Remember this–all bikes are shipped from the factory in boxes, disassembled; & assembled on site.
So, no bike is any better than the bloke assembling it.
Bike shops have professional bike mechanics, with the right tools.
Wally-mart has a 78-year-old Greeter named Gert. Her experience with tools begins & ends with beating on things with a hammer.
Go with the bike shop.
After we moved to Holland, I decided I had better get a bike. A bike being preferable to my feet for the purpose of hauling groceries for five people, taking the kids to school across town, and so on.
I had the same problem you have, with the additional complication that I am very small and so the smallest women’s bike is really still too big for me. Particularly when I considered that I would have my then-three year old on it, too.
I solved the problem by getting a second hand bike. It cost me all of 12 euro. It was a good make and solidly constructed and it was what they call a between size. It was unattractive but otherwise serviceable. I rode it for about a year and a half, day in and day out, until it was stolen (bike theft is a constant drumbeat in Holland). About two months ago I got a new bike. It’s the smallest women’s size but has a very low frame and a very low instep so I am just able to pull it off.
Having a better bike does make a difference but it would not have if I had bought it right off the bat. When I bought the first bike I had no clue what it was I needed in a bike or what would make a difference and what would not or even how I would in the end be using it.
Lifetime maintenance and tune ups would not have helped me in any way for instance as the 12 euro bike never needed either maintenance or tuning up. Beyond repairing a tire once, that is, which I did myself. I use my bike on mostly flat ground (other than the occasional bridge over a canal Holland is very, very flat) and entirely on the road.
Around here anyway, a lot of bike shops have used bikes which they sell with a guarantee. They are mostly trade-ins from people who just bought new ones.
I don’t know about Wal-Mart, but I am a former Target employee. They had a specialist who travelled between stores regularly, assembling bikes. Sorry to burst your bubble, Bosda.
That specialist must not have hit the Target near where I live or is a very poor specialist. When I was in the market for buying a new bike (after Katrina), I went to the local Target and found that none of the bicycles in my size range had wheels that were true and two of them had the handlebars improperly aligned. I decided to spring for a bike shop bicycle and was not disappointed. I spent about $350 on a hybrid.
The problem with Walmart/Target is not the quality of the bikes they sell. It’s the assembly and customer service. When you buy a bike from a real bike shop, they will assemble and adjust the bike properly, and encourage you to bring it back for a free 30-day checkup. If you buy from Target/Walmart you’d be lucky to have it shift and brake properly. And you’d end up taking it to a real bike shop to get it adjusted (and pay for the service).
I’ll second this. I’m getting ready to buy my first “good” bike (after years of riding $150 bikes from places like Target & ShopKo - which I would ride until they broke and then buy another one). I’m buying a Specialized this time, and I’m looking to spend around $600 - $700. Why am I buying a Specialized? Mainly because every time I’ve visited the local Specialized dealer to look at what they have, I’ve been greeted by friendly staff who seem interested in showing and explaining the various styles of bicycle, and helping me choose which one is right for my style of riding. And they haven’t seemed the least bit bothered when I’ve told them that I don’t have the finances to buy right at the moment, but that I’m researching for a future purchase.
I took my last mountain bike, a $160 Schwinn (a brand they don’t sell) to them to have the derailleur adjusted because I was having all sorts of trouble with it and my own attempts to fix it were just making things worse. Their repairman fixed the problem, but he also brought me into the shop and showed me exactly what I’d been doing wrong so that the next time it needed adjustment I could do it correctly myself (it turned out to be something very simple). That’s service.
The other major dealer sells Trek bikes, which I understand are about on par with Specialized bikes. Same price range, anyway. But I won’t buy from that dealer. Not because I think Specialized is better than Trek, but because every time I’ve gone into that shop the staff has come across as being really impressed with themselves, and uninterested in talking to me unless I’ve got cash in hand to buy something expensive right now. Guess why I’m going to buy from the other shop.
Anyhow, whatever kind of bike you end up buying, take this bit of advice: don’t bother with rear shock absorbers. They look cool, and at first they seem like a good idea. But in the long run, they make riding a lot more work than necessary because a good portion of the energy you’re putting into pedaling is going into flexing that shock instead of driving the wheel. Are you going to be mostly riding on the street or paved trails? Then go for skinny tires. Fat, knobby tires are unnecessary on pavement, and just make more work due to increased rolling resistance.
Make sure you get the kind with round tires. Those triangle bikes are a bitch.
Triangle bikes? You had it easy! Back when I was a kid we rode on square bikes! And we were GLAD of the chance to!
Square bikes?! Bah, back in MY day, we only had rusty unicycles, and you didn’t see us complainin none neither!
I had a piece-of-poo Raleigh for years. One of their bottom end hybrids. So I certainly wouldn’t knock your Schwinn. My Raleigh was under $150 range, but was put together at a bike shop. They called me a month later to remind me to bring it in for a free check-up, and they made some minor tweaks to it since I had replaced the handle bars with one that wasn’t so ugly, and they helped adjust my seat post so riding was more efficient for me.
You can certainly get affordable bikes at a bike shop.
And as a “travelling specialist”, he probably wouldn’t be there to talk to me. He probably wouldn’t be there to help me adjust my seat post and handlebars to fit my body when I was there. He probably wouldn’t be there to answer any of my questions. And he probably wouldn’t be there enough for any kind of personal accountability if I had a problem with something was put together back-asswards.
A specialist who goes “store to store regularly” just doesn’t cut it when it comes to the kind of service I expect when I’m making an investment in someting that needs to be functional, comfortable, and reliable.
I recommend you go the bike shop route like the others have mentioned.
However, should you wish to go the Target/Walmart route, make sure that the bike you pick out has quick release skewers on both the front and rear wheels instead of socket bolts.
You will thank me when you have to change a flat tire on the rear wheel in the middle of a bike ride. Practically no one carries a honking wrench to loosen bolts with. If you have bolts holding your wheels on, even the friendly passing Lance Armstrong guy won’t be able to help you out.
The Schwinn was actually the best of the “cheap” bikes I’ve owned. It was my fourth “mountain bike” (though before mountain bikes, I had owned three 10-speed road bikes: a used POS of indeterminate brand & origin; a Huffy that weighed a ton but got me around on my paper route as a young teenager, and a reasonably nice Schwinn that was my high school graduation gift from my parents).
Of my previous “mountain bikes” (I put that in quotes because they all came with warnings that they were not actually intended for hard off-road use) the first was a Huffy that I bought at ShopKo. I gave it away when I bought a Pacific at Target. I rode the Pacific until one day, as I was riding to work, the rear axle broke. I was still a almost mile from work, and with a broken axle the rear wheel wouldn’t even turn, so I had to carry it the rest of the way. Not fun. I went out right after work and bought a shiny new cheap “mountain bike” with rear suspension. That one lasted a few years, until the day I was coming home from work and the brakes failed as I was going down the steep, cloverleaf ramp off of the pedestrian bridge. That was too much excitement for me, so I went and bought the Schwinn.
I locked the Schwinn on my front porch, and two nights later somebody stole the other bike, which I hadn’t bothered locking since I was just going to trash it. I chuckled, hoping the thief didn’t find out the hard way that it had no brakes … 
Then last fall, somebody stole the front wheel and the seat off the Schwinn, again, right off my front porch. The bike was locked up, so they just took what they could, the dick(s).
When I get the Specialized, I’m keeping it indoors.
OTOH, those quick-release levers are the reason it was so easy for somebody to steal my front wheel and seat …
Perhaps “safe” should be strongly added, in bold, to this list. Phase42 described two bone-chilling, potentially deadly incidents in great detail – I had one similar experience with a Magna bike bought at Target.
I don’t think the quality of the bike matters one whit for casual riding – anything made today should be fine for riding around town and getting your feet wet – but there are about a thousand things that can break your skull, resulting in death, permanent facial disfigurement, permanent loss of teeth, or legal and moral liability when your bike causes another person – such as a pedestrian – such maladies.
Every component of these complex machines must be properly adjusted and assembled. Exactly analogous to driving an unsafe car is piloting an unregulated bicycle, even at slow speeds.
Oh, stop already. A bicycle requiring contant attention and care is a toy, a nice hobby article for people who have the luxury of spending lots of time and money playing with their toys.
My bicycles have all been unregulated, not complex, reliable transportation requiring no adjustment. Even the one I bought for 12 euro.
Yes, and he probably worked ‘by the piece’, as most of them do.
Take your time and put a bike together correctly, make $3/hr maybe. Throw 'em together as fast as possible, not caring what the end result is like, make $8/hr.
Guess which happens?
I’ve been looking at box-store bikes for years, just about every time we go into a store (long story). They’re crap.
I bought one from ToysRUs, but I have a partner that has been working on bikes for years. We didn’t get a pre-assembled, we got one still in the box and put it together ourselves. As I recall, there were still some parts we had to take back because they were broken/stripped/worthless in the box.
The reason we got a cheapo bike was because it was for a light-weight kid who wouldn’t ride hard (so fewer safety worries), who wasn’t allowed to ride out of the neighborhood (max about 4 blocks, so no plan for heavy usage) and who was in a serious growth period when she decided she wanted a bike. I was unwilling to fork over a couple hundred bucks for a bike that wouldn’t be ridden and would be outgrown in 6 months.
Obviously, if you need/want a bike and can’t afford a specialty shop, then any bike is better than none (except for the safety problems). However, I generally recommend people visit the bike shop and look at their used bikes first - you can usually get a much, much better bike for about the same amount of money or just a little more.
Yes, and that’s the only kind of bike you find at Walmart and Target, at least in the US.
You mentioned euros so I take it you’re in Europe. The situation is somewhat different in the US. Here, Walmart and Target do not sell simple, practical bikes suitable for errands and commuting. They sell bikes with lots of features that sound good on the spec sheet (front suspension, 3x6 speeds, aluminum alloy frame, etc), but with very low quality.
If you live anywhere near a seasonal resort, some of the bike shops that rent out bikes in the summer will sell them in the fall when the season is over.
You can pick up a used bike pretty cheap to see if your interested in biking before investing in something better.
Fortunately, the broken axle happened as I was taking a shortcut through an alley with no traffic, and the failed brakes happened in a foot- and bicycle-only area. That still could have turned out badly - despite the obvious speed of my descent down the cloverleaf and my yelling “I have no brakes!”, another idiot on a bike started up the ramp :smack: So I’m dragging a foot and rubbing against the chain-link fence (glad I was wearing a jacket) in a desperate attempt to slow down, and managed not to plow right into the guy.
Here is the cloverleaf in question. The end of the bridge is about 50 feet above the ground, and the cloverleaf is shorter than it really ought to be, thanks to the railroad tracks being right there, so it’s pretty steep. There’s a chain link fence on both sides of the ramp, and the whole thing is maybe 10 feet wide.
You were given rusty unicycles?
BAH!
In my day, we had to wrestle the Renegade Trained Circus Bears to steal their rusty unicycles!
AND WE WERE GRATEFUL!!!