Battle of the Buyer's Guides

Every Spring the bicycling magazines put out a rash of so called "buyer's guides." Wow...that sounds so much more sarcastic then I actually mean it to be...well you'll see what I mean in a minute.

I am a voracious magazine reader. And, like many of you, crave any bit of information I can get about bikes. So when its buyers guide season, I'm in my glory. I'll walk through an airport newsstand, Barnes & Noble, or Tower Records and start snatching any bicycle buyers guide I can find in all of their glossy goodness.

The trouble is that they almost always fall flat. Buyer's guides tend to fall into one of two main categories. First there are those that are nothing more than lists. Long laundry lists of every conceivable detail. Geometry specs down to the sixteenth of an inch...drive-train information down to the brand of chain...no detail is too small...except for weight. They never seem to include the weight of the bike in these lists...but then...that's a post for another day. Nonetheless, I have trouble finding the value of these guides beyond the manufacturer's Web sites.

The second type of guide I call a "hot" report. Basically, these guides report on what's hot or popular at the moment. The guides are usually far from comprehensive and seem to include a random collection of bikes of which the criteria used for selection is vague at best. Nevertheless, the hot bike of the year...the new release...always comes out on top. Some of these bikes are deserving, no doubt, however, it is hard to distinguish the magazine write up from the press release. Therefore, it casts doubt on the entire guide and even calls into question the credibility of the magazine itself.

In subsequent posts I'll review each of the buyers guides that I have obtained including, Bike, Bicycling, Mountain Bike, Outside, and Mountain Bike Rider (from the U.K.). Before I start the reviews, my next post in this series will define the anatomy of the ideal buyer's guide. I don't claim to be an expert on buyer's guides or the cycling media, so I hope you'll help me explore some of the ideas I propose and bring some of your own to the table.

Oh, and from an administrative perspective, I probably won't do all of these posts in a row. The thing is that I will need to go back to each of these magazines and leaf through them, make notes, etc. I know myself, and I know that I will be too exhausted to do that some nights so I'll probably spread them out over the next few weeks and pepper in other stuff to keep things going. Don't worry...I'll reference each of the related posts as we move along.