Walmart and other big-box store bicycles are infamous in the cycling community for their poor quality and assembly, often to the point of being completely unsafe to ride at any speed (Nader reference intended).
They often use the cheapest high-tensile steel they can find, off-brand rims, mix-and-match groupsets, low-quality brakes, and so forth. The bike you linked exemplifies that - mixed Shimano/SRAM components and "alloy wheels" are in its description. Box-store bikes are also never put together correctly - flipped forks, pinched inner tubes, and sheared screws/bolts abound when they come in for repairs.
Comparing these two bicycles directly, the big things that stand out as pros are the Sladda's aluminum frame and disc brakes. An internal gear hub is also a nice low-maintenance touch. It remains to be be seen how well the Sladda holds up, but $400-500 isn't too unreasonable for a aluminum city-cruiser that's been ruggedized.
Boy would you love the Netherlands. Here, almost everyone rides a used bike that's had many owners, each of which changed it in some "improper" way. Wheels the wrong size for the bike, duct tape holding the bike together, half of the spokes broken, etc., etc.
But you know what? That's what the whole country uses for transportation, every day, and it works fine. It turns out that, in your day-to-day usage of a bike (and this is for a country of people who ride their bikes as their main mode of transportation) it doesn't matter what ridiculous new type of Chinesium your wheels are made out of, as long as they stay vaguely circular. Brakes don't work? Here, put this duct tape on the brake pads, now they work. Chain keeps falling off? Oh, just don't put it into that gear then. And when it completely falls apart one day, or when it gets stolen, then another one costs $50.
When I'm in the US, I ride an $1100 bike. It's ridiculous, the thing is this gleaming sparkly shade of white, fancy carbon fiber parts that are 150% more aerodynamic than everyone else's carbon fiber parts, a frame that is so light you can carry it with one finger, etc., etc. It goes really fast, and is so smooth I forget I'm biking. But when I'm in the Netherlands? I ride a $20 bike that has spokes sticking out and broken, rust covering everything, and sometimes the front falls off. I'm serious, the front actually falls off. Yes, the handlebars and front fork and the whole shebang, in one go.
Somewhat uniquely, American bike enthusiasts are insane about safety. "You could DIE with an improperly maintained bike!", "Not wearing a helmet is like not wearing a seatbelt!" and "Walmart bikes are death traps" are things I've heard recently. But somehow, when the front of my $20 bike falls off (which has happened twice now) all I get is a minor scrape to my hands.
The difference is that cheap Dutch bikes are super simple: no gears and a coaster brake. The Walmart bikes aren't. They've often got 21 speeds, shocks, etc etc, all of which is pure crap and fails after minimal use.
There's also the infrastructure to consider. If your bike fails in NL, you curse and coast to a stop on the bikeway. If it fails in the US, you may be in the middle of trying to cross a 6 lane road with no bike infrastructure whatsoever, putting your life in danger. I rode a crappy bike in NL (3 month stay in Rotterdam), but I wouldn't want to ride that same bike here in the US.
I'm not sure anyone would dispute that there's some incremental danger to allowing right turn on red. After all, it wasn't the norm for a long time in the US. (It became widespread in the 1970s as a fuel-saving measure.)
Similarly, we'd certainly be safer with lower speed limits.
But we collectively make tradeoffs which may even be informed by some level of data.
I think the most impactful difference (visavis safety in NL) aren't the segregated bikepaths - those are common, but not pervasive. Even more important are the car drivers, which are accustomed to bikes, and not as easily surprised when some cyclist makes a sudden appearance in their path.
Of course, bikepaths are great in busier parts, but even where they're absent serious traffic injuries aren't common. And that's despite some unnecessary risks (such as lack of lights in the dark) that are taken a little too commonly.
Interestingly enough, at least where I live in the Netherlands I find that most cheap bikes have handbrakes, and a lot of bikes have 3 speeds.
I agree that the infrastructure is a big thing too, though. If there's a chance of you failing on a snowy hill on the side of a highway, you're going to pay a bit more for something that won't fail as often.
I've ridden for years with the Dutch mindset - I kept a '60s steel roadbike rolling with a bent frame after a car hit it while locked on the sidewalk (ugh). Frankenbikes can be great, and the performance limitations give them some personality, especially if you're already a comfortable cyclist and understand (or implemented) the quirks.
But there's a big difference between the 'keep it rolling' mindset and dealing with new-from-factory plastic that walmart et al try to pass off as metal. I've seen axles split in half while coasting down a steep hill, dropping the bottom bracket straight to the ground (and the rider along with it). Derailleurs pulled into spinning spokes, causing an explosion of twisted metal that was thrust into my friend's calf.
I think a lot of the safety insanity you refer to comes from most American cycling experience being on bikes that seem designed to fail spectacularly.
Also those shitty American bikes are designed to look like extreme speedsters. Nobody would get on a Dutch bike and expect to do more than hobble around the countryside or neighborhood and show off your new elbow patches.
Folks get on those Walmart deathtraps and they explode on an off-road boulder or disintegrate while someone speeds around the wheels of a dump truck.
> Brakes don't work? Here, put this duct tape on the brake pads, now they work.
That's something which I have not seen. Not duct tape but brakes. I must be one of the few who don't have coaster brakes. Then again, expats don't really count.
> Somewhat uniquely, American bike enthusiasts are insane about safety. "You could DIE with an improperly maintained bike!", "Not wearing a helmet is like not wearing a seatbelt!" and "Walmart bikes are death traps" are things I've heard recently. But somehow, when the front of my $20 bike falls off (which has happened twice now) all I get is a minor scrape to my hands.
I think this applies to lots of things in the US comparatively. I can't imagine anywhere in the US having Canals and no guard rails; Jaywalking like you born to; Firecrackers in the middle of street for NYE. I think the US has too much of a "fear" attitude that's probably due to frivolous lawsuits, whereas in Amsterdam at least, it's more laissez faire. That translates to $1000 cycles for recreation vs $20 cycles for transport.
I find the bikes in Amsterdam are actually somewhat well maintained compared to the rest of the country. I live in Delft, a town with 25,000 students of a population of 95,000. Here, the bike combinations are particularly creative, which I really enjoy.
> I can't imagine anywhere in the US having Canals and no guard rails; Jaywalking like you born to; Firecrackers in the middle of street for NYE.
Just speaking from my experience growing up in NYC: I've seen and done all of these things. Of course, that's definitely not the average American experience.
I think a large part of the US's penchant for regulating cycling comes from a tendency to look at bicycles as a toy, rather than a tool. When we think of cycling foremost as a diversion for children, we're less likely to stress the importance of learning to maintain one's own bike and are more likely to stress replace-ability and a misguided sense of safety ("it's just a toy, we'll get you another one!").
As an American who almost exclusively bikes for transportation, I think it comes down to a difference in cycling conditions.
Most people I know grew up riding ~$100 Walmart bikes, just as described - steel, heavy, poorly assembled and usually the wrong size.
It's quite harrowing to be riding a slow and breakdown-prone bike on 65kph auto-centric roads, when your chain falls off or brakes fail.
If there was more segregated cycling infrastructure and denser cities, I think it would be much different.
Adding in the fact that most people I know don't know how to change a tire, much less fix or maintain a bike, I'm not surprised they are turned off of cycling entirely by the time they become adults.
After riding department store bikes most of my life, I bought a entry level aluminium hybrid bike with quality components for $400 new (vs ~$200 for a department store steel bike). It was life changing to be able to be able to accelerate and maneuver in traffic, and made cycling much more attractive. I could also ride long distances without worrying about breaking down - and if I do, the parts are standard and I can fix it myself.
To be honest, I love our slapped-together bikes. I love it when someone takes a completely rust-covered bike out of a canal and somehow manages to ride it. I love it when the front falls off, and I love it when the spokes stick out. Because every $20 Dutch bike that's a mess of barely functioning parts is a slap across the face to the bike snobs of the world.
For every snob with the custom carbon fiber frame and the wind-tunnel-tested wheels there's a man in Rotterdam with the front half of a toddler's training bike welded to a Fatboy. For every idiot that says their unlubricated chain is literally unrideable there's a man in the Hague who combined two different-size chains into one and rode on it.
Isn't the difference that in the Netherlands you ride at 15 mph on a dedicated bike street, while in the US you ride with the cars? This explains a lot about the desire for speed, emphasis on safety and maintenance, etc in the US.
Weren't those Dutch bikes changing hands for €50 once decent, €350+ bikes? I think they are, that's why they're still working.
I was given an £80 bike once, to cycle to work and back every day. It was ruined within 6 months -- the bearings in the hub and bottom bracket were worn out, the brakes wouldn't line up properly, the wheel rims were almost worn through, the gears didn't change properly. People in the Netherlands simply don't buy these bicycles, they'd rather spend €90 on a second hand one.
However, the £80 bike is OK for a British adult to cycle 10km round a nature reserve, once or twice per year.
The US has something like 10x the number of cycling fatalities per mile. It is more dangerous here, though I grant you that the main hazard is not the fronts falling off our bikes.
I ride a Franken bike that my dad picked out of the trash. It's in good working condition, but in my defense, I simply enjoy tinkering with mechanics as a hobby.
It still seems expensive compared to what I can get at a local bike shop. I got a Trek 7.2 from a bike shop for that price and it was assembled and came with some free tune-ups. Similarly, one can get a Fortified Bike 1-speed for $399. Both seem like better bicycles than the Sladda.
I agree that big-box stores often sell crappy bikes. But one can get a really nice bike from a bike shop for $400-500. If IKEA were selling this at $200 and it were a good bicycle, it might be notable. It just doesn't seem like a great bicycle for the price. It says nothing about puncture resistant tires. It's 33lbs which seems heavy (over 40% heavier than the Fortified). You have to assemble it at that price and there's no included adjustments and tune-ups vs. buying form a bike shop where you can you get something well-assembled and cared for.
IKEA is cheap for certain items and simply not a good deal for others. I'm not arguing that this is a downright crappy bike like many big-box bicycles. It just seems bad for the money given that I can get a significantly better bicycle for the same price and it would come pre-assembled better than I would assemble it with tune-ups and adjustments. What's the selling point of this bicycle? A $400-500 impulse buy when dropping a grand or two at IKEA? Are bicycles significantly more expensive in a lot of Europe and so it seems like a deal in a lot of IKEA markets?
It just seems like there's a wealth of bicycles at my local bike shop that they'll sell me for the same money that are better bikes.
I know quite a few people who own a Trek 7.2 as a commuting bicycle. It's a great hybrid at MSRP.
You can indeed get a nice bike from a bike shop for $400-500. What you often can't get is a nice city cruiser at that price - the ones I see at my LBSes are often either substantially more expensive ($600+) or cheaper-made without a belt drive or disc brake. I think what's really attractive about this bike is the decreased maintenance requirements (provided it's assembled correctly, which I admit is a big if) and warranty.
Part of it is probably the belt drive, which is for the moment still a premium feature. It was a $100 bump on my belt bike. So if you were to compare this bike to $300 traditional chain-drive bike shop bikes... well, I'm not sure what those would be, as you don't see much at that price point at most shops, but it doesn't seem too crazy.
Disc brake --- the rear brake is a back-pedal job, unfortunately, which makes it a write-off from my perspective; years of cycling ordinary bicycles mean that I tend to automatically move the pedals backwards while coasting to a comfortable position, and doing this with a back-pedal brake leads to unhappy experiences.
I'm impressed by the add-on bicycle trailer, obvious being sold as a first-class citizen. A lot of IKEA stuff is modular and eminently hackable --- like, literally today I have assembled 40kg of random furniture into a workbench/desk for my study by bolting together bits of office with bits of bedroom. I'm sure there's interesting things to do with it. It looks like you can restow the towbar to make a convenient handle for pulling it.
Coaster brakes are somewhat common on city cruisers, but it is a little odd that they've chosen to go with the combination of the two.
I reset my pedals when I'm coasting as well, and it's probably fair to say that we're not the target market. My guess is that it'll be popular among (shorter-distance) city commuters and college students who would've bought a Huffy or something equally shoddy instead.
I've seen the combination of a coaster brake and a front brake on some kids' bikes. I believe the thinking is that a coaster brake is friendly to novices, those with weak hands, and those who knock their front brake out of adjustment and don't know how to fix it. While a front brake gives riders who can actually get above 12 mph some actual stopping power for safety.
Reliance on a single coaster brake is dangerous. When a coaster brake fails, it can fail in two ways that are both very dangerous: full lock-up or full brake failure. They also have the tendency to catch at strange points in the pedal movement, like the vertical noon/6 position, which are difficult to establish the needed force to slow the bike.
I have a Shimano Nexus 3 speed with a coaster (and hand brakes) that is my daily driver, and where the coaster brake catches is pretty random. I can sometimes make several, as in 3 - 5, full backwards pedal rotations before it catches, other times it catches immediately. I am now in the habit of catching the brake before I descend any large hill. Since I live in Nobb Hill SF, that's every day.
You should get your coaster brake fixed, since it is apparently dangerous for you.
I have never had a coaster brake failure. Nor have I experienced a problem with engaging the coaster brake as you describe. I have always found the single coaster brake to be more than adequate and to be more reliable than any (set of) handbrake(s). I like the fact that I can skid the rear tire if I apply enough force. I live in a non-hilly area, so YMMV.
Haven't had a coaster brake since the Schwinn Typhoon I had as a kid in the 1970s but the coaster brake was flawless. I think it was Bendix. Never failed to engage and was very controllable.
Of course Schwinn today is not the same as they were then.
Some countries such as Germany mandate that you have two independent braking systems on a bicycle, so the coaster brake is probably here as a cheap backup.
Of course everything depends on your riding conditions. It's hard to get sufficient stopping power from the rear brake when going downhill, especially if it's wet out. I had a situation once, where I slid into traffic, because I applied the coaster brake on a very steep grade. That day, I installed a front brake.
"we did have a few niggles about how it had been assembled which much to our amusement on our first test ride the handlebars went one way while the bike carried on going straight"
This is enough reason not to buy a bike from a non-bike store, unless you have the skill to reassemble it yourself.
You can only do that while moving; once you've stopped (e.g. at traffic lights) the pedals are stuck where you left them, unless you lift the rear wheel off the ground.
When I moved to Copenhagen from London, it took me several weeks to get used to a coaster brake rather than disc brakes -- I'd often stop with the pedals in the wrong place.
I can attest this is not the case. All I,and everyone who are not cyclists,have ever rode are cheap Wal-Mart bikes. Even when I used to do stupid stuff like jump them and fly down hills, I've never had a structural failure occur.
I'm obviously exaggerating. One of the things I recommend when a friend or acquaintance buys a box-store bike (after ignoring my initial recommendation not to buy one) is to immediately take it to a bike shop to be reassembled and re-tuned. With a proper tuning and assembly, they become substantially safer.
That being said, your experience is a fortunate one. It takes only half a turn in either direction on the headset washers to result in a failure that can break your collarbone. I've seen it firsthand.
It depends on which components get mixed with which. For example, one brand's shifters sometimes aren't compatible with the other's derailleurs. Also watch out for chain widths relative to cassette gear spacing (more a concern since 2x10-speeds hit the market).
But for the most part, we're talking about mechanical (not hydraulic) devices that can be tuned/adjusted to work with each other.
It's not a problem if the parts have been intentionally selected and tuned to operate with each other. It's all springs and wire tension internally, and a good bike mechanic can make just about any (modern) groupset components work together.
However, box-store bikes are usually just built with whatever individual components are cheapest in bulk at that price bracket. More often that not, that means mixing and matching for no good reason other than to save the retailer a few cents.
I love the Walmart bikes as they are my designated beater bikes. I've purchased a handful of them over the years - since they are so cheap, when parts do get stolen you can simply just replace the entire bike and use the old one for parts. I live in NYC and my goal was to get around quickly (without bringing my bike in and out of my apartment everytime I wanted to ride). So, I've learnt to lockdown my bike, and generally make it look unappealing to thieves (gorilla glue on bolts and screws, duct tape,dremel "Property of..." into the paint job) - while greasing regularly and ensuring the brakes are tuned. Another trick is to always use 2 U-Locks, one for each tire. Granted, I agree that the materials and build-quality are terrible, but not to the point where I've felt unsafe riding around at a good pace.
I grew up with a slew of craptastic second hand, thrift store and K-Mart level bikes since it was all we could afford (and as I grew, the bikes grew). We used to beat the living snot out of those bikes and I don't remember any of them costing more than $150 new and they either never broke or were easy to repair. I would expect to pay no more than around $300 for a similar quality of bike these days.
The last time I walked into a bike shop I turned right around and walked out. Since when did bikes get so unbelievably expensive? I just wanted one for tooting around the neighborhood and maybe popping a curb or two, and the cheapest I could find was around $500. Most were easily in the $1000-$3000 range.
I think younger people have been trained that bikes need to be expensive but unless you're doing some very very intensive mountain biking or road racing you probably will never encounter a problem with a Walmart-class bike.
Every year Costco sells some bikes for around $300-$400 and they're in the class that I care about. Probably "better" than Walmart, but not these outrageous prices in bike stores.
IKEA quality is also often very questionable, the "Family" price seems closer to reasonable. $400 otherwise? No way.
I really just want a Hyundai Elantra bike, not a BMW M3 or a Ferrari.
"Since when did bikes get so unbelievably expensive?"
Quality bikes have always been expensive. You can still go buy a cheap bike at Walmart as the parent post points out.
"unless you're doing some very very intensive mountain biking or road racing you probably will never encounter a problem with a Walmart-class bike."
Nonsense, riding a quality bike is a much better experience in every single aspect. They're lighter, they have better brakes, shifting is smoother and more consistent, they're more comfortable. You can get the exact size you need instead of a one size fits all approach. Also, one of the most important factors in a bike's reliability is how well it's assembled, and you can be sure that places like Walmart will do a terrible job.
I find that most US bike shops fall into two categories - either a general bike shop with a lot of models, or the racing/road oriented that focus on carbon fiber, racing etc.
If you want a general around town bike, I usually recommend the Trek FX series or Giant Escape hybrids. They're a light aluminium, but sturdy, use standard, durable, entry level components, have wider 700c tires good for handling potholes and curbs, mounts for racks - and worlds better ride quality then your run of the mill department store bike.
They're also common enough that you can find them used for under $300, or new starting around $380 or so. Models climb in price as they start adding higher level components but the entry level is usually good enough.
In 1997, I would agree with you 100%. Times have changed, and things get cheaper and more terrible.
I bought a cheapo WalMart bike on vacation when mine was damaged in transit in a minor car accident. I was riding on a bike path, swerved to avoid something and went off a high curb. The impact cracked a frame weld.
It's a weird market. There's a market for cheap stuff that doesn't get used, and outrageous stuff for fanatics. No ,idle ground.
I ran a volunteer bike repair shop for a while. The big box store bikes, like Walmart, Target, etc. have terrible parts. Brakes that fail. Wheels that bend. A girl at my school was killed because she rode in front of a garbage truck. Bystanders said it looked like she was trying to break and couldn't. Sometimes this is because the big box store employees put the brakes on backwards, with the pads facing away from the wheel. I've seen it.
If you want a cheap bike, buy a good one used. Craigslist is an excellent resource. A quality frame lasts forever (unless misused or left in the rain) and decent replacement parts aren't crazy expensive.
I used to work in Halfords in the UK and they sold adult bikes in the apollo range for £75. They do still have one for £80 on their website.
The apollo outrider (as it was then called) was always pretty shoddy, but mostly just for the look and feel of the components, a bit heavy etc. We didn't get that many of them back in for repair.
> We didn't get that many of them back in for repair.
But you don't know if they're actually used.
My mum and sister have cheap bikes from Halfords. They see less than 50km of use per year.
I used something similar (maybe Asda or Tesco's version?) and it was ruined with 1000km or so of use -- every bearing worn out, the wheel rims worn ... it was miserable to ride it.
For the record, I'm probably a slow beginner leisure rider on beginner trails, I probably wouldn't be doing even half of the things in the video so I wouldn't be very alarmed.
He has some other tests of the bikes and what kind of realistic destruction these kinds of bikes can endure.
Me and my friends used to buy the cheapest bikes we could out in rural Australia, as low as $50 AUD. We would flog them in the ground for a month or so, when they finally gave out left them right where they broke, and went bought another one.
No one wanted a good bike because a good bike was too good not to fix, and no one had the money to fix a good bike.
It was also the kind of town where if you had a good bike, it would get stolen for sure.
The cheap bikes are much cheaper today (in terms of build quality, though there are some that are, inflation-adjusted, lower priced than the cheapest bikes when I was a kid).
I mostly had cheap bikes as a kid, and they held up really well. The quality was lower than that of a "good" bike, but not remarkably so. My first two bikes, a Huffy (from K Mart) and a Ross Piranha (from Toys R Us) had Chromoly frames and forks, and held up to years of intense abuse (ramps, dirt jumping, lots of falling and running into things). When I started earning my own money, I bought a General RL Osborne, which was a significant upgrade...but, not orders of magnitude better.
The quality of what is sold at Walmart today, at least in the general case, is really low. I wouldn't trust the linked bike to be safe on day one, much less to hold up to years of service. I tried to fix up a friend's low end Schwinn, that was less than ten years old, but it would have been cheaper to buy an all new bike than to fix everything that was wrong with it (shifters didn't work, derailleur was broken, brakes were soggy and couldn't be adjusted to work well, the fork had shocks and would bottom out when applying brakes even lightly). The frame was definitely not chromoly (might have been aluminum, as it was pretty light weight, but could have been thin steel, too I guess). On the other hand, I have a mid-range Giant mountain bike that I bought in 1994 for about $480 that has often been my primary mode of transportation. It's needed new shifters one time, a couple of new cassettes, one new set of brake and shift cables, a new seat, one new rim (I ran into a fire hydrant at a pretty decent clip), and tubes and tires. It's taken a beating over the years.
I dunno what I'm trying to say, exactly, but I think the overall quality of bike-to-dollar has gone down, especially at the low end of the market. The mid range of the market still seems pretty good, when inflation adjusted, though I will note that finding an all chromoly frame and fork (or other high quality material) bike is much harder than it used to be, and it is impossible in the low end, where it used to be very easy.
Maybe that's it? Maybe the shitty bikes I remember from my youth were actually just better than the equivalently priced bikes of today?
I sold my last bike for $50 after a decade of really hard city and trail riding, even taking a couple dives off the edge of a 20 foot fall and getting in a minor car accident.
That owner kept it for another decade and outside of normal part wear and repair, used it well for some pretty hardcore trail biking. It's now on at least it's 3rd owner and last I heard was going strong.
I bought that bike new in the late '80s for no more than $200 IIR, but the story of the bike sounds more like what I hear from modern $2k-$3k bikes...except without most of the fuss.
I feel like the market has really bifurcated into two segments:
a) what I'm willing to pay, but not made well
b) more than I'm willing to pay, and offers more performance than I'd ever conceivably use
I, and I'm sure many consumers, really would like some kind of middle ground.
I agree; $500-$750 will buy a pretty good mid-range bike, today (probably comparable to a $300-$400 bike of 15 years ago). But, there's no such thing as a "pretty good $200 bike" that I've been able to find. Anything in the very low end is effectively disposable; made too cheaply to be worth repairing, and will need major repair to stay on the road within a few years.
If the frame and fork were decent quality, you could upgrade over time (which was common in my day, when solidly constructed Chromoly frame and forks were available on <$150 bikes), but they're just not. Even the $500 bikes of today will have lower cost aluminum or steel forks, even if the frame is a high quality material (like a better quality of aluminum of chromoly).
I don't understand the flight of American manufacturing well enough to know what was causative and what is merely correlation, but nearly all of the bikes when I was a kid were made in the US. As manufacturing has gone overseas, the quality has gone way down. I know that Chinese factories can make high quality bikes (because they make most of the high end brands, as well as the cheap ones); but, a lot of brands that used to mean "decent cheap bike" like Huffy and Schwinn and Mongoose mostly only mean "cheap", today (Schwinn still has some decent bikes in their higher end).
I've clearly got a lot of grumpiness about bikes! I may love bikes too much.
My first bike (the Chromoly Huffy I mentioned a couple of posts back) cost a little less than $100 in about 1983. That same $100 is $242 today. $242 will actually buy an all Chromoly BMX bike today ( http://a.co/5vAYzBc ). So, I guess we're keeping pace with inflation, and I need to tie an onion to my belt, as was the fashion at the time. We just need to re-arrange our expectations to match current reality.
It feels quite obvious that a specialized bike store would focus on the more hard core end of the spectrum, since otherwise they would need to compete with wallmart and costco.
Like others said, the frame material is a huge part of the cost/value difference. But I'll also point out the fact that the IKEA bike is powder coated, has a belt drive, a coaster break, a disk break, and an internal gear hub. That combination of components makes this bike basically maintenance free. If this bike was left on a bike rack outside a college dorm for a school year it would be perfectly fine; the same can't be said about the Walmart bike. Glace at any bike rack at a college campus and you'll know what I mean.
"Fancier-looking" in the same way that a dell laptop covered in blue leds looks fancier than a MacBook...
Taste aside, those walmart bikes are the biking equivalent of a Ford Pinto. Plenty of folks bought them and did just fine, plenty of others had engine fires.
The Sladda is a little expensive, but there is real value to the convenience of just walking in and buying "bicycle" without having to deal with the salespeople and misanthropes who staff most bike shops.
Or computer stores, to circle back... between the pared down selection, and paying a bit of a premium for a great warranty and a familiar name, and quibbles from industry types about superior specs from companies civvies have never heard of with, this feels very Apple Store. Not for me, but I'd suggest one to my parents with no hesitation.
Belt drive - I can't see much advantage to that.
Aluminium frame - probably the Wallmart ones are as well.
Disk brakes - cheap V brakes would be fine for the sort of cycling you will do on that thing. (This seems to have the cheaper cable pull disk brakes, rather than more powerful hydraulic ones).
2 gear system - hardly worth having only two gears in my opinion.
Maybe it's just because I am a bit of a bike snob with a fairly decent mountain bike, but I thought this looked pretty expensive for the type of riding it would be used for.
I bought one of those cheap bikes for Burning Man with the expectation it would get trashed. The steering screws came apart every day and I had to carry a screw driver with me to routinely fix it. It was fine for burning man, but I would not have driven that thing on a road.
I bought a bike from Target over the summer for $100.
It has:
broken one chain
suffered multiple rear brake failures
unfastened the handle bars so they dangle from the fork
All of these things happened while miles from home, and required tools for repair.
When one thing was fixed, another thing broke. The brakes failed repeatedly, and warranted full replacement.
The handle bars are especially treacherous, because putting weight on them risks failure, and then steering becomes impossible.
Accessories and repairs now outweigh the original cost of the bike, meaning I'm looking at over $300 all-in. Meanwhile, this thing feels like it will eventually cost me some teeth.
Anything from Walmart/Target or anything that is not a real bike shop is going to be incredibly low quality.
Best off going on Craigslist and buying something (probably japanese) from the mid to late 1980s that was at one point a good quality bike. Get something with chromoly steel. It will be a lot more reliable and bike mechanics and you will be better able to fix it. It'll have all ISO standard parts.
Wow, you know, this is probably the most accurate conclusion. I've probably put about 20 or 30 ten mile trips on it, and the frequency of failure cropped up maybe every 5 trips.
I chalked it up to poor assembly by a new guy on a Monday morning.
Considering this model of assessment, I realize that department store bikes aren't measured with the same sort of warranty ratings as perhaps cars. Too bad bikes don't use the same sort of 100,000 mile power train warranty as a mark of quality or durability.
Fancy looking? The IKEA one has an Al frame with 25y warranty. A belt drive (more expensive than chain), front disk brake and internal rear gear hub (more expensive than cheap external derailleur).
If you look closer the IKEA bike looks much fancier. It's not hard to make a bike at $250, it's hard to make a good bike at $400.
To me, it seems like a marketing and branding exercise.
Mainstream bikes are generic. You send a list of frame dimensions, colors, and components, to a factory in China, and they make some bikes for you. It's like getting circuit boards made.
It may seem expensive unless the value of the Ikea brand is considered. In fact, this would be just another of many "city" bikes to emerge on the market, and is only newsworthy because it's Ikea. They may be able to tap into a market for people who wouldn't go into a bike shop, but who would look through the Ikea catalog. I remember LL Bean selling bikes many years ago.
I am actually a fan of sub $100 bikes but I can also mess and tinker with them. I think here's a big part of the difference:
"It’s a belt driven automatic 2 speed integrated into the rear hub. The belt drive eliminates need for chain maintenance meaning it’s open to people who know little about bikes or people who do not have the time to do so. Amazingly the belt itself is guaranteed for 10 years which is exceptional length of time to offer in our opinion! Along with a 25 year guarantee on the frame itself it speaks volumes about how this bike was built to last!"
I have been riding bikes since I was a kid and still do. Seen one case of frame failure (or a fairly expensive enduro mountain bike that was used for downhill).
It is incredibly cheap for a belt drive. I've no idea if things have changed in the last couple of years, but I think cheapest I found in 2014 was around 1000€ in Europe.
[1] https://www.walmart.com/ip/26-Roadmaster-Granite-Peak-Men-s-...