Carrera Banshee X Advice

lighty89

So I have got the £1000 to spend with Halfords through Cycle2Work and want a new trail bike and some bits (helmet, camelbak, tools etc).
Was looking at the Banshee X online, then saw it in store for real and ended up ordering one in for when I get my voucher.

What does everybody think of this bike?
I would think the Epicon etc is pretty good, had Epicon forks on a hardtail before and they were amazing.
Pics attached!!

rockmonkeysc

Very heavy and a surprisingly weak frame. There are much better

buddy_club

A friend of mine has an older Banshee (2011?(its grey)), which is a very similar or if not the exact same frame and he's never had an issue with it in the 3 years he's owned it. Yes it may be heavy but he lugs it around Cannock, FoD and Llandegla easily enough. The Epicon forks are very good though, and overall its not a terrible spec. The worst thing is that its brown .

lighty89

buddy_club wrote:

A friend of mine has an older Banshee (2011?(its grey)), which is a very similar or if not the exact same frame and he's never had an issue with it in the 3 years he's owned it. Yes it may be heavy but he lugs it around Cannock, FoD and Llandegla easily enough. The Epicon forks are very good though, and overall its not a terrible spec. The worst thing is that its brown .

Thanks for that mate, I did hear about the pre-2011 ones having the rear chainstay snap. So hopefully this one isn't affected by that!!

Actually I can see you own the Bizango, I was looking at that and it was the reason I went into Halfords today but they didn't have one. What do you rate of it? Got the 2013 Bantu at the moment, whilst good it's really lacking- especially in the forks. Bizango looks decent to be fair!!

PBNinja

I had a bizango for about 8 weeks, went back and changed it for a Boardman 650 comp after multiple issues.

Zero regrets.

lighty89

PBNinja wrote:

I had a bizango for about 8 weeks, went back and changed it for a Boardman 650 comp after multiple issues.

Zero regrets.

Yes thinking of the 650b as well!
You got team or comp?

buddy_club

lighty89 wrote:

buddy_club wrote:

A friend of mine has an older Banshee (2011?(its grey)), which is a very similar or if not the exact same frame and he's never had an issue with it in the 3 years he's owned it. Yes it may be heavy but he lugs it around Cannock, FoD and Llandegla easily enough. The Epicon forks are very good though, and overall its not a terrible spec. The worst thing is that its brown .

Thanks for that mate, I did hear about the pre-2011 ones having the rear chainstay snap. So hopefully this one isn't affected by that!!

Actually I can see you own the Bizango, I was looking at that and it was the reason I went into Halfords today but they didn't have one. What do you rate of it? Got the 2013 Bantu at the moment, whilst good it's really lacking- especially in the forks. Bizango looks decent to be fair!!

I'm really liking it actually, great fun to ride and it's held up well to me throwing it about. One thig I would say is that the fork needs a little bit of fiddling about with to get it set up just right, but when you spend the hour or two working it out and testing different settings then it's absolutely worth it.

97th choice

I had a 2008 banshee x, and it was a blast. The frames can give bother but mine was well abused and had no problems, plus I ran 160mm forks on the front. Not much fun going up hill but great going down through the rough stuff.