Old 04-20-24, 09:29 PM
  #13  
Russ Roth
Senior Member
 
Join Date: Dec 2019
Location: South Shore of Long Island
Posts: 2,843

Bikes: 2010 Carrera Volans, 2015 C-Dale Trail 2sl, 2017 Raleigh Rush Hour, 2017 Blue Proseccio, 1992 Giant Perigee, 80s Gitane Rallye Tandem

Liked 1,057 Times in 743 Posts
Where you are located can matter for what else might be available to you. Personally I would want to get a State All-road for a commuter and general use bike due to a combination of quality and cost. However, if I were in Europe which I'm guessing you are, I might look at brands like Dolan which offers a good value and well tested bikes for the money or something from planetx, where you could get an all day comfort riding Ti, steel or carbon.

1x vs 2x, for a general use bike, 1x is more than adequate. 1x can give you similar range to older 2x systems but without the complication of figuring out if you needed to change the front gearing and the back gearing for the next best gear. For riders that spend hours every other day on their bike the next best gear is known and shifting is easy, for everyone else changing the front is an afterthought to use once you've run out of gears in the back. 1x you just shift to easier or harder and no real thought needed. Most 1x gearing will work fine if you aren't trying to make real speeds or distance, a 40/42 or 45 low gear might climb some steep grades easily but the corresponding 40/11 isn't going to be fast. It also has the disadvantage of having some larger jumps in the climbing gears that aren't always optimal.
2x can be better if you like shifting gears, or are at least willing to learn all of them and how to use them. There's just more gear options to pick which gear will optimize your effort based on hills, wind, and how you are feeling. A lot of gravel will run a 46/30, 48/32 or some sort of compact road bike a 50/34. A 48/11 will be noticeably easier to maintain a higher speed in over flats but easy enough to spin away in for long periods of time. However a lot of gravel 2x still doesn't have the low gearing of a 1x since the rear der has to also take up the longer chain for those front gearing changes. While a 32/36 is a very low gear it isn't as low as a 40/45 since those rear gears have a greater effect than the front on how much easier or harder the pedaling is.
Personally, I like kicking around the city on my single speed, it isn't the fastest but it just cruises. If I were to look for a new gravel bike that would be used to ride around and even go for longer partial day trips on I'd probably go 1x unless I was worried about becoming a serious rider with ambitious plans. A 1x gravel bike with the right tires can ride a lot of local mtb trails with no effort, do 40 miles comfortably at a decent pace, maybe not truly fast, but faster than a mtb, and has a simplicity that makes it easier to just pick a gear and ride.
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