F or Z????

gregwari

Hopefully I'll be in a position to buy my first carbon road bike in January. This will be my second year on the tarmac, my original purchase (Scott Speedster) was only supposed to be to help me get quicker on the MTB. No surprise, I'm hooked. I'm not 100% sure still if a sportive bike (whatever the fark that is) is a better option for me vs a traditional race type bike. Bit about me, I'm relatively fit (one 50-60 mile ride most weekends) but quite unflexible and I tend to favour a higher cadence but less power. The compact set up on the Scott is ideal for me (gearings right and as I'm lazy I tend to leave it in the 50T chainring and use the full range through a 12-30 cassette), and I'll mainly use the bike for riding solo in and around the Chilterns area.

OK, to keep it simples, our LBS are going to include Felt bikes in their range next year and I'm quite taken by the F and Z series bikes (4 or 5 series for reference). So, question is this: How would you decide which of these is the one to buy?

Garry H

Try them both????j

bobones

You say you prefer a sportive type bike and the Z fits that brief better than the F. The Z's are supposedly more comfort oriented and the Fs more racy with a shorter head tube and less sloping geometry. I never had a problem with fit or comfort on my F and I believe stuff like sportif v race is overstated. I prefer the look of the F series over the Z and the Fs are just a bit cooler IMO. A few of the fast guys in my club ride Fs, but I have yet to see a Z in our bunch. The Z's got a redesign for 2013, whereas the Fs will probably get refreshed for 2015. Check out the new 2014 AR series for something a bit different, but as Garry says, test ride them all if you can.