Hardtail category | Suspension travel 100 to 140 millimetres | Price range 1100 to 1700 euros
As the saying goes, you catch mice with bacon. Applied to the mountain bike sector, our hardtail test field is nothing more than tasty bait to get you excited about a really great sport. Entry-level hardtails already have a long tradition at BIKE and are tested every spring when the season slowly picks up speed. The bikes in the 1000-euro or Shimano XT class were once the ticket to serious off-road cycling. Let's get this out of the way: Unfortunately, those days are over.
The last 1000-euro hardtail (a Bulls Copperhead 3 RS) with full Shimano XT equipment, Rockshox Reba suspension fork and an attractive weight of under 11.5 kilos rolled into our test cellar in 2015. Rising production costs, inflation and exploding transport costs have turned the market upside down, and not just since corona. Over the years, the general rise in prices has also overtaken the entry-level segment. You can't currently get a serious sports bike for 1000 euros, let alone a bike with full Shimano XT equipment. In recent years, we have therefore had to successively adjust the price limit of our entry-level test field.
In this test, the most expensive bike, the Stevens Sentiero, costs 1699 euros and exceeds our pre-set price limit of 1600 euros. The two bikes from Cube and Radon are slightly cheaper at 1499 euros each and the Drag Bicycle at 1599 euros. At €1099 and €1199 respectively, the Merida Big.Nine 400 and the Bulls Copperhead 3 are the cheapest representatives in the comparison. Due to a lack of availability, Bulls and Merida were also unable to push the price range to the top. However, this gives us an interesting overview of this highly competitive price segment. As a reference bike, we invited the brand new Trek Roscoe 9 for 2599 euros to the test, an even more expensive MTB hardtail.
You can download the complete comparison test of the 7 entry-level hardtails from BIKE 4/2022 as a PDF below the article. The test report costs 1.99 euros.
Why not free of charge? Because quality journalism has a price. In return, we guarantee independence and objectivity. This applies in particular to the tests in BIKE. We don't pay for them, but the opposite is the case: we charge for them, namely tens of thousands of euros every year.
You will find these 7 hardtails in the test:
- Trek Roscoe 9 (reference bike)
- Bulls Copperhead 3
- Cube Reaction C:62 One
- Drag Bicycles Trigger 7.5
- Merida Big.Nine 400
- Radon Jealous AL 8.0 HD
- Stevens Sentiero
