10 BEST £1000 BIKES

DISCOVER OUR 2020 BUDGET ROAD BIKE OF THE YEAR

While CyclingPlus’ testing guv’nor, Warren Rossiter, spent his winter testing superbikes and other more expensive machines, I was getting in the hard miles on bikes costing up to £1000, or thereabouts. These are the bikes that most of us buy as a first road bike, an upgrade from an entry-level bike having caught the cycling bug, or perhaps as a training bike. In some cases these are bikes that we reviewed in 2019 and have revisited, others are on test for the first time – and all of them are absolute belters.

They’re ordered from 10 to one but doing that has been incredibly difficult and I’d happily recommend each and every one of them – that’s why they’re here. In some cases it’s like tryng to choose your favourite

offspring…

The most familiar bike at this price has an aluminium frame with a Shimano 105 groupset and a geometry aimed at some form of endurance riding and long-distance comfort. This takes in the Canyon, Giant, Triban and Specialized, for example. A couple of our aluminium-framed bikes – the Cannondale and Van Rysel – have racier aspirations with steeper, more aggressive frame angles, aimed at the wannabe fastmen and women.

Four of our 10 bikes have dropped down the Shimano groupset hierarchy to make way for carbon frames, including Carrera’s £800 Virago – Britain’s least expensive carbon bike. Boardman’s SLR 8.9c and Ribble’s similar R872 are both bikes that we’ve rated highly over the last couple of years since undergoing radical redesigns, while we’re testing Vitus’s Zenium Road for the first time. This is not only a £1000 carbon road bike, but it has disc brakes too, a great achievement at this price.