Abneycat

Heya, pedalheads! Here's my review on the Globe Live 2, which is marketed as a light utility bike. I've owned one for approximately 2 months now and have enjoyed it a fair bit so far, but it has it's ups and downs. I purchased this bicycle looking for a nice city bike that would fit up and down my elevators and have decent cargo ability for every day use.



Here's a run through of the specs, followed by the review:

What: Globe Live 2 light utility bicycle

An upright city bicycle with an 8 speed internal gear hub and a medium duty (25kg weight capacity) front rack

Who: Globe bicycles

Globe is a subsidiary of Specialized. They manufacture a line of city and utility bikes, marketed towards mainstream and casual consumers.

How much: approximately $950 in the United States, $1050 in Canada

Now that the basics are out of the way, here are my thoughts and opinions on this bicycle.

Firstly, the Live is a very attractive bicycle in my opinion. I greatly appreciated the lack of logos and branding, what few stickers there were on the bicycle were all removable and as a result, the Live is nearly brand free. It has a very clean design with a little internal cable routing, matched colour components, and the head badge is a nifty picture frame instead of a logo, which is sweet.

While the components themselves aren't top notch, the bicycle comes equipped with good accessories like full (super full!) fenders, a stabilizer, a half guard for the chain, and a really nice and high end double legged pletscher kickstand. The frame also has a lot of nice touches on it like ring lock mounts and an eccentric bottom bracket. There is also a chainstay mounted disc brake tab, and the fork has a disc tab as well. There is also a blank for a derailleur hanger. Essentially, the Live could be upgraded or changed a lot as the rider saw fit. I set mine up right away with a front disc brake + dynamo hub

The frame is aluminum, rather than chromoly steel. In the case of a light utility bicycle, I personally find this quite fine. It isn't intended to be loaded to an extreme, but rather to be used everyday and in a more casual fashion. The aluminum frame and aluminum / stainless steel components should give the Live very good weather resistance.

The Live has a very upright riding position to it. One of the biggest complaints I have with this bicycle in this regard is that the seating was very poorly chosen by Globe, as was the seat tube geometry. The Live comes with a mountain bike width saddle and a steep seat angle for such an upright bike, making the ride initially very awkward - the saddle outright sucks for this purpose, and it sits too far forwards to get a nice "dutch" position. I personally think they really dropped the ball in this area - but I resolved this issue personally with a wide Velo Orange leather saddle and one of their 30mm setback seatposts. The ride is now very comfy!

Dear Globe: If you build a bike that rides upright, match the parts, please!

Aside from the seating, I really like the rest of the interface on the Live. The pedals are very classy, good quality and good grip on the shoes. The bars have a nice sweep, and the stock grips are pretty good. No complaints with any of that!

The handling is quite good, I find. Even when loaded, the bike is very manageable to ride. It feels very stable to me, although the responsiveness of the front end does drop if you heavily load the basket.

The basket itself is quite good, it is very robust and has a lot of spots to attach a bungee cord or net to, with lots of holes drilled in the wooden deck and lots of railing to hook onto. It could be better if the basket had removable rails in order to carry large packages though, as the weight capacity is quite good and it would be nice to really take advantage of that.



So overall, do I like this bike, and is it really worth it?

Yes and no.

The Live is not only a pretty functional bicycle that has a lot of nice touches and features to it, but it is also gorgeous! I really love how it looks, and it gathers a lot of positive attention, but not in a blingy sort of way - it just has class.

If there were 2 downsides to note though, it would be that the components aren't particularly good for the price, and that the saddle and seatpost will probably be wrong right away - they are really mismatched to the bike.

Also, the Live is considered a light utility bicycle. It can be fitted with a pretty good capacity rear rack, the front basket is really great and the geometry is well suited to it, but it isn't a true heavy hauler. It would be very good for someone looking for a classy city bike with some good capacity to it, but it would never keep up with a true cargo bike.

I would personally have to give the bicycle about 7 / 10. It would probably fall behind a more pure utility focused bicycle like a Civia Halsted in terms of pure usability. The Halsted is around the same price range and more utilitarian, but the Live has a lot of style and grace to it as well, in my opinion. Riding a bike isn't always just about using it, but sometimes its about loving to use it too

Basically, if you are on the search for an ultra porteur or a front loading heavy cargo bike, look elsewhere. The Live would make a great choice for someone looking for a casual and attractive light cargo bike though, and I personally just love riding mine around as a commuter, event bike, and all around gorgeous and fun ride as well.

dtscoot

Good Morning!

Thanks for a great review on the GLobe Live 2. I am looking at that bike and was wondering what else you were looking at in that category? Are you happier or less happy now? You mentioned a seat and seat post, which seat did you specifically buy?

Regards,

Jay

Abneycat

Hello, sorry for the slow reply! I have not been on Bikeforums a lot lately.

In a similar category, I looked at the Civia Loring and the Trek Belleville. In the end, I am happy with the choice of the Globe Live though - it is the only one of the three that really has a nice low trail for front end loading, and the capacity on its basket is much higher than the other two. The Loring and Belleville are lovely bikes, but they can't carry as much weight on the front.

Still happy with this bike. I saw the 2011 model in a shop the other day, they've cheapened the spec a little but also have dropped the price a fair bit too. The only thing I didn't really like about the 2011 was that the low and mid range models come with a single legged kickstand, the bike will just flop over if the basket is loaded!

Specifically, I purchased a Velo Orange 30mm setback seatpost and a Velo Orange "Model 8" city saddle. The combination is extremely comfortable!

thdave

Questions:

What bag works best to put in your front basket? Did you buy a pannier that you afix to the rails of the basket?
Or do you use a backpack and put that in it? I'm mostly interested in grocery shopping use.

Also, how heavy is it?

Thanks for the nice write up!

Dave

Abneycat

Well, I personally have a medium sized PAC messenger bag that I just throw in the front of the bike, if I want to throw something really big in there, the PAC can then be worn. That's just what I owned, a backpack or something else would work fine

I have a little reusable shopping bag folded away in the PAC bag too, in case I want more volume. It's nylon and folds into itself to about the size of a golf ball, pretty convenient.

You could affix panniers, I guess. My Carradice panniers with the Rixon and Kaul system will hang off the rails, but that will make your bike very wide, the panniers won't be secured at the bottom, and uneven loading will make your bike flop over right away.

Unfortunately, I can't tell you exactly how heavy it is stock! I know that mine weighed in at exactly 40 lbs after adding a Shimano DH-3D72 dynamo hub, Supernova E3 lights, a Velo Orange model 8 saddle (heavy saddle), a Tubus Cosmo stainless steel rack, a Lezyne micro drive HPG and a lock that I think is a Bikeguard bonelock - the bike was also weighed while equipped with a pair of Nokian winter tires instead of normal tires..

So overall, I don't recall the precise stock weight - but given all that stuff, my size M bike was probably sub 30 lbs stock. Sorry I don't have an exact number for you.