$500 vs $2000 Hardtail Mountain Bike

Welcome back, you beautiful people. The trusty Hardtail. It is trustworthy, why? Because it's hassle-free, it's maintenance-free, it's humbling, it's earthing. Earthing? What is that? Oh, it's grounding, because this, I would say, and I have said it before, is the perfect foundations to every single mountain biking skill. You learn it on the Hardtail. Now, what also Hardtails offer is budget. They're affordable, which brings me on to this, the Voodoo Hoodoo. Who do? They do. This is budget versus premium. This, my friends, is my Nukeproof Scout in factory yellow. Now, this is an alloy frame, medium size, and it has 29-inch wheels, front and rear, boasting the Spank 359 on the rear, being a bit more aggressive, and on the front is a 350 wheel set. Now, I've got Vittoria Mazza tires, 2.6 front and rear, but on the rear, I'm running the Trail. The bars I am running are Nukeproof Sam Hill Series, cut down to 760 with a nice 50 mil Nukeproof stem there. On over here, over there, over here, we have a 170 mil drop seat post with a nice Ergon SM Enduro tie rails. Look at that. The brakes I am running are Hayes Dominion, front and rear, super aggressive, four-part brakes. Drivetrain, not so premium, but it is the Shimano Deore 12-speed. It works perfectly fine. This is my bling, Nukeproof carbon bottle cage with a nice accessory plate right here from Nukeproof as well. Oh, over there, look at these Manitou forks, just murdered out with black, with nice chrome details saying Manitou. 150 mil these are, 150 mil with a nice mud guard. All of this adds up to an astonishing 2,000 pounds. Now, that's quite premium for a hardtail, but I love it. I actually love this so much. This is the Voodoo Hoodoo, designed by Joe Murray himself. Now, I'm not too sure who he is. I should probably know, but anyway, I don't. This is an 18-inch alloy frame. The forks on this bike are from SR-Centaur, and they are the XCR at 120 mil of travel. On the rear, we've got Shimano Deore 11-speed, so this is one less than my bike, but it is Shimano Deore, so it's running the same sort of setup as mine. It's budget-friendly. We've got some Maxxis tires, front and rear. Anyway, we've got no dropper post. We've got a Voodoo saddle. We've got Voodoo bar and stem. We do have hydraulic brakes, front and rear. Now, they are from Shimano, two pots, front and rear, so they are going to work. It's not going to fail me when we're going down the hills, which I do not want to happen, but there is no dropper, and it's a quick release, so that's a good thing, so I don't have to carry my multi-tool, even though I do all the time. I don't. Anyway, there we go, so I can drop that when I get to something that's a bit more hairy on the trail. This, my friends, comes in at 500 pounds. Now, it was secondhand, and it is being used and abused. Hopefully, it's in good working order. Anyway, let's put some challenges together. Desirability, now, for me, it's kind of a no-brainer. I would say it would be the Nukeproof. Why? Because look at it. It's fancy. It's colorful. It's got nice black things. It's shiny. It's got some nice premium parts on it, but the price isn't really that desirable if you've got a budget. Now, this would look quite desirable to you if you were on a budget, because it gets you out there onto the trail. You're going to have some fun. You can pretty much go bikepacking. You can race this thing. I think Rich has done that already. You can race it. You can just go on epic rides. You can go out there and have a lot of fun, so that makes this desirable, but then when it just comes to eye candy, man, that there, I would say takes the cheesecake, man. Takes the cheesecake. This, my friends, is the Hill Climb Challenge. I don't know why I'd do it, but this bike, it's got a really slippery saddle, so I can't really sit back into it, because I'm just going to slide off the back. I've got 11 speeds, so it's one less than my Scout. Right, how far can we go up this climb? Voodoo? Hoodoo? Let's go. Oh, it's slippery. Don't sit forward. Stay. Stay back. Where am I going? Oh my goodness me. Ah. I actually nearly made it. Look at that. You're thinking, why are you climbing up the steepest bit of trail ever? Well, it's boring to sit on a fire road, isn't it? On the direct route. Ah. All right. I made it to there with the voodoo. Hoodoo? I do. Meine Fahrrad ist Butterblumer. There we go. There's my bit of German for the day. Right, now it's time for the Nukeproof Scout. Clipped in. I have an abundance of grip, thanks to the Vittoria Mazza. As soon as you stand up and lose all pressure and weight on that rear tire, it's just going to break traction and you're going to start to slide and spin. You don't want that. You want to sit down in that saddle and rat! Ready? See you at the top. Rat! Grip is immense. I'm sitting back, tugging on the bars to get it there. Grip. Incredible! I think I made it. I made it! Look at that! I only wanted to get to the, hang on. I think overall, that there is more to do with the grip. And that comes down to the tire choice on your bike. All that R and D that goes into the tire, costs money. There we go. Oh, lack of choice on that one. Been an XC tire. All right, next challenge. Let me get a, finding a stick. Ah, yes. Steve Jones stick. This challenge is all about brakes, because if you didn't have brakes on your mountain bike, you'd just, you'd just end up being on a big pile of blah, blah, blah. This challenge is a braking challenge. Without brakes on your mountain bike, you would be somewhere where you don't want to be, and that is down a cliff or crashing. That's nasty, isn't it? So, I'm going to test the brakes on both of these bikes. And I am going to start the brakings, brakings from this line. But that's not all. I got this big fire road right up here. I'm going to build up the speed up to 20 mile an hour, get up to that maximum speed, and then hit the brakes on this line, and see how fast I can stop. My money is on Boto Bluma. First up is the Voodoo. Voodoo. It does say hoodoo up here. I'm not just joking, it is the Voodoo hoodoo. Anyway, this is quite technical, actually. You've got to build up a speed of 20 mile an hour, hit the brakes on the line, as close as I can get to the line, and then stop. Very technical. What's 20 miles an hour in kilometers an hour? On it. Yeah, hurry up. 32.19 kilometers per hour. Right then. It's quite fast, actually. Drop it in! That's actually pretty good. 32 kilometers an hour, it's quite fast. I was coming in, I was like, ooh, I'm not going fast enough. Oh, yeah, there we go. That's actually really good. Right, time for Boto Bluma. Whoa! Pretty much the same braking point. Look at that, whoo! Probably like three inches. Oh, that's, well, it's inevitable, really. You've got more aggressive tires. Look at that. Look at the grip there. An abundance of grip. Bigger brakes. So, I've got a lot of braking power. Digging my heels in. Obviously, it was going to win. Ooh, what were we thinking? All right. Well, the brakes are tested. Let's go and, let's actually go and use them. Right, Sheepskull. This is a descending trail, so it's downhill all the way to the bottom of this trail, which is a good thing, because I'm going to time myself down here, and I'm going to go flat out, no bars. Flat out on both bikes. Time runs, but this is kind of another obvious one that the Scout is going to be a little bit quicker than that, but the question is, how much quicker is it going to be over the Voodoo? Because that bike is an incredible bike. I want to give it a good fair fight, because you only have to adjust a few things on that. An upgrade is put on a dropper post and your tires, and it will transform that bike into something very crazy. You're right, you ready? Three, two, one. Go on then! Oh, man. I did say I was going all out. I just had the biggest high side of my life. It landed on my back on all this. Look, I've ripped my jack and everything. Anyway, I need a bit of flapjack. That means I have to go back up to the top again. Clock stopped, didn't it? We'll do that again. Not that, but more flat out. Yes, that was good. I didn't crash that time. All right, I'm going to walk back to the top and get it on the Voodoo. Ho, ho, oh. Oh, that paddled. Whoa, you bugger. Done! Right, I said it two times. I'm not going to look at it. I'm not going to look at the end result. Let's go to the drawing board and see what it's all about. Right, I've satisfied my curiosity, and that is budget versus premium build, my Nukeproof Scout. I was quite curious in how this bike would handle the trail. My riding against what this one's all about. And to be honest, it actually handled quite well. Now, going to the times, because that is quite a surprise. So that one was 103. This one was 107. So there's not much in it, is there? Like, you could upgrade the tires. It's quite muddy today, so an upgrade of the tires to something a bit more aggressive, just like that, to take the mud and get a bit more grip. You could actually add on a few seconds, or you could take off a few seconds, really. You could put a dropper post on, so you can make it more trail-ready. I think this right here at 500 pounds is really close to that there, which cost just over two grand, thanks to Nukeproof for helping me build that personal bike. There it is. Not much in there. The brakes, perfect. Right now, hopefully this has helped you understand that budget hardtails are actually really good, so the budget bike that you have is really good compared to that over there. Thank you very much for watching, and I'll see you next time. That was a fly in my eye. See ya. Cup of tea? Cup of tea, yes. Another fly.