Should you buy a £500 new or a £500 used bike?

Nothing beats buying a new bike, but it’s a process fraught with lots of important decisions. The first, and arguably most important, is whether you want to buy a new or used bike.

Naturally, we’d all ideally like to have a brand new shiny steed, but this invariably comes with a huge hit to our bank accounts. That’s why many cyclists turn to second-hand bikes as a cheaper alternative, but how much more value for your money do you actually get by going used?

GCN’s Ollie Bridgewood wanted to find out, so he bought a new and used bike, both for £500, to find out how they compare.

• Read more: Top tips for buying a second-hand bike

The new £500 bike

Chris Boardman is a name steeped in cycling prestige, with the British rider boasting a time trial world title, multiple Tour de France stage victories, and an Olympic gold medal. Since the 1990s, when all of that success was delivered, the Boardman name has been used for a range of high-quality but affordable road bikes.

One of these bikes is the Boardman SLR 8.6 which Ollie picked up for a bargain price of only £450, down from its usual £650. It’s an entry-level road bike and like many that hold this tag, it has an aluminium frame combined with a carbon fork.

It’s specced with Shimano’s lower-tier Claris groupset which packs in eight-speed gearing and, proof that they’re not extinct just yet, rim brakes.

All of this combines into a package that weighs 10.4kg - over 3kg heavier than the UCI’s legal weight limit, but then that doesn’t really matter for the majority of riders.

Ollie had a more in-depth look at the bike in a separate video, which you can check out here.

The second-hand £500 bike

It’s up against a Pinarello FP Uno, which may be familiar to you. That’s because we’ve used it before and the bike has already conquered some impressive challenges in Ollie’s company, including an ascent of the Stelvio Pass.

It’s now over a decade old but is still instantly recognisable as a Pinarello bike by its curved fork and seatstays, something of a trademark look for the Italian brand’s bikes - even the brand’s current race bike, the Dogma F, still sports the same curved silhouette.

Like the Boardman, it has rim brakes, but it also benefits from more gears through the Shimano 10-speed groupset. This is a conglomeration of parts from multiple tiers, including Tiagra brakes, an Ultegra cassette and chainset, plus 105 shifters.

• Read more: How to find the best budget bike for you

The bike comes from the age before aerodynamics dominated, when lightweight was king, so it’s no surprise that it tips the scales at 8.4kg, a full 2kg below the Boardman bike.

How do the new and second-hand bikes compare?

To find out how they compared, Ollie completed a timed hilly route on both bikes, except this wasn’t an all-out effort - we’re far too scientific for that! Instead, Ollie held an average power of 200 watts for both efforts so we could see how much that power transferred into performance, and the results were telling.

Second-hand bike: 30 minutes 5 seconds, 199-watt average

New bike: 30 minutes 52 seconds, 198-watt average

The second-hand bike was 47 seconds faster, which is a huge amount over that amount of distance. After a deep dive into the results, it was clear that the lower weight drove most of that difference, as the Pinarello was 25 seconds faster on the 2.5km climb embedded in the route.

Pros and cons

The results are clear, then: the second-hand bike is the best option. Well, not quite, as things aren’t that simple and there are many other factors to consider. Many of these are subjective, like ride quality and comfort which will be individual to each rider, but Ollie picked up on a few things on the rides.

The first was the benefits of modern gearing. While the Boardman bike has fewer gears, it has a wider range with a largest 32-tooth cog on the cassette. That’s on-trend with modern thinking but older bikes, like our Pinarello Uno, come from an age when spinning wasn’t really considered important, hence why it has a largest 28t cog. A four cog difference doesn’t sound huge but it is out on the road, where Ollie found himself grinding up the climb on the Pinarello, although it didn’t slow him down.

Another modern trend has resulted in wider tyres, although the Boardman didn’t fully take advantage of this. The maximum width it can accommodate is 28mm, although Ollie reckons you can squeeze something wider on, whereas the Pinarello can only go up to 25mm - a very snug 25mm. Tyre width affects numerous things, like rolling resistance and grip, but it was the comfort that Ollie noticed. The Pinarello had a much more unforgiving ride.

So, the Boardman redeemed itself in other ways such as comfort and practicality, but the Pinarello undoubtedly provided the best performance package, not only in results, but on the road where Ollie felt that it was noticeably snappier and more responsive.

This is only a snapshot of the differences between a used and a second-hand bike, and the differences will vary greatly depending on the specific bikes.

Then there’s the fear of buying a crash-damaged second-hand bike to contend with, something that isn’t always obvious when inspecting it. Fear not! We’ve pulled together a guide to help sieve out the second-hand disasters from the gems.

For more buying advice, head over to the ‘How to’ section on the GCN website.