Hello!
I want to buy my fist folding bike and hoped some of you could help me with some questions.
Use: commuting
Me: small female (1.58cm, 50kg)
Budget: < 900€
Where: Austria (middle of Europe)
For all fans of Brompton: Yes I would love to own one, but I just don't have the money.
That's why I would go for a Dahon. Why not Zizzo, Fhnon or all of these possibilities: they are not available around here, so they are no option for me. and I don't want the Decathlon because it is heavy (and it doesn't stay folded, as I read.... the magnet is just not good)
I would love to find a bike that is light and small, with some gears (more than 3 would be nice), for riding to the train, have it on the train, and then riding to the working place. It doesn't need to be for big mountains or gravel but the surroundings have some small hills why I want more gears.
So I looked into some of the dahon models which is quite difficult because one never knows if the models really are for the European market or not. But I've already read that many people don't get this way of Dahon dealing with his customers esp. in Europe...
So here are my concerns:
with horizontal folding bikes like the
Mariner you have to set the handlebar at a certain hight and tilt it in order to fold it in between the two wheels... this seems to be a lot of "unnecessary" fumbling around to fold it before entering the train and then have to adjust it again as you get off.... or is this just something you get used to?
Then there are vertical folders like the
Qix where you cannot adjust the handlebar at all which seems to be not usefull!
the
Eezz has an interesting folding style and is lightweight and small but the pedals don't fold which I think is uncomfortable - can you switch to other pedals?
I also looked into the
Curl - where I find it very difficult to find out which version actually is sold. when I look into folding videos there are Curls that have folding pedls, others don't, there are Curls where the saddle folds down, whereas with other curls the saddle just goes completely down and further others the saddle has to be removed (!!) to be stuck into a seperate holding device. very inconvenient!
Yesterday I tried to lay eyes on a Dahon Bike in reality
not only on the internet. But unfortunately that was impossible!
I went to the second biggest town to check out the stores which - officially - should sell Dahon bikes. But one store only had 4 Tern link, the other had 1 Tern link and about 5 Bromptons, the other had 2 Tern (link and verge). that't it...
What would be your suggestions?
Thank's a lot in advance!
