Reflex Horizon 18sp Ladies Hybrid Bike Silver

Overall I'm happy with the bicycle. I was looking for a ladies bike that was a hybrid between a road and a off-road/mountain bicycle and this product met that requirement. I had difficulty sourcing a similar bike from local suppliers around Edinburgh, for a similar price.

Once the bike was built up, and adjusted, the ride quality was fine. The pannier rack is also practical and fitted as standard.

The point of caution I would raise is that the bicycle as delivered was not ready for the road. It has a couple of significant issues that had to be resolved, the person who built the bike explained the following needed done:

A number of adjustments were necessary requiring a set of tools and some bike maintenance knowledge/experience to achieve.

The adjustments were to re-pack the front wheel bearings and one pedal bearing with grease - surprisingly neither had any real lubrication and were grinding/crunching and running dry. The front yoke also had to be adjusted to remove significant movement within the steering column. The chain was not lubricated properly, nor was any of the shimano gear train nor any brake and gear cable runs. Some silicon spray fixed those issues. The front wheel, mudguards, reflector, bell, and seat height all had to be fitted or adjusted along with the re--setting the front brakes - this is standard and to be expected.

None of the above is a problem if you have the suitable spanners and other items in your toolkit and bit of bicycle maintenance experience. The handbook provided was useless (as far as setting up the bike was concerned) and seemed to cover other types of bicycle and the single allen key provided didn't seem to have a purpose.

We took 90 minutes to tune/adjust the bike using a full set of mechanics tools. I would recommend you find a knowledgeable friend with the range of tools required or buy one of the many bicycle maintenance books and ask locally about which tools to buy - if you haven't worked with bikes before.

Overall I would recommend the bicycle if you are looking for a hybrid road/off-road ladies bike, since on the road it seems fine to use. The shimano 18 speed gear train was a bit rough in the higher gears initially but I think after 10-20 miles that will resolve and settle down through use.

If like me, you are looking for a simple road/trail bike to play around on then this is a good buy and also looks very nice (identical to picture shown). However a friend who knows about bike maintenance or a local bike repair/build shop could be very useful, if like me you do not know the first thing about bikes!

I needed a bike as a result of the ever increasing fuel costs and in an effort to get a little fitter. I didnt want to pay a lot of money as my average journey to work is less than 5 miles.

I have not owned or ridden a bike for over 20 years I was pleased with the build quality and how comfortable I found my first outing on the bike. It feels really sturdy and the brakes are really responsive which was really comforting as I was a little wobbly to start with.

This is a great bike for the price. It arrived promptly and was excellently packaged. Fitting the front wheel, handle bars and mud guard was a little fiddly - but this was probably more my inexperience than a issue with the bike.

I am now hoping for a nice dry spring/summer/autumn so I can enjoy many bike rides.

I bought this bike for my mum's 60 something birthday! She hadn't ridden a bike for approximately twenty years but we thought it would be good for her to use when she retired. The bike arrived promptly and was very simple to assemble. It has a really lightweight frame and the gears are the twist type so are simple to operate. After a couple of shaky starts mum soon got the hang of riding this bike. We also bought some raleigh pannier bags to go on the bag so it can be used for shopping etc. My only complaint would be that it doesn't have a pump included. All in all, I would definately recommend this bicycle!!