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Our eldest will be three and a half this Christmas, she's informed us she wants a new bike (no prompting honest).
She's been getting on pretty well with her 10" wheeled balance bike so it's about the right time.
The trouble is what sort of wheel size to go for?
12" or 14" at the minute I'm drifting towards the idea of 12" on the grounds of better stand over and slightly less weight and they seem to be listed generally as for '3-5' where 14" seems to be for 4+ if I have to get another bike for her in 6-8 months so be it I'd rather she was on a better sized bike now...
Top contenders right now are the Ridgeback Minny or Specialized Hotrock 12 (girls)....
General advice or comments please...
Always goes for what fits, not what she may grow into... At her age she needs to be confident and be able to put her feet down.
My top piece of advice is to make sure the tyres are pumped up and get on and ride it yourself, you'll get a great feeling pretty instantly for how the bike handles. Some kids bikes are real dogs....
I also found there's a fair bit of difference between what wheel size kids can handle and the frame geometry. I've had my kids on Scott voltages and the frames are great they could ride bigger wheeled bikes earlier with these frames and as soon as they start riding over things bigger wheels are better.
But your going to have to resign yourself to upgrading your kids bike fairly frequently so going mad spending £££'s maybe daft if you're on a budget
+1 for getting what fits. I made the fatal error of getting my daughter a bike that was a bit too large for her as she is quite tall for her age so thought i'd get away with it. but all i've done is succeeded in completely putting her off riding a bike altogether, and now she shows no interest in it whatsoever. To be honest you're better off buying a decent 2nd hand bike cheap and change it often as they grow, looking at the cost of new kids bikes. I know this goes against the modern consumerism ethos, but kids don't care if they are new or second hand.
As above - try lots.
I'm finally getting rid of the 2 mine grew up with at some point soon.
Both virtually spotless and less of a financial hit than something new.
I can sort of justify spending a shade more as she has a ten month old younger sister who inevitably end up with the cast-offs so working life will be longer split between two users.
I sort of like the hot rocks coaster brake as it's a bit less for her to think about...
I'm not gonna be worried about new vs used, whatever seems reasonable, resale value means nothing fit and function before finance...