this thread will end badly..

please use the search as this has been covered (in depth) a million times...

but the short of it is this:
- for 'real' MTB'ing these brands will not hold up well.
- for paved bike path/sidewalk they will work fine.

my .02...and I am outta here!

 

i went to Oleta about 6 months ago with 2 friends who showed up with a pair of "Next" FS bikes. They grew up riding BMX so they know how to ride a bike. Oleta is not particularly brutal on bikes. Within 30 minutes the rear derailleur snapped off and the crank bent. 20 minutes later the rear suspension of the other bike literally snapped, and the stem detached itself from the bike.

hope that helps.

and like i said relative to the photos I see on this forum, Oleta is NOT hard on bikes.

 

You get exactly what you pay $100.00 for, a $100.00 F/S bike. As far as trying one, no I have not felt the need to buy one. Logic tells me that when a decent rear shock for my Trance X costs about $300.00 that on a $100.00 F/S bike they cut some corners to meet the price point. Good luck.

 

I dont plan on getting one. I have a Giant MTB already, I just find it funny that they make these bikes with all these fancy "components" on them when in reality making a less flashy bike would be more benficial.

 

Flash is what sells it to the uninformed. Every industry is like this in one form or fashion. It is not unique to the cycling world.

 

Yeah that's why I see these bikes all over the place.

 

i have an old 90's mongoose back when it was a bikeshop brand. it is NOT my sole mtb, i just use it as a store cruiser.

did you know NEXT has disc brakes now? scary!
anyway, we were discussing how funny it would be to all grab a NEXT and take it out on our normal trails just to see what we could do with them. Reminds me of a "top gear" challenge. just beat the piss out of them to see what happens.

 

Dirt Rag did a nice write up in that a few months ago. if I could find it I would give the linky

 

....sometimes though, they have crappy bike builders too. could explain why people have stuff just randomly falling off

 

Funny how they call these bikes mountain bikes when they have stickers on them that say not intended for off road use.

 

My words exactly.

 

If you're looking for a bike in that price range, buy used or go for a rigid bike.

 

of course as a kid the whole neighborhood rode cheap bikes. i had a pacific that costed maybe 170, which was more thn most of them at toys r us. i actually loved it. but i was 12, so i didnt know any better. but it fit me well and it was comfortable. i "mountain biked" in it for years, if you can call it that. i think it worked out fine because it was a rigid bike. it didnt have any fancy components to "go wrong". no suspension. Fast forward 15 years, and i started riding my local easy trails on a dept store schwinn. It did the job, it was comfy...but heavy. but i only rode it about 4 months until i got myself a 700 dollar bike (on sale for 360!) and i was like wow....DISC BRAKES ACTUALLY STOP!!!

 

The mongoose deception is actually a decent bike for 200. The Next bikes are pretty much junk and I wouldn't take them off road.

 

Should we all assume you ride a Mongoose Deception?

 

I repair these bikes all week long at the shop. Trust me, they're junk. Aside from poor quality parts and materials (off brand shifters and derailleurs often cannot be made to actually index correctly; flexy brake housing instead of shift housing, etc.), They are never assembled or adjusted correctly. They use freewheels instead of cassettes, which results in bent axles. Brakes are junk, and don't return consistently, The "shocks" are just springs with no damping.

Please do not try to ride these off road. We had a customer use one for dirt jumping, and ended up with a catastrophic fork separation followed by reconstructive facial surgery.

 

I repair these bikes all week long at the shop. Trust me, they're junk.

Please do not try to ride these off road. We had a customer use one for dirt jumping, and ended up with a catastrophic fork separation followed by reconstructive facial surgery.

Thank you for the warning. I was half joking with friends about buying one of these bikes and beating it to death jumping it and stuff but now it sounds like it's more likely to beat me to death than vice versa!

 

BSO(bicycle shaped object)=junk. Terrible products. I really wish they would just sell rigid bikes with decent components instead of trying sell bikes that look "cool". At the $200 price point, with big box buying power they could sell a functional safe bike if they wanted.

 

I wonder why department stores haven't been sued over the failures of bikes that result in injuries. On the flip side CostCo sells a decent bike and target has the Forge line.

 

They have, it takes some searching but there are a litany of lawsuits over bicycles in general, not just Dept. Store bikes.

 

here is the answer....

http://www.dirtragmag.com/printrag/deals-wheels-how-masses-do-it

 

They use them at red bull rampage. Get you one!

 

Gotta give respect to Dirt Rag for running that story. Surely MBA wouldn't even think about it.

 

Actually about 10 years ago or so MBA ran a full "wrecking crew" test one of these types of bikes. I can't remember what it was or when exactly but they documented the poorly assembled aspect of the bike(backward fork , brake levers pointing to the sky, etc), the broken handlebar after riding, essentially what everyone is saying and believes about these bikes, they just haven't done one recently...I guess there are too many $10000 specialized bikes and tubular tire how to's to give glowing reviews about.

 

I went through a tough financial spell back in the early 90's and my 1st wife and I wanted to ride bikes so we bought crappy Huffy MTBs. I was in between decent bikes at the time. We never did anything beyond street riding with them and we got a few years out of them and sold them. They were heavy and the components were terrible even compared to current dept store bikes but they served the purpose at the time. I've been on nice bike and crappy bikes and certainly prefer the nice bikes but at least I was riding. Riding crap still beats festering on the couch mastering the latest X-box 360 game...

 

A coworker bought one of those bikes to commute to work (on sidewalks and bike lanes) and within a year he broke the frame in half. He went to a bike store for his next bike...

 

Spagette, you siad:

(don't ask why I was there)

there is nothing wrong with shopping at Walmart, UNLESS you are looking for quality bike. I heard someone say, "Everybody complains about Walmart except the consumer".
Sorebuttbike said:

I've been on nice bike and crappy bikes and certainly prefer the nice bikes but at least I was riding. Riding crap still beats festering on the couch mastering the latest X-box 360 game...

Good statement.

 

Riding crap still beats festering on the couch mastering the latest X-box 360 game...

Agreed.

As I said earlier though the Costco Northwood bikes and target Forge bikes seem to be decent entry level bikes albeit coming from a department store.

 

We had beat the living snot out of Huffy Stalkers we got from the PX when I was stationed in Korea in the early 90's. Those were terrible bikes. Side pull steel caliper brakes, nothing was aluminum, they weighed a ton. We did eventually break them but they seemed to be more tough than the current cheapie bikes sound. They were fully rigid of course. When we did break them we just went and got another one.

I think the new ones are more fragile because they are over complicated. I agree that they should be rigid or at least a suspension fork. I think rear suspension is just not possible to execute cheaply and safely and it encourages riding beyond the capabilities of that cheap bike despite the warning stickers. It also seems that final assembly is the biggest problem. I have seen who works at Wal-Mart, no way am I trusting even my most hated enemy on something assembled by these individuals.

 

Saw a 29er at walmart earlier that I swore had plastic rims. Could be wrong

 

was it orange and white ? if so i saw it too and no i dont think it did. the one i saw was 200 bucks

 

Had a next and its what got me interested in real Mountain biking, as noted by chum they can get a person around light riding but there is simply no comparison on quality to any level with a "real" bike.
Mine did get my ass around town for five years, I sold it to a guy who has been riding the piss out of it in town for over a year now as his to work commuting bike and loves it, go figure.
As for components, everything works on them, barely, the initial setup friggin sucks and I took mine in and had it tuned at the local LBS, that helped but again, still not a real comparison.

 

See this thread:

http://forums.mtbr.com/showthread.php?p=8143023#post8143023