Cycling noobie here, can sombody tell me if this road bike is any good.

[hbyton]

Hello,

This is my first post and to be honest I know nothing about bikes, however after being dissapointed with my mountin bike I thought that I would try a road bike because I have no intention of going off road and (they are faster?)

One bike that I was looking at was the Viking Treviso Road Bike, to me this bike looks good and it also has straight bars which I think I would prefer.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Viking-Treviso-Gents-Racing-Speed/dp/B00CH25ZHW

As I said before I am a complete novice so don't want to be spending too much money however I still want a good bike that will out perform a mountain bike in terms of speed, to me this bike is a little expensive so wondered if anybody could give a recommendation for a road bike (preferably straight bar with gears) for around the £250 mark?

A quick question about road bikes in general...
I know that you can only ride a road bike on the road (obviously) but I wondered how easy it is to actually damage the bike, how much would it matter If I accidentally went over a small pot hole or rode on a bad road?

Thanks

 

[hbyton]

Another one I have seen is this one
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/TEMAN-21-SHIMANO-GEARS-ROAD-RACE-BIKE-BICYCLE-STRAIGHT-HANDLEBAR-/221367750638?pt=UK_Bikes_GL&var=&hash=item338a8bcfee

Both these bikes look nice in my opinion but I don't know if they are any good.

 

[doss]

For a first bike on the cheap you might also look into something used locally over Chinese knockoffs. As for a little pothole or gravel roads you should be fine. Plenty if gravel grinders out there he'll I have done sine serious distance on 23 tires and gravel roads with no problems. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[Volnix]

Not exactly a "road bike" as it has a flat handlebar and no brifters (shifter brake lever combination).

Apparently "Brifters" are quite costly, the cheapest Shimano pair (Shimano 2300) costs 60 euro for the right and 50 euro for the left totalling at 110 euro for the pair...

The next grade up in Shimano (Sora) will probably cost even more... So you might wanna keep that in mind when checking if a road ike is a good deal or not...