Road bikes have gone through loads of tiny optimizations and improvements that have been building up for a while. The features are all pretty much the same but its just better in every single way....
Road bikes have gone through loads of tiny optimizations and improvements that have been building up for a while. The features are all pretty much the same but its just better in every single way. I think more interesting is mountain bikes which have almost totally changed in less than 20 years. The manager at work was showing me his 20 year old MTB and said it was the best one money could buy back then but now its similar to a budget level $400 mtb. I have a 2018 MTB that cost about $2400 and its just amazing, you can fly over terrain that would be just about impossible on mountain bikes 10 years ago. The whole sport has basically only been in existence for a short time because the tech didn't exist back then. All the mountain bike parks here were built after 2008.
There is also a lot of totally new features in mountain bikes today like dropper seat posts which let you adjust your seat height while riding so you can drop it just before flying over a jump.
Ebikes are another newish thing in bikes. They have been around for a while but now battery tech is good enough to get a really good range on them. I have used one of the $8000 electric mountain bikes and they are insanely fun.
I haven't ridden a bike in many years, not since about 2006 or so. Some of these features I recognize and it had, like indexed shifting, most others, like self-sealing tires, it didn't. Pretty...
I haven't ridden a bike in many years, not since about 2006 or so. Some of these features I recognize and it had, like indexed shifting, most others, like self-sealing tires, it didn't. Pretty cool how much technology around them has improved, especially for how long bikes have been around.
Yeah this was a really neat article. Biking hasn't been a part of my world for about as long as you so it was genuinely novel to see some of the changes.
Yeah this was a really neat article. Biking hasn't been a part of my world for about as long as you so it was genuinely novel to see some of the changes.
The really are amazing. I'm just sad they aren't more common on road bikes. When I was getting mine I had to go with an aluminum frame because there were no carbon frames with disc brakes. I think...
The really are amazing. I'm just sad they aren't more common on road bikes. When I was getting mine I had to go with an aluminum frame because there were no carbon frames with disc brakes. I think back then disc brakes were banned in some races so none of the pro bikes had them.
It's always interesting to look at stuff like this that you suspect hasn't changed but actually really has. I had the same hair dryer from 2001 until 2016, and then I bought a new one, and wow has...
It's always interesting to look at stuff like this that you suspect hasn't changed but actually really has. I had the same hair dryer from 2001 until 2016, and then I bought a new one, and wow has hair dryer technology improved!
This guy must have bought a pretty high end bike though, because I am a bike commuter, and a lot of my friends are super into bikes, and most of them don't have hydraulic brakes I don't think.
My summer bike is only 3 years old, and was... medium price for a hybrid ($950) and has like, none of these features. It still has the clamp on tire axles you can misalign and it still has regular squeeze brakes on regular brake cables, and it still has tires with tubes.
My winter bike has disc brakes which I do like, but I don't know how expensive of a bike it is because I bought it from the pawn shop. It also has gripshift which I haaate. The frame weighs about 1000 lbs though, so I doubt it was pricey. Maybe disc brakes are starting to trickle down to cheaper bikes, when I bought my good bike they added about $300 to the price.
(I looked up the bike he bought, it's a Giant Defy Advanced 1, which costs: $2,699. Yeah that's why his bike is better than mine :P )
Road bikes have gone through loads of tiny optimizations and improvements that have been building up for a while. The features are all pretty much the same but its just better in every single way. I think more interesting is mountain bikes which have almost totally changed in less than 20 years. The manager at work was showing me his 20 year old MTB and said it was the best one money could buy back then but now its similar to a budget level $400 mtb. I have a 2018 MTB that cost about $2400 and its just amazing, you can fly over terrain that would be just about impossible on mountain bikes 10 years ago. The whole sport has basically only been in existence for a short time because the tech didn't exist back then. All the mountain bike parks here were built after 2008.
There is also a lot of totally new features in mountain bikes today like dropper seat posts which let you adjust your seat height while riding so you can drop it just before flying over a jump.
Ebikes are another newish thing in bikes. They have been around for a while but now battery tech is good enough to get a really good range on them. I have used one of the $8000 electric mountain bikes and they are insanely fun.
I haven't ridden a bike in many years, not since about 2006 or so. Some of these features I recognize and it had, like indexed shifting, most others, like self-sealing tires, it didn't. Pretty cool how much technology around them has improved, especially for how long bikes have been around.
Yeah this was a really neat article. Biking hasn't been a part of my world for about as long as you so it was genuinely novel to see some of the changes.
Self sealing tires (tubeless) make my life so much easier. There is some goo on the inside of the tire that just plugs any hole unless its huge.
For me the biggest difference is disc brakes. They are much more finicky but their stopping power is so much better.
The really are amazing. I'm just sad they aren't more common on road bikes. When I was getting mine I had to go with an aluminum frame because there were no carbon frames with disc brakes. I think back then disc brakes were banned in some races so none of the pro bikes had them.
It's always interesting to look at stuff like this that you suspect hasn't changed but actually really has. I had the same hair dryer from 2001 until 2016, and then I bought a new one, and wow has hair dryer technology improved!
This guy must have bought a pretty high end bike though, because I am a bike commuter, and a lot of my friends are super into bikes, and most of them don't have hydraulic brakes I don't think.
My summer bike is only 3 years old, and was... medium price for a hybrid ($950) and has like, none of these features. It still has the clamp on tire axles you can misalign and it still has regular squeeze brakes on regular brake cables, and it still has tires with tubes.
My winter bike has disc brakes which I do like, but I don't know how expensive of a bike it is because I bought it from the pawn shop. It also has gripshift which I haaate. The frame weighs about 1000 lbs though, so I doubt it was pricey. Maybe disc brakes are starting to trickle down to cheaper bikes, when I bought my good bike they added about $300 to the price.
(I looked up the bike he bought, it's a Giant Defy Advanced 1, which costs: $2,699. Yeah that's why his bike is better than mine :P )