Giant Defy

As chosen by editor Pete Muir

Any bike-buying decision is a battle between the heart and the head. The heart says you should go for an Italian brand with oodles of heritage. The heart says you need the same bike as ridden by that guy who won the Tour de France. The heart says you should go for a futuristic bike with blade-like tubes and hi-tech integrated thingamajigs, like Batman would ride. That cape though, hardly aero.

But your head? The Giant Defy is the bike your head would choose.

Like most riders I’m very susceptible to romantic notions of Grand Tours and the rich history of the sport, and a seductively curved stay or a covetable head badge can easily divert my attention. But, like most riders, I also need to take a hard look in the mirror and remind myself of the rider I actually am, not the one I’d like to be.

I have to accept I’m not going to win the Tour de France, or any other race for that matter, so I don’t really need a bike that will shave a fraction of a second off my 10km time. Nor am I likely to be bothering the upper echelons of the Strava leaderboard for classic climbs, so it doesn’t really matter if my bike isn’t as light as a helium balloon.

Of course, I don’t want a slow bike, or a heavy bike, it’s just that these things are no longer the absolute priority. When I ask my cold, analytical brain what I should be looking for in a bike, this is what it tells me.

First, the bike needs to be comfortable. Who wants to come back from a ride with bruises from wrestling a jackhammer and a back aching from trying to maintain a position designed for aerodynamically efficient 22-year-olds? Not me.

The Defy has got this nailed. Its geometry is more upright than Giant’s pure racer, the TCR, making it forgiving without actually turning the bike into a stately cruiser. Add in 32mm tubeless tyres as standard, plus the shock-absorbing D-fuse bars and seatpost, and you couldn’t ask for a more polished ride. And not a bouncy suspension gizmo in sight.

Secondly, the bike needs to handle beautifully. After all, even if it’s not a race

I still want to feel in control and I want the ride to be fun. That means being able to fling the bike into corners with abandon and descend hills with a grin rather than a grimace.

Again the Defy delivers in spades. That massive head tube and tight frame shape help to keep the bike stiff in the right directions, making for responsive handling, while a relatively long wheelbase and trail ensure stability at speed.

Ruthless efficiency

On top of all this my robot brain wants the best possible bike for the cash at my disposal. My head loves a bargain.

Giant may be a faceless behemoth – the biggest bike brand in the world – but that comes with certain advantages. It makes bikes for other brands such as Trek, Scott and Colnago, so it has all the technology and experience that those brands have, and more. In a sense its understanding of materials and how to make those materials into bikes is those brands’ technology and experience.

Giant can command the best talent in composites; it can test and refine products in-house more easily than other brands; it makes every component bar groupsets – recently resurrecting its Cadex brand to create high-end wheels to go with its tyres – so it can design and build bikes as a unified whole. Then, too, it has the economy of scale.

It’s not the sexiest brand in the market but I’m pretty certain it would be impossible to find a better-constructed frame, or a more complete bike, for the money. The equivalent Sram Force-specced Specialized Roubaix costs an extra £2,000 on top of a Defy, and my head tells me that the money would be better spent on a complete set of fancy cycling kit and a long weekend in Mallorca.

The dispassionate me knows the Defy is the bike I need; the bike I will enjoy riding the most. It’s the sensible choice. It’s my head’s choice. But once I pull it from the box, run an eye over its elegant lines and drink in its sparkling blue paintwork like the Mediterranean in the moonlight, my heart will be pretty happy as well.

It’s not the sexiest brand in the market but I’m pretty certain it would be impossible to find a more complete bike for the money

As editor Pete oversees an army of underlings who do all the hard stuff like pedalling bikes for reviews each month. Despite this, the position also has the advantage that his opinion is always right. Even when it’s wrong.