Name brand di2 complete or Chiner build?

[PineappleExpress234]

Hi everyone,

I'm planning my next roadbike from a 15 year old Pinarello running Ultegra 6600.

I'm slowly weighing up the options of buying complete vs building. I understand building will always be more expensive, but with recent price drops across the industry it's difficult to see the value in Chinese bikes.

Take this Merida Scultura 6000 as an example. $3,600 AUD for a bike with 105 di2 is a fantastic price. Cheapest complete 105 groupset down here is $2,000 AUD leaving me with $1,600 for basically everything else.

On the flip side, I'd buy a complete bike for $3,600 then be inclined to spend another ~$1000 on wheels and tyres. Plus a couple hundred on bits and pieces over time to have the bike fit just right.

If we look at a budget of $4,500 then a build from scratch could be much more feasible. 1k frame, 1k wheels, 2k groupset leaves $500 for all other bits. The shortfall being the lack of dealer support and manufacturer warranty.

I guess the question from all of this is: Financially, where does a Chiner build excel over a name brand, complete bike?

[PLA]

The answer is a chiner build doesn't compete with a merida scultura 6000. The scultura is better value. But a polygon helios is better value still.

It starts to make slightly more financial sense when you build a chiner frame up with a mechanical Chinese group. But meh that comes with its own issues.

If you like to build yourself and know what stem length, bar width/flare/reach, crank length, chainring size, cassette, saddle, tyres, bb you like or maybe have stuff you want to carry over, then maybe it makes more sense because you can get your fully custom build at a similar/slightly lower cost to a prebuilt that still needs stuff changing to your liking.

But factoring in that even the better chiner frames have essentially 0 resale, it makes less sense.

If you want to build, you could just buy a tcr frame on sale. At least then you'll get a warranty and resale and it won't cost much more than a chiner frame.

Or just buy a prebuilt poly a7x with 105 di2 and carbon hoops for $4300 from bikesonline.

[raisinberry777]

I feel like I'm fairly well-placed to answer this - having gone through basically the same process last year deciding between a Chinese bike, a Merida Scultura 6000 and a Polygon Helios with 105 Di2 (I'm also Australian-based, so these are basically the cheapest electronic options).

TL;DR: I went with the Merida and upgraded. Full story below.

The goal was:

- Under $5k AUD ($3250 USD)
- Decent frame (was willing to consider Chinese - bought a Velobuild 8 years ago and it was pretty good)
- Under 8kg with pedals
- Dual-sided or spider-based power
- Wheels at least 50mm deep and at least 23mm wide, prefereably with name brand hubs and spokes, preferably under 1400g
- Electronic shifting, preferably 12 speed
- Hydraulic brakes
- Good quality tubeless tyres at least 30mm wide
- No totally proprietary stem/bar setups - not too difficult to find one-piece bar/stem combo
- Easy to find a zero offset or short offset seatpost (my position requires a zero offset post on most medium size bikes)
- 38cm c-t-c bars

The Merida provided an extremely cheap starting point at $2750 AUD with 105 Di2. 99 Bikes were selling them at 25% off RRP, but for an extra discount, their gift cards were available at 15% off. Worth keeping an eye out for these deals for any Australians looking for one of these.

The stock build for the Merida is not great, but I was willing to forgive that for the price. The issues are:
- stock wheels are crap - 17mm internal, heavy, not tubeless ready.
- tyres are some low-end Contis, not bad, but not tubeless and only 28mm. You expect that on most OEM bikes though
- handlebar is much too wide, the 42cm bar measured at 43cm and the bar tape is cheap
- stock saddle is heavy, but again, you expect that

In favour, the factors were:
- price gave me a lot of room for upgrades within budget
- nothing unusual about the frame - BB86 bottom bracket, FSA headset, round 27.2mm seatpost(!!), fairly standard race geometry
- world-tour tested (means little, really, but it's nice)
- media reviews tended to be favourable, particularly for the frame
- pearlescent white paintjob is nice

In the end, I bought that and it's now been upgraded with:

Kocevlo one-piece bar and stem, 38x100
Elita One 27.2 zero offset seatpost
Elita One carbon railed, carbon base saddle
Farsports Hyper wheels with DT Swiss 350 hubs and Sapim CX-Ray spokes
Pirelli P-Zero Race TLR (Italy version) 700*30
Magene PES power meter

Final weight: 7.95kg
Final spend: $4,970



I'm super happy with it - it's a nice upgrade from my previous (lighter) rim brake bike, a Focus Izalco Max. It's significantly more comfortable - the 30mm tyres play a big part. The only thing I'm having issues with is the headset with the Kocevlo spacers - it's been a pain finding a balance between having the headset tight enough to remove knocking and stop the split spacers from coming apart, but not having it so tight that it binds the headset. Other than that very minor issue, it's been amazing. The FarSports wheels in particular are excellent - I ordered them without spoke holes for easy tubeless setup, and the Pirelli tyres were quite easy to get on and sealed straight away with a track pump - that impressed me a lot!

I skipped the Polygon Helios because:
- stock wheels are relatively heavy and only 19mm internal.  Cam Nicholls also wasn't a fan of them (see his ride review on YouTube).
- stock handlebars are much too wide for me (42cm) so the integrated bar/stem would need to be replaced anyway

Apart from those two things, it ticks most of the boxes.

I skipped the Chinese frames because:
- groupsets are too expensive to get in Australia on their own compared to a full bike, unless you get lucky on a second-hand set
- the price of framesets from the more reliable brands (LightCarbon, Carbonda, etc.) is starting to get to a point where it becomes better to buy a lower tier frame from a major manufacturer.
- I'd have to pay extra for custom paint, I've had a matte black bike for the last 3 years so I wanted a change. Some are not willing to do custom paint without an MOQ.

[Takiyaki]

This is the conundrum for me as well, though I am leaning towards a build. If I could buy a low end Canyon/Giant carbon frameset in a color I like for $1000-1500 I'd go that route. But getting a whole bike for $3K, then going through the rigamarole of selling and swapping parts... I'd rather just do a custom build. Money wise I'd wager it's the same but time and hassle wise going one way or the other is "cheaper".

Plus with Chinese bikes you can get custom paint for cheap which is increasingly important to me.

[carbonazza]

If you go with top-end components, with all carbon parts direct from China you get usually a bike similar in weight or lighter, better equipped for half the price you would get in a shop.
On the other side, if you equip it with cheap chinese components, you end up with a bike that is still expensive like 2000+ but lighter in general
And in between plenty of variation that will depend case by case.
With the big elephant in the room, not having a sticker on the frame makes the bike really hard to sell for a good price.