9km each way, and it will live locked to a rack at a train station five days a week, outdoors, in all weather. I want mudguards and a rack, and I am open to used. I keep reading that you should not buy the cheapest thing, but I also cannot tell what the extra 500 actually buys other than a lighter frame I will not notice while carrying a laptop. What did you actually notice going up a price bracket?
The extra money almost never goes into the frame in a way you would feel. It goes into wheels, brakes and drivetrain, and those are the three things that determine whether the bike is annoying in February. Hand built or better factory wheels stay true instead of needing the shop twice a year, brakes that work in the wet stop you rather than making a noise, and a drivetrain a step up shifts under load and lasts longer.
For a station bike specifically I would spend the difference on hub gears and a fully enclosed chain if you can find it used. Salt and rain eat exposed drivetrains and a hub gear does not care.
Genuinely lower for a commuter. The moving parts are inside and out of the weather, so you clean and lube a single chain line occasionally and otherwise forget it. The catch is that a shop repair is more specialised if something does go wrong, which is rare.
Hub gears had not crossed my mind at all. Is the maintenance genuinely lower or does it just move the problem?
Going to disagree with the buy-quality advice for your specific situation. A bike locked outdoors at a station all day is a bike that will eventually be stolen or stripped, and the arithmetic changes completely once you accept that. Buy the cheapest sound used bike that fits and takes mudguards, spend properly on a lock rated by a testing house, and spend on lights. My station bike cost less than my lock and I sleep fine. If it goes, I buy another one on the weekend and my life does not change.
That is a completely reasonable strategy and it is roughly what I do. The one thing I would not economise on even for a station bike is brakes, because those are a safety item rather than a convenience.
Also worth registering the frame number somewhere and photographing it. Costs nothing and it is the only thing that ever gets a bike back.
I bought a genuinely lovely bike as my first commuter and it was stolen from a station rack in under three weeks, cut lock, middle of the day. I had been riding it for eleven days. The replacement was a scruffy used thing that cost a fraction, and I have ridden it for five years. The bike you leave outside and the bike you love should not be the same bike, and I learned that in the most expensive way available.
Things I would not compromise on at any price: mudguards that actually cover the wheel, lights that are seen from the side, a rack rather than a rucksack, and tyres with a protection belt. All four of those can be added to a cheap bike for far less than the gap between your two price points, and all four affect every single ride.
Used, sound, fits, takes guards and a rack. Then spend on the lock, the lights and the tyres. The frame is the least interesting decision you are making.
@mobility_moss · 6mo ago
I own both ends of this. I have a cheap steel hybrid I bought used for very little that lives at the station, and a considerably nicer bike that lives indoors for weekend riding. Riding them back to back on the same route, the differences I actually feel are braking in the wet, which is stark, and how much I have to fight the gears when I am tired.
What I do not feel is weight, because both are carrying the same laptop and the same rider. The station bike has been out in every weather for four years and looks appalling, which is exactly the point. I would not leave the nice one locked up anywhere for eight hours and that constraint matters more than any component.
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