrasing Si here – "[Reviewers say] If tyres aren't armour plated [they're no good]… My local trails, I don't really get flats, I just want a really supple tyre".
I live not that far from GCN ground zero near the rural south coast. The gravel trails here are commonly lined with dense thorny hedgerows which are hacked back around this time of year by local farmers or council workers using a tractor attachment that leaves chunks of thorny branches on the ground. Armour plated tyres are therefore very high on my winter wish-list whereas a lovely supple ride is merely an also-ran. I am grateful to the reviewer that has pointed me in the direction of the right tyre.
The problem? Too many "reviewers" on zootube and elsewhere, whose qualifications are little more than the ability to make and upload a video! As you noted, lots of opinions, based on what? Experience? Knowledge? Rarely, most based on what the zootuber thinks will get clicks and comments to put money in their pocket. Making something to test well is another thing..back-in-the-day a famous MTB magazine chose a bike as best solely because the blueprint they saw checked all their personal preference boxes…there was NEVER an actual bike built or tested!
People/consumers need to be a lot more skeptical about this stuff, but they're not. They're stupid. They think titanium is lighter than aluminum, 3D printing makes everything great and pro teams use/ride X because it's the best rather than that they get paid to use/ride it.
"Are Bike reviews ruining bikes? Stay tuned as we review three new bikes." ha
Looks like the Assos BOSS stuff adds about ~$20 US to the price of each piece although the spring line is on sale. But having a great big ugly BOSS on your back is pretty lame IMO. Might as well say FASHIONVICTIM . I actually like and wear Assos — and have been doing so since the 90s, but I draw the line at designer duds.