Yeah, a Birdy Touring puts you in the lightweight Brompton category, price-wise, but it handles better than a Brompton. As it sounds like the compactness of the folded Brompton is not much of a selling point for you, I'd certainly consider a Birdy.
Again a bike to ride before buying. The Birdy seems to split riders in two categories: Either you love it or you hate it as it rides a bit special. The suspension works great in my opinion but the steering feels a bit strange and is in a strange way very nervous, even compared to a Brompton. Not necessarily bad but different. So it is really a matter of taste.
Furthermore one should be aware that the Birdy is not only an expensive bike but also requires a hefty amount of expensive maintenance through regular exchange of expensive parts like the stem or the front swing arm. I would definitively recommend checking the maintenance section of the manual before buying to be aware of the follow-up cost. Unfortunately - different from many other bikes - this is not just theory: Breaks of parts on Birdys do not happen every day but do get reported more or less regularly, sometimes even within the maintenance interval for those parts, and also of parts that are not subject of regular exchange like the rear swing arm. As these breakages may lead to very bad crashes to me this is a serious issue even if it only happens occasionally and on fraction of the bikes sold (I do however not have any numbers here, neither of bikes sold nor of total cases). What makes things worse is that the parts are relatively expensive and difficult to get hold of: Riese and Müller, the makers, have a reputation for really bad customer support and even the regular delivery of parts through a dealer (which is sometimes hard to find) sometimes turns out to be an issue. The more for older bikes - they seem not to care for them any more as soon as they released a newer version (the Birdy exists since the mid nineties and got apart from changes on it during the first couple of years bigger overhauls in about 2005 and 2015). For the Birdy third party parts are barely available and clearly not for core frame components, so there is a total dependency from R/M here.
The lower end models, though still expensive, suffer from some cheapish parts. Not as bad as on the Moulton TSR but the choice of components does not fit the price of the bike. Interesting models with better components like the Birdy speed are even more expensive.
Initially, before buying a Brompton, I was very interested in a Birdy and those maintenance topics as well as the perceived attitude of the manufacturer drew me away from it. Today I am happy about my change in choice and in the meantime I know a couple of Birdy owners that in general like the bike but would never buy one again due to the longterm cost, the breakages and quality issues they perceived even w/o misuse and the attitude of the manufacturer towards customers and their support requests. However: I've never dealt with R/M personally apart from visiting their booth on trade shows, so the judgement about their customer support is second hand opinion. It is however pretty consistent and it also fits to my perception of the R/M people on the booth during these trade shows.
Can also be fully folded in just a couple of seconds more than a normal Brompton and this way be taken onto the train. Works flawlessly and this was the reason why Juliane created the kit at all in the mid nineties - she wanted to be able to take a recumbent with her when traveling which, at that time, was not possible due to a lack of folding recumbents.
Photos please!
