Before I got my Ragley Blue Pig X I naturally read a few reviews, a mixture of reviews in magazines and owners reviews on forums. I tend to take owners reviews with a pinch of salt; you don’t know their level of experience, their riding history or if they are just trying to justify their purchase to themselves.
Magazines, on the other hand, have reviewers who’s main passion is mountain biking, who ride all the time, have ridden lots of different bikes in all sorts of conditions. Or so you hope.
There are people out there who are so in tune with their riding and the bike that they can micro analyse the frame or each component to the nth degree but I suspect not all bike reviewers have this skill.
The real problem is that when all you know is that you liked the bike and it did a bit better in certain sections of the trail than others, the reviewer then has to write enough to fill the page, come across as knowledgeable and be better than the other magazines. It often produces a lot of flowery wank and misinformation.
Don’t get me wrong, I can read between the lines and know who to trust. Steve Worland springs to mind as knowledgeable, honest and practical and I’m sure there are others who’s names I can’t remember.
I don’t have the reviews to hand that I read about the Blue Pig but some of them basically said that you had to be an aggressive rider to appreciate the bike. What a load of rubbish. I’m not particularly aggressive on the bike our have great skills but that geometry has helped me ride trickier lines than I could before and generally have more fun. If I’d believed the reviews I wouldn’t have got one, luckily I had the chance of a test ride and ended up having more fun on a bike than I have in a long time.