I think you are right. The piece was not useless, but damned close. The heart rate monitors thing
was kind of nice, but again quite superficial/limited.
My guess is that a couple of bike guys on their staff were given a very small budget and a few pages
to do their report and this is the best they could do with limited resources. I personally would
have liked to see them add a few a of the often-reviled "department store" models to their
comparison just to see what 1/3 less than the lowest priced models in their ranges would get them.
- GRL
"It's good to want things."
Steve Barr (philosopher, poet, humorist, chemist, Visual Basic programmer)
"Rich Clark" <
[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
>
> "Tom Parker" <
[email protected]> wrote in message
>
news:[email protected]...
> > The latest issue of Consumer Reports (June) just arrived, and they have a small article rating
> > bikes, for 3 categories of riders: comfort, fitness, and road. The top-rated bikes were by
> > Giant, Giant, and Bianchi, respectively. They didn't care much for the two comfort bikes with
> > automatic shift. FYI.
>
> I was mostly impressed with the quality of the general advice they gave about bike-buying. It
> isn't comprehensive or complete, but it's mostly at least not wrong. They make the case that
> buying at a local bike shop is
the
> best strategy. And they didn't include any mountain bikes, for once.
>
> But the test reports are ludicrous. For one thing, they make no mention of the basic reality that
> what they tested is about 1% of what's actually available. Entire major brands are omitted
> entirely. Nothing is said about the brandmates of the bikes they did test. And while the issue of
> fit is mentioned in the text, the connection is not made to the "ratings." The uninitiated buyer
> who wants the "top rated" bike may have trouble understanding why it's not suitable for their
> particular physique.
>
> RichC
