You can find bikes for women from various brands but Trek and Giant are best in this regard. If you have the opportunity, visit your local bike shop to see these bikes in person before you make your final decision. The 160mm travel Giant Reign comes in aluminum as well as carbon fiber frames.
These are sometimes called “endurance” bikes because riders end up taking them out for hours at a time. The Defy and Avail are endurance road bikes that prioritize rider comfort. The frame is designed with more vertical compliance than the TCR or Propel to reduce fatigue on long rides or rough roads. They use more relaxed geometry with a longer wheelbase and lower bottom bracket for more stability, and more stack for an upright riding position.
But you will still have thousands of people voting for one brand over the other, and visa versa. There are some slight differences between the bikes that could help you decide whether you prefer a Giant bike over a Trek bike. We’ve just reduced the price of our 71 page ‘Bicycle Commuting Handbook’ by 50% for a short time. Keep fit and save money by using your bike for more things like running errands and commuting to work. Yes, as the world’s largest manufacturer of bicycles, Giant bikes are good.
The carbon-fiber Defy Advanced 3 rides smooth, light, and fast, with a peppy responsiveness that’s ideal for fondos and hard training rides. With a Shimano Tiagra groupset, cable-to-hydraulic disc brakes, and an upright riding position, this bike offers value and performance, which is part of this reason it won a 2018 Editors’ Choice award. Confident handling on descents, tubeless rims and tires, and sweet paint complete this solid, affordable model. Make sure to get a bike that will fit your riding style, don’t go for a full suspension if you just want to commute or ride mellow trails. In general a hardtail is always a safe and less expensive choice.
The differences don’t stop there, the RockShox Yari RC Debonair offers 180mm of travel and the RockShox Super Deluxe Coil Select allows for 160mm of travel. The Reign SX gets a full Shimano Deore drivetrain with MT501 levers hosed up to MT520 callipers. The crankset changes too, this time there’s a Praxis Cadet with a 34t chainring with a Giant custom design MRP CS chain guide. Prices for Giant’s mountain bikes start £400 and go up to £8,000 – they also have a complete gravel bike range too , plus women’s specific Liv branded models.
The Trance 29 2 gets an aluminium frame with a Fox 34 Float Rhythm fork with a GRIP damper matched with a Fox Float DPS Performance shock. It gets a full Shimano SLX drivetrain including the cranks which come with a 30t chainring. This bike rolls on Giant AM 29 rims with Shimano hubs with a Maxxis Minion DHF 29×2.3″ 3C, EXO tyre on the front and a Maxxis Aggressor 29×2.3″ to the same spec giant mountain as the front tyre. It’s built around Giant’s Advanced-Grade Composite frame and has a Fox 36 Factory with a FIT4 damper up front and a DPX2 Factory both with Fox’s fancy Live Valve tech. It comes with a drivetrain from Shimano which is a mostly XT but with an XTR shifter. The crankset also comes from Shimano and the Deore XT crank with a 30t chainring and carbon MRP AMG V2 chain guide.
It’s the cheapest in the range but still comes with some pretty decent kit. It’s built around an alloy frame with a Fox Float SC Performance fork and Fox Float DPS Performance shock. It gets a full Shimano SLX drivetrain and crankset with a 32t chainring. The wheels on this one are a pair of Giant XCT 29’s and they’re wrapped in a pair of Maxxis Rekon Race 29×2.25 TLR, EXO tyres. The rest of the bike is finished off with Giants own kit and matches the spec of the rest of the range.
The Giant Manufacturing Company in Taiwan has not, as one might suspect, always produced Giant brand bikes, but it has always manufactured bicycles. King Liu founded his company giant ROAD BIKES in 1972 as a frame manufacturing subcontractor for a variety of bicycle brands. It wasn’t until 1981 that the cycling brand Giant, as we know it today, came to exist.
Giant have a separate brand altogether for their women’s bike and it’s called Liv. We’ll be doing a whole new buyer’s guide to Liv mountain bikes very soon. The Giant Dirt-E+ electric bikes are all hardtails with 120mm travel suspension forks. They’re more aimed at light trail use and general go-anywhere bikes for beginners and casual all-round cyclists.