6/4/11

Bicycles for kids age 4-7.



My son is two years old now and rocking out daily on his Strider Push Bike and loving it. I highly recommend this bike for kids < 4 years old. However, it won't be long before he is ready for a pedal bike and my occasional search for light weight kids bike options have left me underwhelmed at best.

My nephew is in town for the summer, has a birthday coming up, and was in desperate need of some wheels. We opted to fill the void and hook him up. After some more research we found that the Specialized Hot Rock series offered the lightest weight bike (I suspect due to their use of aluminum vs. steel frames) for kids 4-7 years old.

We ended up getting him a Specialized Hot Rock 16 (kids bikes are sized by the wheel diameter, hence the 16 = 16" wheels) which as configured in the picture above (sans the training wheels and adding some heavy steel pegs) weighed in at 17.58 pounds. The competitors bikes in this space all come in around ~25 lbs (w/ training wheels) and the Hot Rock was at ~20 lbs before the mods. The bikes are all in the $200 range. Which is pretty steep if cycling isn't an avid part of your families lifestyle. Check out the Specialized Hot Rock series here... Specialized Hot Rock

If you are not sure what size bike to get your kid I recommend checking out this article from livestrong.com... Sizing Bicycles for Kids

Here are a couple of other big name bike companies offering bikes in this space...
Trek Bikes (Masa's daughter loves her Trek Mystic 16)
Giant Bikes
Marin Bikes

1 comment:

Derek said...

Check out Scott too. Good range of junior bikes. All seem to be 6061 aluminum.