How to Choose The Best Road Bike

When choosing your next road bike, more times than not, most people are only looking at the price of the bike and not the quality. Although price is obviously important, it is equally important to recognize the value based on the price you are paying for the bike.

Your search for a new road bicycle must begin by answering several basic questions.

Used-vs-New
There are many places to find used bicycles today. You can find plenty of them for sale on Craigslist in most price ranges. This may be a viable option if you are limited to how much you can spend. Buying a used road bike can pose many problems including knowing about any existing issues the former owner had with the bike. Even though the bike may look shiny and clean there may still be serious problems which may cause a failure down the road.

You must visually inspect all the parts of the bike to see if you can find obvious signs of wear. Everything wears out, but it is the amount of wear and how quickly it wears out that must be taken into consideration. The frame has to be looked at with a careful eye because if there is a small crack in the weld the bike will be virtually worthless.
You can always swap out the components yourself if you have the capacity to do so. Your local bike shop can do this but at a much higher price. These are just some of the problems with buying a used bike. Imagine the kind of injuries you could get if the brakes failed while you were riding.

Mid-Range Price VS Low-Range Price
You can categorize road bikes relative to their pricing so in this article we will focus on the mid to lower-range road bikes. Road bikes generally range in price from 200 to 400 dollars for the low range and 400 to 1200 dollars for the mid range. Now you may say that 1200 dollars is a lot of money for a mid range priced road bike but when you take into consideration that you could pay upwards of 10,000 dollars for a higher priced road bike it doesn't seem so high.

The difference between these bikes is the quality of the frame, crank, derailleur, gears, brakes, tires, seat, head post, handlebars etc. So basically the overall quality of the bikes will be as different as night and day. Although you will be probably be getting a Shimano derailleur on both bikes you will be not be getting the Shimano XTR Shadow on the low priced road bike. This holds true for most of the components on the road bike. If you don't care then the least expensive bike might be the right choice for you. An example would be, if you couldn't afford the higher priced Schwinn Laguna road bike you could instead look at the lower priced Rapido by Lamborghini. Both are excellent road bikes and for a beginner the Rapido may be just what the doctor ordered. If you can afford something in between, the Tommaso Monza might just be the road bike for you.

Repair Costs
Considering the cost of component replacement can you say that you really saved any money. To replace the derailleur will cost you anywhere from 100 to 200 dollars and more depending on the bike shop and the derailleur you choose to replace it with. The same holds true for most of the components on the bike. The original price of the road bike will be far exceeded by the cost to replace it's components.

The rule of thumb is that if you buy cheap you get cheap.