So I haven't had much chance to get out and back to shopping around for my bike for a couple weeks unfortunately. I finally went out again today and found that the bike shop which sold the Giant's had apparently had a run on XL bikes-- they had almost none in the shop and all of the Giant bikes were sold out and wouldn't be in stock for a month at best. (Apparently they're transitioning to 2019 in the next month or so, which is also going to jump the price up significantly.) Given that I hit actual mountain bike trails, they were also reluctant to sell me a Roam or Sedona. Stopped at another shop that sold Trek bikes and they were willing to put together a Marlin for me, but it will be a week or two at least before that is ready.
As a result I stopped back at the shop which offered up a GT and road that again. I found it was a comfortable enough bike aside from the seat and was considering pulling the trigger, however, in searching I turned up the fact that Dick's Sporting Goods actually offers the same bike-- a GT Aggressor Expert. All told, it has pretty much everything I was looking for in terms of shifters, shocks (locking), and disc brakes-- hydraulic in this case, which is a nice bonus. Given that I am completely without a bike at the moment, I'm leaning towards that bike, but Dick's also has another version they call the "Pro" which seems to be on perpetual sale for $400.
$100-$125 less is a fairly significant difference, but it looks like this would be giving up a fairly substantial amount of quality potentially-- what I assume is a better fork, shifter, and almost certainly better brakes. Would it be safe to say that all of the below is worth the price difference? (I'm not a big fan of the neon red for the Expert and like the colors on the Pro much more, but that is a pretty superficial difference.) Based on reputation I'm seeing online, I suspect that the bike would be better tuned and put together by the guy at the local shop too.
Specs
Search Dick's GT Aggressor Expert
Search Dick's GT Aggressor Pro
Last edited by balthanon; 07-29-18 at 09:26 PM.
Reason: Remove the mangled table I originally tried to insert