Buying a road bike isn’t an easy process. Just this morning, I had a conversation with one of the people from our IT department, who despite being brand new to cycling, had already spent two months poring over the decision of what to buy. He had sought advice from friends, bike shops, and even myself as he tried to make sense of things like carbon vs alloy, endurance vs race geometry, Shimano vs SRAM and size guides vs a bike fit.
Even if you’re not new to the sport and you’ve got all those bases covered, it’s still not an easy process. Trying to weigh up the pros and cons of one bike versus another, comparing different specs and trying to balance that against the difference in price, working out geometry charts to see what will fit you best. It’s no wonder many of us turn to a spreadsheet in the process.
Our content here at Cyclingnews always tries to help people in that process, answering queries like ‘what size bike do I need?‘ but ahead of our inaugural Cyclingnews Awards, Myself, Tom and Will decided to go one step further. According to research completed by our employers Future Publishing, the next bike that our audience is looking to buy will fall at an average rough price point of £3000 – £4000 (or equivalent in local currency). We took this bracket, reached out to as many brands as we could think of, and requested their best road bikes that met the criteria.
Upon receipt, we built them up, pored over the spec sheets, dove into the geometry charts, and spent a couple of months testing them back to back (…to back, to back, you get the picture).
We did the same with gravel bikes too, and you can read that in our gravel bike field test.
The original aim was that we’d choose one single winner, but nothing’s ever that simple. In the end, we came away with a ‘race bike‘ favourite, a ‘value proposition’, an ‘honourable mention’, and the closest we could come to a one-bike winner: our Editors’ choice.
This is because, in the same way, that gravel bikes have diverged into two categories of racing and adventure, not all road cyclists are the same. The best road bike for an 18-year-old aspiring professional who does three criteriums a week (ah, those were the days) isn’t going to be the same as someone with a passion for audaxing, or someone whose cycling entails Sunday cafe rides with the pub club.
Without further ado, then, we’ll get into it.
Best Race Bike
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