[Closed] mtb reviews in magazines

Questioning whether people who ride bikes for a living are better than people who don't?

New login GW?

who is GW?

What's more useless is is believing what you read, instead of getting out on the trails where you can see people riding the bike you desire and asking them what it's like?
Also booking demo days, quite a good way to experience a bike if you are serious about buying.

Firstly you need to remember these are the opinions of the reviewer no matter how impartial they try to be.
Second part on ability, what's your minimum standard of rider? Personally the reviewers who represent the majority tend to be quite good, there is no point in reviewing a DH bike for the WC rider or even fast UK bike for instance as those guys (a) know what they want and (b) are sponsored.

Got a particular review your having a problem with?

"Laterally stiff but vertically compliant"?!

I stop reading any review that employs the term "Body English".

I find the bit that Road.cc put at the end of their reviews useful, i.e. a profile of the rider and their preferences etc. Gives a bit of context.

Too eloquent for GW Tom... Plus the 5 yr reference .....

I afraid I'm a little older than you, riding Mtb,s since 1982-3, still have my first edition of Mountain Bike UK. I read Mtb, car and plane magazines for 20 years, even got to know a few of the writers in each area. In my experience most are pretty good (if not very good), they get more time in and are with others discussing the stuff even more than we do!
But the more commercial the mag, the more bland I see the reviews as they try not to offend.
My biggest bug bear is how 'unreal world' they can be, ie. Most people drive to work and the shops, most people ride theirs bikes around their local route and prob do a bit of road to get there. This leads to some ott bikes being bought and ridden on the local route or slight ott cars on the every day run. We can get our hands on some pretty cool kit in all of those areas and some of the most fun is, simple hard tail on local trail, old 'granny' hatchback on shopping run, even in the air, back to real basics can bring biggest smiles. Taken me a few years to realise... Still get the odd mag now and then for a long journey.

Trauty ain't GW, his names Dan and he's a good rider. Lithuanian IIRC Dan?.

Hmmm, if bike tester have to prove there worth in order to make their review, then maybe riders should pass a test too? No more ATGANI?
🙄

he would be confident by knowing that the reviewer has the skills to backup his words on paper otherwise the review is pretty much useless.

Of the 2 or 3 magazines reviewers I had the chance to ride with, ride pretty much like "blokes messing about on bikes" which is a pretty spot on "skillset" as far as I can make out

Can we see a video of your riding to decide if your opinions are worthy of any discussion?

I bumped into a well known mag writer once and he rode like it was his first time on a bike. I don't believe a word he says anymore and avoid his reviews. It's something I hadn't really given any thought to before that the writer may be a rubbish rider and not really qualified to be reviewing anything more than a halfords special.
I do still read reviews but take them with a pinch of salt and read between the lines.

I need to see more examples showcasing your writing skills before I can decide whether your level of writing ability is good enough to back up your opinion or whether it's just bullsh1t.

I afraid I'm a little older than you,

The OP doesn't mention his age just how long hes been riding .

Awww, c'mon andysredmini, we can't have that anecdotal evidence without some more detail!

I'm not naming names. He was a really nice bloke just not the rider I expected for a product reviewer. He certainly looked the part though in his Troy Lee pyjamas. I'm not really placed to comment as I couldn't write a review. Well I could but no one would want to read it. In fairness for lot of products you don't need to be a good rider it's just when some pretend to get technical that winds me up. obviously there are some really good reviewers out there who do know what they are talking about so as I said I read between the lines.

Gotta remember they spend most of their time behind a desk.

TLD pyjamas, only known by his surname?

Personally I much prefer to read the opinion on here of someone who has bought a bike without testing it or the opposition. I find that these people are always reasonable and their opinion balanced.

Some of pinkbike reviews are almost bang on. Bikeradar/mbr I take as fictional.

Bikeradar/mbr I take as fictional.

I take them as what manufacturer comped them most recently

Personally I much prefer to read the opinion on here of someone who has bought a bike without testing it or the opposition

[img] [/img]

This is like XKCD for bikes, I keep thinking of a strip to post.

EDIT - I used to quite like mtbr.com for user reviews.

Never accept what someone who has something to sell is telling you.

Is it Ok to do both? You know read reviews and try one out or is it that you can only do one or the other?

I really like the reviews VitalMTB do, they're not scared of being critical and their writers tend to have decent pedigree...

Every review I read is either littered with mistakes or subjective guff. Even worse the ones that claim to be reviews but are just press release cut and pastes.

Say what you like about Steve Jones, he doesn't pull his punches in his reviews...
https://dirtmountainbike.com/bike-reviews/downhill-bikes/intense-m16c-bike-test.html

See I'm going to pick a fight here. I bought a camber evo last year based on the long term review in MBR. In amongst the inevitable super rider waffle were all the things I wanted to know. It had a low bb, a 5'10 rider was on a large, it had safeish handling and pedalled well, The stop go bits were decent and reliable and it would take a dropper with a bit of fiddling.

I like specialised bikes, my lbs sells them, I knew it was enough bike for me and someone better than me thought it was good. Thanks to that I didn't buy something too big or over travelled.

Job jobbed.

Jones' reviews have definitely improved since he finally stopped moaning about all bikes being too small for 6'+ riders - he used to waste far too much of the word count on sizing, which is a fairly arbitrary argument as everyone varies in size. I think the turning point was the Transition Patrol review in the last proper issue of Dirt, where he spent half the review moaning about it being too BIG! 😉

this tread is well packed! did not expect that.
so to vaguely respond to some posts.
I miss Dirt - pure and honest !\
MBUK - buying occasionally.there is one folk that I sure know is proper good rider and his opinions are valued more to me. (he is on cover of latest mag)
Singletrack - buying rarely as it covers mostly XC which I dont do much.

I would like a reviewer to be able to be perhaps in top 10% of racers in some enduro race for a good indication of valued review. That kind of reviewer would be more trustworthy to compare bikes when pushed proper hard. Also having reviewers information like height/weight inseam etc. would be particularly helpful too.

A tester ragging a bike to its limits is as irrelevant to ordinary riders who can't as a mincer testing a bike that others could ride much faster. Being fast and being a good tester or writer are not the same thing.

It's like saying you only trust a review for your next family car if Lewis Hamilton has tested it by thrashing it at a track day.

/\ He's not wrong

I emailed Steve Jones to tell him to stop banging on about whether the XL was big enough, he emailed me back and said "well what do you want me to talk about, lateral stiffness? Tyre rollover?" Point well made tbh

There's been times though when the review doesn't match the reality... I'll not name names but I remember one reviewer going on about how their test bike had taken an enduro race in its stride. Meanwhile, I'd seen them in that race, literally taking it in their stride, pushing down a not very hard bit. Their finish time was about twice mine, and at my best I'm competent... So basically, a load of shite, the entire review was pure fantasy. That's not cool. I've not trusted a word from that reviewer's mouth since.

This one I will name and I hope it doesn't come across as mean. Watching Chipps at the GT7, he's definitely [i]not[/i] a riding god. He's alright though. In fact he's probably massively, usefully representative of Joe Average MTB Enthusiast. And I've seen occasionally people slag off mtb journalists for not being a riding god but I think i care more about people that ride like us. Most MTB journalists I've been able to really objectively compare with, have turned out to be solid enough riders, but not riding gods. As long as they're not pretending to be something they're not, I reckon that's grand.

I don't give a rat's ass if Aaron Gwin's fast on a particular bike because I won't ride it in the same way... I've owned incredible race bikes and been underwhelmed because I'm not an incredible racer. But any sort of misrepresentation is a problem in a review.

So back to the OP... Maybe it would be useful to know how well they all ride. Not to invalidate their opinions, but just to place them. MBR had a dude writing for them for a while that was barely more than a novice and it was great tbh, he's say things like "Maybe the suspension is really clever but I can't make it work" and "Muldoon says it needs to be slacker but I'm not sure what that means and I don't care"

Just to throw something else in the mix...the star rating system. I'd be interested to see the average star given out as everything seems to be about 4/5. When was the last time you saw 2 stars? Should it not be proportional to some extent because most mtb products these days tend to work so comparing x to y would be more helpful than the generic you're safe to buy it ratings we tend to see imo? Seeing some products get crap reviews would give me more confidence in reviewers. Probably unlikely due to the difficult position of mags needing advertising revenue so probably not wanting to piss off potential advertisers. I suspect crap products just might not get reviewed as a result? Also did the reviewer get the product for free or is it obvious they did etc is something worth noting in the footnote? Agree on comments re demo days if you can get to one.

Agree about the road.cc reviews.
Always found them well balanced and informative.

Cycling Active seemed honest and mostly guff free.

You get to know journo's styles and preferences over time, which helps.

I always trusted Steve Worland's opinion.
He just came across as very honest, wrote about things others missed or ignored.

dogthomson - Member

I stop reading any review that employs the term "Body English".

I stop reading any review that employs the term "Guy Kesteven"

I mistakenly bought the Esperanto version of Dirt in WH Smith in Manchester once.

I agree about reviews in mags being mostly nonsense. I just bought the latest MBUK to look at their fork shootout and I don't know why. I knew it would be rubbish and I wasn't proved wrong.

They rarely compare like for like, they have the top Fox 36 FIT Kashima (plus numerous other numbers and letters) but then pit them against the middle spec Manitou Mattoc Experts (not the pros) and Marzocchi 350 CR (not NCR). Not really level playing fields. Then they give each fork a tiny paragraph of the usual drivel it's like writing by numbers ie. If it's 34mm stanchions then automatically insert flexy into the review it's just tedious.

I find Pinkbike generally come up with a much better review, they did a piece on the Mattoc pro and it was excellent, they had 3 riders of different skills from average weekend warrior to full on badass and they went through the fork bit by bit comparing them to the Pike and 36 as they went. Exemplary review. I do own a Mattoc so could be considered biased but also it's fitted to a Transition covert which they weren't to fussed on so there! 🙂

OTOH Pinkbike have had some features that absolutely stank of "paid for"- to the extent that if they weren't taking money for it, they must be absolute mugs. Like that one where they "reached out" to Mavic to explain why everything that wasn't UST was rubbish.

thanks folks. best tread ever. really great responses that actually made me re-evaluate some of my thoughts!
the star system in mags - frankly its been so many years of mtb development from all brands , that it is simply not possible these days to rate a bike just 2 stars. Market competition pushed every mtb brand really hard to deliver decent bike TBH. I owned 3 bikes so far and currently have a bike that I demo tried like 4 years ago. Its 26er , its short reach for modern standard(more like medium size these days despite its large ) and it rides amazingly but I bet S Jones would moan about it . haha

I find Pinkbike generally come up with a much better review, they did a piece on the Mattoc pro and it was excellent, they had 3 riders of different skills from average weekend warrior to full on badass and they went through the fork bit by bit comparing them to the Pike and 36 as they went. Exemplary review. I do own a Mattoc so could be considered biased but also it's fitted to a Transition covert which they weren't to fussed on so there!

/hijack

Just read that as I've spotted a Mattoc near me on Pinkbike. How do you rate it?

Steve Jones was right about frame length though! The industry is finally getting it now. He's like the opposite of the boy who cried wolf.

Watching Chipps at the GT7, he's definitely not a riding god. He's alright though. In fact he's probably massively, usefully representative of Joe Average MTB Enthusiast.

He's honest about his limitations as a rider in his reviews, which is unusual in the MTB press. And he's a talented writer, which helps.

Pinkbike do put some good reviews out, so do NSMB. The latter will often get a writer to review a bike and he/she will led it out to a more gnarly rider for a second opinion.

Approaching the subject of reviews from a different angle. Do you want to buy a bike to continue riding at the level you already are? Or to go faster? If the latter, then feedback from faster riders is surely valuable?

I'm not a fan of star ratings in reviews. More subjective than the rest of the words and all a bit arbitrary (when exactly does a 3.5 star turn into a 4 star?). I just need to know what the reviewer thought was good about the product, and what could be better.

Funnily enough, the mags I buy take that approach to reviews.

It's a different market, but here's Linus explaining why they don't want to review things that "suck and are cheap" or that "makes no sense and nobody should buy it"

It's somewhat the same with MTB, no doubt.

As hinted at earlier, maybe have each bike tested by a couple of riders of varying skills/backgrounds? Since a lot of today's bikes are so versatile and can be used for xc - dh why not have a xc minceball test it for that kind of riding and a dh gnarball for the other?

Never really bought mags unless i needed socks that were too small, but I know of a mag tester who would talk about railing berms and all the other buzz words but wouldn't come out with us when he was back home as the trails we rode were too hard (they're just trails btw). Nice guy mind you but all talk. Think he's moved on to something else bike related now.

Alot of mags are killing themselves. Very successful advertising sales with squeezed actual content. A viscious cycle, they chase ad dollar to supliment following sales which drives more people away?

So after reading through this thread I get the impression that most of us don't trust the 'establishment' with their reviews, so does this mean that there is a need for a forum section where real people in the real world can review their bikes warts an all. Maybe we could get a better impression of how bikes are in the long term, how parts last etcetera.

I know I would say in a review that I loved my bike but some parts have had some 'issues' and its a bit of a marmite bike with different sizing but it makes up for all my lack of skill and makes me smile when I ride it, which at the end of the day is what we all want is it not, maybe a real world review could help someone buy the right bike or stop them making a mistake.

Mtbr reviews used to be ace for that but they had a cleanup and deleted aload.

In there you could spot a common theme or issue

@ whatnobeer I'm very pleased with mine although this time of year the full sus has only been out a few times round the local area. I had a Lyrik RC2L with the DH damper mod before and they are noticeably better, much more than I expected. Stiffness is hard to gauge as the fork is much more active but for me I wouldn't say there is any real differences. The HBO is awesome and totally works but the best thing is the how they take big hits. For big square edge hits they are phenomenal compared to the Lyriks. I was happy with my Lyriks but I saw the Mattocs for £400 and my brother happened to need a new set of forks but needed a 1 1/8 steerer which my Lyriks happened to be. So I sold the Lyriks to him and that was it only cost me a few hundred for a new fork. I expected to get a lighter fork but wasn't really expecting the better performance that I got.

@Northwind I did read the UST article but if it's the "to the point" one then it was PB asking a Mavic dude about them. It seemed ok to me?

I think it read the same one, the bit you don't get is how the conversation started

The benefit the testers have is that they ride lots of different bikes, so they can start to see the wheat from the chaff no matter what their riding skill. You'll still get personal preferences in that though, so the reviews that state the riders preferences are extra helpful.

If you've only ever ridden one bike you might think it's brilliant and that's fine, but you need to ride lots to be able to make comparisons and suss out good and bad traits.

so does this mean that there is a need for a forum section where real people in the real world can review their bikes warts an all.

It's an interesting idea but i don't know if it would prove useful in any way. Speaking for myself, i can ride a bike to a decent standard but i've not ridden that many, so what i consider good could well be not so good in relation to other similar bikes out there. Also i'm not fussy about things so if the suspension is 'off' i'd probably not even notice unless it was so badly out that it caused a real issue. My reviews would be pretty much useless to anyone but myself 😀

On the flip side you've guys who ridden loads of different bikes, but aren't really that skilled or fast. They know the buzz words and what each knob or dial does but simply don't push a bike enough to find out what it's really like. Their reviews would sound impressive but be pretty useless too 😀

I do recall buying a mag (mbuk i think) and found it very odd that they had long term tests (1 year or so) but had changed most of the parts from the original bike. How do you test the longevity of something if it's lying in a cupboard?

Maybe an independent testing facility would work for bikes with trusted riders/reviewers - like a Which? kinda thing? Or just ask your mates, that's what i do when it's 'new bike time' 😀 The way the mags currently do it is pretty poor imo.

Maybe an independent testing facility would work for bikes with trusted riders/reviewers - like a Which? kinda thing? Or just ask your mates as that's what i do when it's 'new bike time'

Sounds just a bit well dull and pointless, who trusts who, how do you get trusted, why are people going to give you bikes?

Anyway I'll read reviews, read between the lines and then if I'm interested I'll get on one and try it out. For me that is the only opinion that is worth listening too.
Where reviews come in handy is when they pass on facts that the spec/geometry sheet doesnt tell you.

It's an interesting idea but i don't know if it would prove useful in any way.

+1

I take most recommendations on here with a pinch of salt unless I'm familiar enough with the poster's history/experience to trust them.

And I've been riding 20-odd years but feel like its only recently that I've finally grasped what makes a bike work for me - so be careful with anything I write!

The problem is the reviews could be a lot better in mags without too much effort. Ideally just have your review broken down into characteristics and do it that way. ie damping: we rode a really fast section with smaller bumps then a slower section with bigger drops and hits. The results we found were etc. etc. More of a step by step critique. Have a couple of riders do the tests together, they have plenty of testers so could get 2 or 3 peoples thoughts on the same test.and for things like stifness etc, they suggested they had a twist rig in the Fox 36 bit so show us the results.

Finally instead of a final star rating why not give a rating on stuff like Damping, Weight, adjustability etc and then give an overall rating and conclusion based on those. For example "fork X overall gets 8 out 10 and won our test, whilst not quite as stiff as X it's combo of light weight and excellent damping and adjustability make it our pick for X purpose. However it's limitations were X and if you wanted to wanted to do bigger stuff etc then you might find X fork would still be a better choice.

I guess just a more detailed review and justifications for the comments made. The testers do need to be competent riders and I have to say, from some of the bizarre poses certain reviewers manage to contort themselves into on the front cover I do have my doubts about how competent they all are. At the end of the day if they were that good then surely they would be racing and not writing?

You could weight each category by a multiplication factor and then divide that number by a timed circuit around a test loop (with a median target time decided by multiple runs of people with varying skills and hair colours) whilst allowing for changing conditions which you could call [i]z[/i] and then plot on a bell curve of nominal normalized values.
You could then interpret the results via pictograms and a powerpoint presentation that you could download via an app for your Iphone.
.
.
Or you could just do what everyone does and buy the pretty coloured one that matches your rucksack.

Ideally you would be able to download the whole lot into a a spreadsheet so you could really analyse that data! Naturally colours and aesthetics would be the most weighted catagory.

We may mock.....there is a 'european' (ok...German iirc) magazine that actually does this 😥

Years ago i was at a testing weekend for a manufacturers two new models.
It was in southern Europe and there were UK and European journalists present.
I'd had a chance to ride one of the new models for a few days and found the suspension not working at all on downhill runs.This was swapped out to non standard expensive parts for the journos as the manufacturer was concerned about receiving a bad review with the production parts.
One of the other models,a hardtail, was never ridden at all.It stayed in the van all weekend.A few months later i read a review of it written by one of the journalists that had attended the test.

Cheers Jb. I was looking at second hand Pikes to replace the 2014 Revs on my Norco Sighht but Mattoc Pros can be had pretty cheap on CRC at the moment and there's a nearly new set close to me on Pinkbike.

I had Lyriks on my old Fluid LT and they were my favourite fork I've ridden. It's good to know these are better.