This isn't a bike though... It's a nearly custom fit medical device they'll use most of their waking hours where bad fits can cause permanent damage to their bodies. Their configurator has ~25k options just for the frame fit ignoring colors and all the other parts of the wheelchair.
My bike cost £30 (because I got it from a bike charity that sells excess donated bikes to the public to raise funds)
As of today, the cheapest adult bike-shaped-object in Halfords is £116. It's another £35 if you want them to assemble it, although Halfords are infamous for having pictures of incorrectly assembled bikes in their own catalogue
You say used like it's a slur. There are many fairly high quality bikes to be had used for a reasonable price in most areas of the us. With a few tools and a can-do attitude, you can make almost any bike fit for use. My current daily bike cost about $50. I replaced maybe $100 of bearings and other wear parts. Going on year 4 of medium use now; still works great.
Obviously not everyone wants a new hobby of fixing bikes. But its a great time for almost any hacker or maker.
And it makes a world of difference for a small kid as I've experienced recently, totally worth it if you can afford a lightweight bike (eg 5kg 16" vs standard 8-9kg).
Absolutely, some of these bikes are the adult equivalent of 150lb bikes for kids. No wonder the kids hate them. Even a light weight bike is like a 70lb bike.
I don't remember hating my bike when I was a kid, and I had the cheap kind. I also don't remember it being too heavy or anything. Of course if I wanted to ride my bike, I had to lift the heavy wooden garage door up (elementary-school-age). Kids that I volunteer with all seem weak and have issues that I never had.
There's a parable about helping a butterfly out of a cocoon:
This thread is bonkers. I'm not even American and it took me all of two minutes to find a bike for $118 USD (or about 90 GBP) available from Walmart. Here it is: https://www.walmart.com/ip/1121295
It looks like a perfectly serviceable bike, if not the most amazing experience. I bet you with proper maintenance it could last you decades and thousands of miles.
People in this thread who are claiming a new bike is nearly $1000 are on another planet.
I get that this isn't a wheelchair, doesn't have anything to do with wheelchair prices, and I would certainly not want to rely on this thing in the way a wheelchair user must rely on their chair, but c'mon, guys, stop with the wild hyperbole about bike prices.
You didn't find a bike. You found a box of parts. Read the page again:
> Mountain Bike Assembly - $99.00
If you want the box of parts assembled into a bike, it effectively doubles the price. Also there's no promise it's assembled correctly, or that the bike parts are actually good. "Proper maintenance" is a handwave for spending multiple times the cost of the bike to cover up the inadequacies of the bike.
> We generally recommend spending a MINIMUM of about £200 on most styles of adult bike [...] there are some reasonable quality bikes at below £200 but if you intend to buy at this price, do so from a reputable bike specialist.
So for $118 you get a really poor quality bike that you probably can't repair. Or perhaps you'll end up with one that's just unsafe. $400–500 is probably a reasonable price point, but that'll get you something that's adequate at best. Heavy, clunky, and unpleasant to ride.
Yes, the $118 bike is not going to be much fun, and may be assembled dangerously. It's still a bike, though, and a little TLC and attention to assembly before riding will prevent a significant number of problems. Even the reddit thread you linked just required some screw tightening and replacement of a derailleur -- and a cheap Shimano derailleur is $20 from my local bike store.
Even if we completely discount the $118 bike (plus a $20 part), though...
> $400–500 is probably a reasonable price point
This is a far cry from "much under a grand". Yes, it will be heavy and clunky, but it will function in all of the ways that it is important for a bike to function.
Yes, the $118 bike is not going to be much fun, and may be assembled
dangerously.
No, it'll be built dangerously. A cheap Shimano derailleur won't fix cracked welds or a broken frame. TLC won't make the frame true. Doubtful it'll last more than a few miles really.
Yes, it will be heavy and clunky, but it will function in all of the ways
that it is important for a bike to function.
Ehh it'll be the bare minimum that you probably won't want to use.
I got a cheap "bike" as a student and regretted it when a crank arm snapped clean off pulling away from the lights. No serious damage done to me, but the potential was there.
I used to buy cheapest I can get away of everything and I have to tell you, there is real difference between cheapest bikes you reference, bikes that cost few hundred $ and $1000 bike.
The difference is in speed, effectivity (how tired you get per km), comfort, how much it hurts when terrain is bad and pretty much any other factor you can think off. Those cheap bikes are fine if you go to work and back, 15min drive each way. Or for kids to play around town.
But if you bike a lot, then you really want better bike.
>People in this thread who are claiming a new bike is nearly $1000 are on another planet.
HN is absolutely chock full of people who have entirely lost touch with reality.
Anyways, my sister rode a $200 bike to work every day for like six years. Doing the math, about 19,000 miles. I grew up with a cheap Walmart bike and I had it for over a decade and probably at least 5,000 miles I would guess.
so out of touch you're using an example of a bike purchase from 6 years ago :^)
did she also replace the tires 3 or 4 times? because no way any bike tire is taking 19,000 miles of road use no matter the brand.
The average price of a new bike more than doubled from 2015 to 2024.
I mean, it’s one banana, Michael. What could it cost, ten dollars?
This thread is now full of people who, with real lived experience, will tell you that $200 bike served them perfectly well, but downvotes rain in from people who spend five times more than a middle-Americans month’s worth of savings on a bike and won’t hear of anything less.
It’s not often that the class divide on HN is so front and centre, but it is here.
200$ in what year? 1990? Go price out parts even the lowest their at a bike store and see what it would take to get a complete bike. Sure it might be cheaper in bulk but you will be within 30%.
Unlike a bike, where able-bodied individuals can take the trade off buying it for cheap and risking it breaking a weld and having to gasp walk.
People that are handicapped kind of need their wheelchair not to break unexpectedly.
I don't see anything being out of touch here. You can absolutely get a $100-$200 bike, and it's completely fine if your use is casual. You start going up in bike prices when you start talking about more and more serious use of bikes which is what probably users here think of. Road bikes are hyper focused on cutting every gram with the most efficient cranksets, MTBs are focused on shear abuse and you absolutely will destroy a $100 bike in a month if you actually ride seriously.
You just linked to a $118 box of parts (or $217 if you want it assembled). This is an absolutely trash bike.
You can get a nice bike that, while not fancy and might weigh more than it needs to, will last years and be safe provided it's maintained, for about £200-£300 ($260-$400 USD) in todays prices. If you bought a bike for $200 years ago, then this is the price bracket you were buying into, not the cheap shit. You can then get increasingly good bikes as you go to $1000 and beyond.
You seem to be be blithely unaware how shit the cheapest bikes are these days. I've had bikes where the crankset literally sheared off, where the frame's welds have cracked rather than the suspension failing, where the brake cables have snapped, where the chain has snapped, where bolts have rusted, where the plastic twist-shifters can't hold a gear and drop them as you go over cobblestones, where things have broken because the minimum wage supermarket employee who knows nothing about bikes has assembled it wrong. This will be the average person's experience with the cheapest-of-the-cheap bikes, and the only way they'd be happy with it is if they don't really use the bike much, or they keep it indoors and don't cycle in the rain, or there are no hills where they live, and so on.
It only costs a little more for a hard-wearing, all-weather bike. Not thousands more. If the most you can afford are these shitheaps, I feel sorry for you, and I recommend you look for a bike charity in your area that will sell you or give you a decent second-hand/donated bike that has been checked over by a decent bike mechanic.
