I am in the process of looking for a bike. I was looking at trek’s pre-owned bikes and was looking at the DS 2 gen 4, DS 3 gen 4, FX 4 2021 and FX 2 2023. My main use would be on the road with occasional long rides and possibly some trail rides. Which do you all think would be the best fit for me?
by immersed-reality
4 Comments
The real answer to this question is for you to go to a bike store that has these bikes and for you to test ride them yourself. You can simply try the new versions of each bike. Won’t be the exact same, but you’ll get a great idea of what the older bikes are like.
For your use case, the FX and the Dual Sport will serve your purposes well. The Dual Sport is more adapted to gravel and the FX is more adapted to the road but they are both closer in function than you’d think. I test rode both an FX 3 Disc and a Dual Sport 3 Gen 5 recently and chose the Dual Sport by a hair. It could easily have gone the other way.
Quick summary fx4 best bang for buck. Would not touch old DS with 100foot Poole
I would personally not go for the older DS. They’re clunky and heavy plus the fork isn’t the best so that’s one more moving part that can break.
I have a FX 4 and you can fit pretty chunky tires in the old model 35c. It can handle rough gravel and tires can make that difference( look up canyon aeroad and ultimate won the Paris roubaix and some other cyclocross). It’s a lot lighter too.
We looked at several for my son and got a dual sport 2 gen 5. No front suspension but a good value for $699. He liked the riding position and light gravel stuff and he could do future upgrades if needed. We went with the gen 5 due to the dual derailed to give him more options on the road.
I don’t get the point of a Dual Sport.
FX is a great option if you don’t want drop bars (Domane). What are the groupsets on the FXes?