Originally Posted by
prj71
The only way to find if the fit is right and that you enjoy what you buy is to demo a bike or try renting one.
It's not something you can get from asking questions on a bike forum.
Fit particularly.
I've purchased and owned 4 earlier 26" wheeled mt. bikes, as well as 12 road bikes, thus feel comfortable purchasing frames and building up or transferring components.
29" and 27.5" mt. bikes are COMPLETELY different bikes then any 26" I've ever owned and I could see that in the geometry charts. For 29", longer effective top tubes and super short stems. Really wide handlebars at 750mm or bigger, vs. 600mm of 15 years ago, wider affects reach.. Different head and seat tube angles, thus I was not doing mail order even though I could have saved some money, I just wasn't comfortable figuring out what was going to work.
FWIW, I was pretty much instantly sold on 1X even though I'm a gear head and value a well thought out chainring and cassette combo. I'm not a believer that front derailers suddenly started to suck. On a mt. bike and even though I only ride trails with short but occasionally steep hills, the ability to just slam thru rear gears quickly to get you up a hill, means no pre-planning about getting to the granny at the same time needing to go down the cassette. it simply works and I do not miss a front shifting system.
So good advice to demo before purchase.