£1300 Budget - Carbon hardtail or FS?

UrbanBunny

Hi - new to forum, but would welcome some advice. I'm looking to buy a new bike and a friend of mine owns a bike shop and can do me a choice of bikes for my top end budget. Either the Saracen Kili Flyer 121 (orange/blue) FS 2015 or the 2016 Mantra Carbon hardtail. I've not owned a FS before but live on the edge of the Seven Sisters Country Park so lot's of downhills, but I do like fast, dry downhills on a fast hard tail. Thoughts and comments welcome. Thanks

cooldad

Not the greatest review at RRP
http://www.bikeradar.com/mtb/gear/categ ... -15-49122/

And available for as little as £999, if you want a 19", a bit more for 17".

And I'd expect much better components on a quite pricy carbon hardtail, for eg, the Shimano M396 brakes, Suntour fork.

97th choice

I'd never heard of the full suss, had to google it. But not a great review on Mbr either

http://www.mbr.co.uk/reviews/full-suspe ... -flyer-121


As cool dad said, the components on the hard tail aren't bad but they are basic, and would be contributing to the fairly high all up weight for something with a high end Carbon frame, put another way my £850 aluminium hard tail weighed less out of the box than the Saracen does.

The Rookie

The Canyon Grand Canyon is better specced at that price versus the Mantra.

As above its a bit Lardy, 2kg heavier than my aluminium framed full susser, wheel weight especially is horrendous, my (admittedly 26") wheels complete are only the weight of my cassette heavier than the rear alone, you don't expect m396 brakes or unbranded hubs at that price but it doesn't review too badly for all that.
http://www.bikeradar.com/mtb/gear/categ ... -15-49663/

poah

save some more and get a boardman FS pro

rockmonkeysc

The Rookie wrote:

The Canyon Grand Canyon is better specced at that price versus the Mantra.

It's around a four to six month wait to get a Canyon at the moment though although their website says you can have one in a couple weeks.

poah

The Rookie wrote:

The Canyon Grand Canyon is better specced at that price versus the Mantra.

As above its a bit Lardy, 2kg heavier than my aluminium framed full susser, wheel weight especially is horrendous, my (admittedly 26") wheels complete are only the weight of my cassette heavier than the rear alone, you don't expect m396 brakes or unbranded hubs at that price but it doesn't review too badly for all that.
http://www.bikeradar.com/mtb/gear/categ ... -15-49663/" target="_blank

weight includes tyre and cassette though

The Rookie

I know, my weights include my tyres and not the cassette (as I made clear).....obvious if you had thought about it that my wheels alone weren't 2.6Kg! It also includes discs and bolts which I had also accounted for.

poah

so the nake wheel probably weights abour 1300g for the rear and probably 850-900ish grams for the front which isn't unreasonable for the bike given the cost and the frame. look at wheels you get with the basic orange bikes and how much they cost. you could save bout 400g just going tubeless on those wheels

The Rookie

When the wheels on a £400 Boardman weigh less that that, it is shockingly bad (about 2.2Kg the pair) on a £1300 bike.

poah

not when the cash has been spent on the frame. Its not a bike I would consider but someone people might as its a good basis for upgrading in the future.

UrbanBunny

Awesome, so no-one's actually ridden one then? It was more a question around choice, i.e. one or the other. Not a general slag off regarding components and weight.

rockmonkeysc

They're both pretty bad for the price and if you want to have fun on the downhills then neither will be much good. They will both be very heavy for the price.
I've ridden a couple of the latest Saracens and their frames aren't good enough to make up for cheap components.

cooldad

UrbanBunny wrote:

Awesome, so no-one's actually ridden one then? It was more a question around choice, i.e. one or the other. Not a general slag off regarding components and weight.

I think the consensus was obvious, and that's probably the reason no one has ridden either.
So you got:

UrbanBunny wrote:

Thoughts and comments welcome. Thanks

97th choice

UrbanBunny wrote:

Awesome, so no-one's actually ridden one then? It was more a question around choice, i.e. one or the other. Not a general slag off regarding components and weight.

Then buy the full suss if you are doing bumpier stuff and going downhill, or the hard tail if you are doing less bumpy stuff or going uphill lots. There, nice generic advice.

Of course if you only wanted advice from people who had rode them then you should have specified that, but then your thread would have zero replies.... think about that for a second.

loudog

Seriously, ditch the saracen and grab a bargain from european website

Rookie1986

For £1300 you could do a lot better shopping else where (sorry but your friend isn't giving you a great deal with the bikes he's offering you).

Get yourself over to;

http://www.bike-discount.de/
https://www.canyon.com/en-gb/
https://www.rosebikes.com

Or one of the other European direct sale websites, some good bikes available within your budget.