Matilda Saumarez Smith, aged 11, and her dad Joe, aged a bit more than 11, review the Islabikes Luath 700, a racing bike for eleven year olds and upwards.
Matilda's bike review
When I first saw it I really liked the colour and the fact it had my name on it. It looks really cool. It doesn't look like a child's bike and it looks like the sort of bike a professional would ride.
I especially like that it has two sets of brakes, one on the top of the handlebars and one on the drops. When I first got it I found my hands weren't quite big enough to use the ones on the drops and also it wasn't that comfortable riding in the drops so it was better to use the ones on top. Now I am a bit more used to it it means I can switch between them easily.
I found the gears a bit confusing at first because there are no numbers on them and that is what I was used to. After a bit of practice I could work out which gear I needed to be when I was on the flat or going uphill but it took a bit of time to learn which gear I was in.
One of the best things about it is that it is really light. It makes it much easier for me to move it out of the garage than my old bike and it is just easier to manoeuvre. It also means you can go really fast. I definitely go a lot faster on this bike than my old one.
I've already recommended it to loads of my friends and quite a few of them have tried it. They really liked it too and I think it's the best bike that any of my friends have.
Dad's review
When you open up the Luath, the first thing you notice is how light it is. Matilda has been riding a Carrera (Halford's own in-house brand) racer with drop handlebars and although it is not ridiculously heavy, it is significantly more weighty than the Luath. In fact, the problem with most child's bikes is that they are heavier than our family suitcase for a three week holiday. This often puts children off bike riding, especially if they aren't strong enough to support it from falling over when they stop. The Luath weighs in at 9.9kg including pedals, which is pretty amazingly light by comparison with other children's bikes on the market.
It also looks good. Everything is well proportioned and it clearly isn't just the design of an adult's bike shrunk down to fit a child. Islabikes boast that they have short reach brake levers and proportional anatomic dropped handlebars, which means they have a shallow drop and shorter reach than the adult equivalent. For Matilda this is crucial as she doesn't have big hands and has struggled with her Carrera, saying that she has to stretch uncomfortably far forward and that her back hurts after even a 10 minute ride. The added touch of the decal with Matilda's name on it added to the professional feel too and was a nice touch.
Even though Matilda struggled with the gears early on, even on the first ride you could see that she was much better balanced than on her old bike and with the stability she became more confident more quickly. I now feel much happier about riding around London with her, albeit I will still be riding behind her and a little further out into the road to act as a barrier to crazy car drivers.
The bike is a 10 speed, which I was worried was not going to provide enough gear choices to deal with everything from the slightly downhill bits of Regents Park to the 18% sections of Swains Lane. But Islabikes has done a good job of getting a wide range of ratios into the 10 gears, meaning that the Luath can pretty much handle anything you point it at (although whether your 11 year old would thank you for a trip up Mont Ventoux is another matter).
The build quality is really good too. The frame is a lightweight aluminium that has held up to the inevitable bumps that a child will impose on it and we have had no issues with paintwork chipping or peeling, as I have seen on some cheaper bikes.
At £549.99 there will be a lot of people who say 'how can you spend that much on a kid's bike?' To which I would point out there is a healthy resale value in Islabikes and I would doubt you would lose more than about 15% of its value if you rode it for two seasons and then sold it on to someone.
But most importantly, you pay for a good quality build in the UK by specialists. If your child is really into their cycling and wants to race then you need a really decent bike, and to me this is the best currently on the market. Islabikes really do make the extra effort to build child-specific bikes, and while that does make them more pricey, it pays off in terms of the quality of the ride you get. For a Christmas or birthday present this would be super generous, but it would also be the present of a lifetime.
Check out the Luath at the Islabikes website
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