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2022 Value Bike Field Test – Reasonably Priced Full-Suspension



Pinkbike Field Test is back, and for the first time, we’re also presenting it here on Beta, with exclusive access for members to dive in and binge watch the whole shebang at once. And thanks to the crazy world of mergers and acquisitions, we now have many of the most experienced bike nerds, shape throwers, and gear snobs under one roof. Haven’t you always wanted to see a bike review featuring Kazimer, Levy and Palmer all behind the same camera, hashing over the details of your potential next bike? Well, sometimes dreams do come true. Welcome to the new era of Field Tests.To get more news about ebike with suspension, you can visit magicyclebike.com official website.

For this one, the crew headed down to sunny Tucson, Arizona, to test the world’s latest and greatest bikes—that we might actually be able to afford on our salaries. Things get tricky when testing bikes with a price cap. It turns out that when the bikes aren’t full-carbon engineering masterpieces dripping with the world’s finest parts, there’s more to talk about than cable routing and chainstay protection. And we discovered that, other than the serious lack of gold stanchions, today’s value bikes are pretty damn impressive.
We brought four hardtails under $2,500 and five full-suspension bikes under $3,500 to the boney, unforgiving trails of Tucson, baked our pasty skin in the desert sun, quenched our thirst with bottomless horchata, and spent two weeks figuring out which bike impressed us most, which one scared us the most, and just how many tire plugs a single tire can hold.
5 Full-Suspension Bikes
Let’s be honest with ourselves: Hardtails can be a lot of fun, but we suspect that most of us would prefer to be riding a full-suspension bike most of the time. The holdup for some is that while they certainly can give you more comfort, traction, and speed compared to only having front suspension, the extra moving bits also mean more money, weight, and complexity. Those are less of a concern if you’re okay spending big bucks, but it’s a different story if your budget tops out at $3,500 or less, as ours did with our five full-suspension trail bikes. Plenty to talk about in the reviews below, then.
4 Hardtails
Want to get a mountain bike but don’t have a ton of money to spend? While full-suspension rigs made nearly entirely out of carbon fiber get most of the headlines, hardtails offer a simpler, and therefore less expensive, way to get into riding. And because you’re not paying for the extra engineering, material, and all those pivots, they often sport an impressive spec sheet that a similarly priced dual-suspension bike can’t even get close to.

But they’re not just for budget riders either, as those who can’t get through a season of riding without cracking yet another set of chainstays, destroying another set of bearings, or blowing yet another shock might have better luck—and less time off the bike—by choosing a hardtail.
How Do We Choose the Bikes?
By “choose” what I really mean to say is, “Please, just send us any bike that you have in stock.” If you’ve tried to buy yourself a new ride anytime over the last few years, or even just parts of a bike, you already know that you’re more likely to stumble onto the Ark of the Covenant than the 12-speed chain and derailleur you were actually looking for. Even so, Kazimer somehow sweet-talked his way into getting five full-suspension bikes that retail for $3,500 USD or well under, and four hardtails that come in at $2,100 USD or less.

Yes, a couple more bikes would have been good. Yes, some of the prices have gone up after the fact. And yeah, Kazimer can be downright enchanting when he wants to be, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t tell him how disappointed you are that he wasn’t able to get the exact bike you wanted – needed – to see reviewed at this Field Test.
How’d We Test the Bikes?
This is our tenth Field Test, and that’s not even including all the trips Kazimer and I did over the years before we had a name for them, so we’ve got the testing process on lock by this point. It’s not complicated: head out for a short test lap and then do another. Then do another, and another, and then a bunch more. After we’ve done that, we head out for some test laps before heading out for some test laps after we get back from doing test laps. Then, after we’ve returned, we go for a few more la… Okay, you get the point; nothing beats short, repeatable laps on a course that suits whatever kind of bikes we’re riding.

That back-to-back testing is key because it lets us compare, er, comparable bikes far better than if we were riding them in isolation, and it highlights standout differences in geometry, suspension performance, and the bikes’ specs. Just don’t call it a shootout, alright?