Balance Bike opinions
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I was just at a bike shop with my 20 month old daughter and she is starting to show interest in balance bikes. I was hoping folks might have some opinions on what balance bikes held up to a few years worth of use. We’ve talked about another kid at some point, and I’d rather buy one bike that will last a few years and can be handed down to the second child. The wooden framed Skuut my nephew has is pretty beaten up, and I’m not too crazy about the plastic wheels on the Strider, but I could be convinced otherwise.
Any experience you’ve had or thoughts are welcome.
Skuut – $62
Strider – $71
Giant Pre – $125
Specialized Hotwalk – $175
Trek Kickster – $179
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@GuyContinental 44663 wrote:
As an aside, there must be a market out there for a kids bike with a weight proportional to it’s size… yes I get that kids bikes get worked but “respect the bike” is already a mantra in my house…
Not enough of a market. Issues are cost, durability, and engineering. One of the major ways adult frames have gotten lighter is by making the tubes thicker at the joints than in the middle–kids tubes are so small that I don’t think there’s a lot of room to do that. Then the cost of making individual components lighter is basically the same as an adult bike–and not many people are going to pay for a dura-ace cassette for a six year old. And then at the end of the day, kids do dumb things that would break a lightweight bike, and the returns/complaints would kill the margins for the vendor. So the market isn’t zero, but it’s in the range of custom-builder volume. (And if you have to ask what that costs, you’re not the target market.
)Oh, and after dropping a couple thousand on a custom bike, the kid will outgrow it in a year, guaranteed.
@KelOnWheels 44689 wrote:
Why can’t we have nice things?
They’ve got some of the nicest kids bikes out there. But even then, their 20 inch is about 65% of the weight of my bike for a kid that weighs something like 15% what I do. The discrepancy is probably worse for “how much can we each lift”.
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