New bike: expensive frame with cheap components vs cheap frame with expensive components?

[Reynard]

Nice work, what size is the first chainring (Number of teeth?)
Cheers!

Thanks.

48T on the big ring. It's Spa Cycles' budget touring triple (48-38-28) which is a right snip at £38. It's mated up to an 11-32 8-speed on the back.

 

[Gazjacko]

Town bike, rigid fork, you’d go a long way before you better a Carrera Subway, a frame that’s worth holding on to and adding quality components to.
Maybe if I was ‘badge’ conscious a ‘Dale Bad Boy?

 

[AliShah2020]

@Pale Rider hey mate, thanks very much for the recommendation. I did have a look on the Evans website for the Pinnacle Lithium range, unfortunately they only do a women's Electric Hybrid version at the moment.

This post has pretty much answered my query and I appreciate the contributions from everyone 😎

 

[Pale Rider]

Rigid MTB frames are a rarity now,

I'm bound to observe every hard tail MTB has a rigid frame.

You seem to have taken against my advice to fit a rigid fork, but it does make sense for some users.

Buy a £500 MTB, fit shallow tread tyres and a rigid fork, and you have a capable town/cycle path bike for £600.

Some after market rigid forks have bosses, which also gives you a load lugger and a flat bar tourer (you already have the right tyres and gearing).

You could probably flog the unused sus fork, which would knock a pony off your overall bill.

I'm no fan of cheap sus forks, but they don't make a bike unridable, and they do have their uses.

The OP has posted about there being loads of speed humps on his commute, which he doesn't reckon to slow down for.

No harm in a bit of boing in the front end in that application.

 

[SkipdiverJohn]

I'm bound to observe every hard tail MTB has a rigid frame.

You seem to have taken against my advice to fit a rigid fork, but it does make sense for some users.

Buy a £500 MTB, fit shallow tread tyres and a rigid fork, and you have a capable town/cycle path bike for £600.

OK, you're technically correct, a hardtail has got a rigid frame, but we both know that wasn't what I was getting at.
I'm not against the idea of having a rigid fork, as all my bikes have rigid forks and I won't touch anything with suspension. What I find illogical is buying a bike with suspension if you actually want a rigid. It's a bit like buying a white car although you actually wanted a red one, then paying to have it resprayed. You might have just as well bought what you really wanted to start with and saved yourself the expense/extra work.
The difficulty now is getting hold of a half decent fully rigid MTB to start with, but all bikes regardless of genre, start with a frame, and that frame doesn't have to be new if those that are available are lower quality than older used models that were often cro-moly and sometimes butted tubing too.
There's a tendency for most buyers to look no further than what is currently on sale at their local cycling emporium, which means the huge mass of good quality and very fit for purpose machines built in previous years get completely overlooked, when many of them are actually superior to today's offerings.