Giant XTC (XC) vs XTC+ (trail) for newbie

dhope

Have got the option to get either a Giant XTC Advanced 1 or a Giant XTC Advanced Plus 1 at mate's rates.

XTC Advanced is
27.5 XC Race bike. 100mm travel
https://www.giant-bicycles.com/gb/xtc-advanced-1

XTC Advanced Plus is
27.5 plus / 29er trail bike. 120mm travel
https://www.giant-bicycles.com/gb/xtc-advanced-plus1

Most days will be Bedgebury, Afan, London->Brighton offroad. Unlikely to be anything more technical than trail centres. Decent level of fitness and enjoy getting around quickly. Most bike experience is road and triathlon though, so not exactly technical.

I assume the XC will be faster and lighter.
The trail bike will be more forgiving.

They're the same frame I think, so it's very much wheels and fork that marks it apart rather than a huge change in geometry.

Appreciate that both bikes are more bike than I need and probably both are more than capable of anything I could throw at it. Heart initially said XC race, but I'm leaning toward the plus bike now, thinking I could always get a set of lighter 29" wheels if I wanted to go quick later on.

The Rookie

The XTC will be a more challenging ride on technical stuff as its a very racy geometry, the + would be slightly less challenging but I wouldn't be using the draggy + tyres for your use so you'd want to factor in the relatively expensive swap to some decent 29 wheels and tyres.

Can you get the advanced + 29er (not linked to) as that would be my suggestion.
https://www.giant-bicycles.com/gb/xtc-advanced-29er-2
Still quite racy (bigger wheels take a small bit of that away) but it's not hard to tweak it slightly to raise the bars a little to soften it out a bit.

dhope

Ta. No 29ers in my size unfortunately. Ended up going for the XTC as I already have a 2nd set of 27.5 wheels so figured I could easily end up with a nobbly pair and a quicker set if needed. Collecting tomorrow...