Boardman Hybrid 8.9 with Deore 12+1

[Slothman]

Anyone got or tried one of these?

I like the idea of 12 speed and only one front gear to keep things simple but I'm not sure of I'd sacrifice too much if I want to climb hills without 'grinding'?

Are Boardman any good?
The spec looks good, Deore 12 speed, Ali frame with carbon form and hydro brakes?
Anyone?

[Nearholmer]

Boardman bikes are absolutely fantastic value for money, well made and well specced. They are forever doing well in “bike of the year” type things, and the one I had for c6 years was a treat to ride (my BiL now has it and rates it similarly).

The gearing on that one has a very wide set of ratios, wide enough for tough off-road climbing at one end, and a very decent pace on the road at the other, and the Deore gear is very sound. The only thing you might find, depending how you use it and how fit you are, is that the steps between gears is a bit uncomfortable. If you are used to a close-ratio 2x setup, with twenty gears over a narrower set of ratios, you might miss being able to maintain a dead even cadence.

To all intents and purposes, it seems to be a flat bar gravel bike, so with the right tyres you could have a lot of fun with it.

PS: watch Halfords on “build” though. Some of their staff are not fantastically well-trained or diligent, and they make mistakes that staff at a good LBS wouldn’t.

[Slothman]

Thanks, sounds interesting.
Would it be ok on hills though (having only a single front cog of either 30 or 32t rather than a double or triple?)

[Slothman]

External cabling and lack of quick release front wheel is a shame though?

[Nearholmer]

The spec says it has a 44T front ring, and that the largest cog at the back is 51, so a ratio of 0.86, which in my book is good enough for “gravel” riding and hills on road, unless you are carrying vast amounts of luggage, bike-packing or something.

What bike do you ride now, and what is the terrain like where you live?

QR has fallen out of fashion for bikes that are designed to take a thumping, and the through axles are dead-easy to use anyway.

[Jupestar]

Boardman make decent bikes. And that one looks very good spec.

I don’t think gear range is a problem. It has a wider range than a lot of 2x road bikes.

you’ll likely find large gaps in the gears. May not be a problem if your happy to vary your cadence.

I had and older version of this, brought for a daily 25mile daily round trip commute.. couldn’t afford the time to regularly clean the chain, transmission wore out quick. Cassettes and chains were expensive to replace.

[Slothman]

Thanks, I think it weights around 10.4, is that light, heavy or about average for a decent hybrid?
What would constitute ‘light’ for a medium mens hybrid (with hydraulic brakes)?

[Nearholmer]

10.4kg sounds very respectable to me, the same as the Boardman Cyclocross bike I had, and that always felt a light and very nippy machine for the job. Once you try to go much lighter than that sort of figure for a bike designed to be used at least partially on unpaved surfaces, the price tends to climb fairly steeply (fancy wheels!).

The thing to think about in practice is actually “all up” weight, the bike, the gubbins you add to it, and the rider. You will find that once you do that the odd kilogram is a fairly small percentage, and that the best value way of reducing all up weight is sometimes for the rider to loose weight!

My current bike is just over a kilogram heavier than its predecessor (steel, rather than aluminium and carbon), but things like how much gubbins I’m carrying, and tyre choice, seem to make more difference than that does. I can get back to par by leaving the D-lock at home, and get nippier by changing the tyres, if I want.

I guess it’s different for “performance cyclists”, because they will already be very careful about their own power-to-weight ratio, so shaving weight off the bike and gubbins, and spending money on ‘aero’ stuff becomes the only way to squeeze out the extra 0.5mph.

[Slothman]

Thanks, I suppose that it will be considerably lighter than my current Claude Butler ‘Cape Wrath’ MTB which has a 7005 Alloy frame, Suntor front suspension forks and a 9+3 Deore gear set?
I’ve never weighed it and as it was new around 2002 I can’t find any spec for it with weight.
Bet it’s around 13kg or more though?