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BUYER'S GUIDE

8 of the best 2021 new-generation hybrids — and why your next bike should be one of them

No longer dull, hybrid 2.0 bikes combine practicality and speed

Hybrids have been around since the 1980s, but in the last few years a distinctly modern version has emerged. Here’s why your next bike should be a hybrid 2.0.

  • Hybrid bikes combine some of the features of road bikes and mountain bikes, hence the name

  • The bikes we call hybrid 2.0 take disc brakes from mountain bikes and compact double-chainring gear systems from sporty road bikes

  • The result is bikes that are quick and fun, but still comfortable; ideal for the streets or the lanes

  • For round-town use, budget for a rack and mudguards too; these bikes almost always come 'stripped down'

  • Prices start around £400

8 of the best hybrid 2.0 bikes

The bikes known as hybrids combine road bike size 700C wheels with mountain bike brakes and gears. They appeared not long after mountain bikes became popular in the 1980s, providing riders who didn’t want to ride off-road with the other advantages of mountain bikes: upright position, powerful brakes, and wide gear range.

Hybrids have long been the best-selling bike type in the UK, and they’ve developed along with changes in the bikes that supply their components. In the last few years, with compact chainsets dominating on road bikes, and disk brakes providing reliable, powerful and weatherproof stopping for mountain bikes, we’ve seen a new generation of hybrids develop: hybrid 2.0, if you like.

Kinesis Tripster ACE - drive train.jpg

Compact chainsets are good for hybrids because they can provide a wide gear range without the complication of an extra chainring, especially when combined with the rear sprocket sets intended for mountain bikes. There are still plenty of hybrids on offer with triple chainsets, but they’re now an unnecessary complication, even more so than for most road bikes.

Disc brakes are the development that really ushered in hybrid 2.0. Since hybrids get used around town a lot, they need brakes that are affected as little as possible by the weather, and immune to the effects of a wheel getting dented or knocked out of true.

Kinesis Tripster ACE - rear disc brake

Those are the big advantages of disc brakes, and there’s another bonus too. I see an awful lot of bikes with very badly set-up rim brakes, and in particular V-brakes that are flapping around with the cable unconnected; closing them is awkward and people just give up. Discs have their issues too, but at least if you get the wheel into place, they work.

What are hybrids good for?

Their upright riding position and good brakes makes hybrids ideal for short trips round town. That doesn’t just mean commuting, which actually accounts for a minority of short trips, but also general getting around, visiting friends, going to the pub or the shops and like that.

With a rack and especially with mudguards a hybrid is practical, sensibly-priced general transportation. A few hundred quid for a decent hybrid — less with a Cycle To Work scheme deal — pays for itself in a just a few months of not driving or using public transport.

But hybrids aren’t just about practical cycling. They’re great for unhurried country lane pootling. The upright riding position lets you sit up and enjoy the view and the medium-width tyres let you explore dirt roads and tracks as well a poorly-maintained back lanes.

If you’re accustomed to speeding through the countryside with your head down and bum up, a hybrid is an altogether more relaxing ride, but still capable of covering distance. And yes, you can ride poor roads and a bit of dirt on your regular road bike, but a hybrid frees you from constantly scanning for every rock and pothole.

Eight great hybrid 2.0 bikes

Even within the hybrid 2.0 spec of double chainset and disc brakes there’s a lot of variation, along a spectrum from upright and cruisy to low-slung and speedy. Here are a few we like.

Carrera Subway All Weather — £430

2020 Carrera Subway All Weather

Here's an eminently practical example of hybrid 2.0, especially if you plan to ride through the winter. The all-weather edition of Halfords' popular Carrera Subway comes with mudguards, lights, reflective decals and heated grips, a feature we're not aware of being offered by any other bike maker. Now, that may be because it's a gimmick, but considering the rest of the spec here is very decent for the money, it's a gimmick we'd be willing to take a chance on. Oh, and the brakes are Clarks Clout hydraulic discs, considered in the mountain bike world to be the best budget stoppers you can buy.

Triban RC500 Flat Bar Road Bike — £649.99

Triban RC500 flat bar

The flat bar bike in Decathlon's Triban RC range is a great example of hybrid 2.0. The riding position is fairly upright for a cruisy ride even with drop bars; with flats it's perfect for unhurried country lane exploring or the office run. There's plenty of space for mudguards, and you could easily go up a tyre size or two as well.

Boardman HYB 8.6 2021 — £550

2021 Boardman Hyb 8.6

Flat-bar bikes have always been a mainstay of the Boardman range, and the latest selection includes this great-value runabout. Shimano Acera mountain bike gears provide a wide range with a bottom ratio that should get you up the steepest urban hills even if you're laden with shopping. Tektro hydraulic brakes bring it to a halt.

Cube SL Road Race 2022 — £1,350

2022 Cube SL Road Race

Here's a go-faster hybrid that will still take bad roads and trails in its stride thanks to its 40mm Schwalbe G-One Allround tyres. Hung on the lightweight aluminium frame are a set of Tektro hydraulic discs and Shimano GRX 22-speed gears with an 11-34 cassette for a wide gear range. It's a bit short of features and extras, but there are mounts for rack and eyelets, so you can fit them without too much faff.

Genesis Croix De Fer 10 Flat Bar 2021 — £1,249.99

2021 Genesis Croix De Fer 10 Flat Bar

The Ridgeback/Genesis bike family has always excelled at practical bikes and the Croix De Fer 10 Flat Bar carries that tradition into hybrid 2.0 territory with an 11-34 cassette for a very wide gear range that'll get you up just about anything in the UK. There are mounts for a rack and mudguards (and just about anything else you can imagine), so you can set it up for touring as well as round town use.

Cannondale Women's Quick Disc 1 2021 — £1,200

2020 Cannondale Quick 1 Womens hybrid

A bike with an upright riding position doesn't need a women's version as much as a drop-bar bike, but it's nice to get components like an appropriate saddle as part of the package, without having to get the shop to swap them over.

There's a men's version too, for the same price.

Merida Speeder 900 2022 — £1,450

2022 Merida Speeder 900

A flat bar bike called Speeder — well, it's almost mandatory that it'l be hybrid 2.0. And this is what we find. The Speeder 900 has Shimano's excellent second-tier Ultegra gears and hydraulic disc brakes. It rolls on quick but comfortable Maxxis Detonator 32mm tyres and it's very much a fast flat-bar bike. In his review of the Speeder 900, Matt Lamy said: "The sheer speed and efficiency lurking within the Speeder 900 is hard to ignore. This is a very fast bike."

Specialized Sirrus 4.0 Disc — £1,499

2021 Specialized Sirrus 4.0

Quite possibly the ultimate example of hybrid 2.0, the Sirrus 4.0 has a carbon fibre frame, making for a light and lively ride, and Trek's IsoSpeed decoupler, which isolates the saddle from bumps by detaching the top of the seat tube from the seatstays and top tube.

Explore the complete archive of reviews of urban and hybrid bikes on road.cc

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John has been writing about bikes and cycling for over 30 years since discovering that people were mug enough to pay him for it rather than expecting him to do an honest day's work.

He was heavily involved in the mountain bike boom of the late 1980s as a racer, team manager and race promoter, and that led to writing for Mountain Biking UK magazine shortly after its inception. He got the gig by phoning up the editor and telling him the magazine was rubbish and he could do better. Rather than telling him to get lost, MBUK editor Tym Manley called John’s bluff and the rest is history.

Since then he has worked on MTB Pro magazine and was editor of Maximum Mountain Bike and Australian Mountain Bike magazines, before switching to the web in 2000 to work for CyclingNews.com. Along with road.cc founder Tony Farrelly, John was on the launch team for BikeRadar.com and subsequently became editor in chief of Future Publishing’s group of cycling magazines and websites, including Cycling Plus, MBUK, What Mountain Bike and Procycling.

John has also written for Cyclist magazine, edited the BikeMagic website and was founding editor of TotalWomensCycling.com before handing over to someone far more representative of the site's main audience.

He joined road.cc in 2013. He lives in Cambridge where the lack of hills is more than made up for by the headwinds.

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42 comments

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E6toSE3 replied to dobbo996 | 2 years ago
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Agreed. At budget level, disk brakes blow rim brakes away. Huge advantage of disk brakes is allowing fatter tyres - 700C * 38mm near slicks are perfect for potholes and lumpy roads of south east London. Fatter even than 1970s 27" * 1(1/4) tyres but still fast enough

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E6toSE3 replied to IanEdward | 2 years ago
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Ultegra rim brakes on my 2007 Cannondale Ultra-Six are great. V-brakes that replaced the cantilivers in the recall of my first generation Specialized Tricross not great. Weinman 500s on early 1980s Weinman concave rims just about OK except in very wet conditions feplaced by early Shimano 105s which were a revelation. Weinman 7?0s in 1970s and 1980s - almost useless in wet and expensive on worn out toes to my shoes.

But the big surprise is my very new £580 Orbea Car-Pe hybrid commuter with Shimano Tourney mechanical disk brakes on steep up and down hills of south east London including living on Shooters Hill. Utterly brilliant and easy to adjust and maintain for squeak free (so far) precise control.

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kev-s | 7 years ago
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Had my Whyte Shoreditch for 3 years now, mainly used for commuting (20 mile round trip each day) and its been faultless

Carbon forks, hydralic disc brakes, deore rear mech and shifters as standard

 

Only thing ive changed is the tyres to durano plus and binned the crappy crank for a deore one to match the rest of the groupset

 

Best £600 ive ever spent, they are on offer at the moment for £500

https://www.winstanleysbikes.co.uk/product/79587/Whyte_Shoreditch_2016_M...

 

 

 

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Roberts Clubman | 7 years ago
1 like

My wife got a Liv Thrive 0 on the btw scheme, and  I struggled to keep up on my old steel mtb commuter.So, I bought a Merida Speeder 500 and haven't looked back. Triple butted alloy frame full carbon fork, Shimano hydraulic discs, internal cable runs and Ultegra 11sp for £950 brand new. With a rack and mudguards fitted and the stock Maxxis Detonators swapped out for Conti Gatorskins it has been an ultra reliable all year all weathers fast commuter. Plus it's a fun ride and really moves when the mood takes.I can't fault it. For 2017 the same money will only buy you the 400 which is 105 and alloy instead of carbon forks and seatpost. But there are still 2016 500s to be had. Fatbirds Don't Fly are selling them off at £750 - that's a steal given the high spec. Update- now appear to be sold out. If you can still find one in your size -grab it quick!

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Argos74 | 7 years ago
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Difficult to argue with the Boardman Hybrid Pro - marked down to £750 at the moment, 9.6kg, SRAM Rival 1x chainset, aggressively speedy and handles like a dream.

 

But for a few euros under £1250, I'm looking very covetously at the Canyon Roadlite. The top of the range model comes in at 8.5kg and fitted out with some very tasty kit - full Ultegra drivetrain, internal routing, and so on. Arguably, the wheels would be first in line for an upgrade, but for a performance flat-barred road bike, struggling to find anything that even comes close.

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SDK-R | 7 years ago
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I bought a Hybrid Specialized Sirrus Elite Disc last year for chasing my 5 year old son around the park, as it looked ridiculous using my carbon MTB and road bike for such trips.

Last week my road bike was out of action so I used it for some 30 mile training road rides. It weighs around 12kg so going up hills was a drag but overall it worked great.

I was even considering fitting a drop bar to it for Winter training but soon found the incompatibility with bar thickness and gear fitting.

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LastBoyScout | 7 years ago
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I bought a barely used Whyte Portobello on eBay for < 1/2 price, mainly for putting daughter's bike seat on, but it's been great for local errands.

I don't find it so good for commuting, as the wider bars aren't as easy for filtering through traffic as my road bike.

Pretty soon after I bought it, I swapped the 80mm stem for a 100mm, as it felt like I was going over the bars standing up. The next size up bike would have been too big for me, I think.

I've got 2 criticisms with it.

1 - the rear hub is already knackered. The previous owner didn't know much about bikes to maintain it, but I don't think he did a huge amount of miles on it, either. I've got a replacement, but the flanges are different, so I need new spokes to swap it over.

2 - I'd like to put cyclocross tyres on it to make it better on gravel tracks, but there's not enough clearance on the chain stays. Which is a shame, as there's plenty of clearance on the seat stays and fork. I'd definitely watch that if I got another hybrid.

 

The alternative would be a 29" hard-tail mountain bike fitted with slicks, but that'll be somewhat heavier, even if you swapped the suspension fork for a rigid one.

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SpaceFlightOrange | 7 years ago
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I had a Boardman Hybrid Comp for a while, to compliment my Focus Cayo, but in looking for a "winter bike" I replaced it with a B'Twin Triban 7. The Triban is a superb road bike for the money but for winter, finding a suitable set of mudguards (apart from Cruds) has proved extremely difficult.

I 'love my T7, but I really miss my Boardman. nothing I own compares for commuting. I also felt there was a bit of a stigma around having a flat bar road bike. I was wrong. Even in Winter the Boardman was great.

Cheap too! The latest range sees the Team at the same price point, but the spec is much better. Shame my company dont support the same Cycle to Work scheme that Halfords do.

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flobble | 7 years ago
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I've been considering adding a flat bar bike to my stable for the commute, but have struggled to find one which is genuinely long and low, permitting an aggressive position akin to my race bikes. Pretty much everything I've looked at combines a longer reach (top tube) with a shorter stem and (the killer) a longer headtube/stack height.

The BMC bike above puts the grips at about the same height as the hoods on a race bike, so that's a start, but £1200...

Any one else already done the research addressing this specific issue?

Avatar
Langsam replied to flobble | 7 years ago
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flobble wrote:

I've been considering adding a flat bar bike to my stable for the commute, but have struggled to find one which is genuinely long and low, permitting an aggressive position akin to my race bikes. Pretty much everything I've looked at combines a longer reach (top tube) with a shorter stem and (the killer) a longer headtube/stack height.

Any one else already done the research addressing this specific issue?

 

Convert one of your race bikes instead to flat bars and (for example) 2x10 speed Tiagra trigger shifters. Easy.

Avatar
oceandweller replied to flobble | 7 years ago
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flobble wrote:

I've been considering adding a flat bar bike to my stable for the commute, but have struggled to find one which is genuinely long and low, permitting an aggressive position akin to my race bikes.

My regular ride is a straight bar 'cross bike, a Condor Terra X with carbon forks & a mix of road & MTB bits on it. It works a treat for my preferred riding, country lanes & bridleways, quick on tarmac, agile on gravel, capable even on rocks & roots. I've done a fair few 100+ km road rides on it too, at a good pace & in great comfort.

I needed an upright riding position (bad back & neck) so I got a smaller-than-normal size & fitted a lot of spacers below the stem but I'm pretty sure a bigger-than-normal size with a slammed stem would give you the kind of stetched out position you want. (But start off cutting the steerer conservatively with loads of spacers above the stem first, & experiment with different riding positions.)

Bear in mind that you'll need MTB gears & brakes to work with straight bar shifters & levers (though SRAM are now making MTB-style trigger shifters to match their road 1x11 groups, specifically for straight bar road bikes).

You'll probably need to experiment with the stem; IME if it's too long the handling feels weird, like trying to steer a supermarket trolley, while very short makes the bike twitchy & the position too upright.

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flobble replied to oceandweller | 7 years ago
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oceandweller wrote:
flobble wrote:

I've been considering adding a flat bar bike to my stable for the commute, but have struggled to find one which is genuinely long and low, permitting an aggressive position akin to my race bikes.

(snip)

You'll probably need to experiment with the stem; IME if it's too long the handling feels weird, like trying to steer a supermarket trolley, while very short makes the bike twitchy & the position too upright.

That's the trouble with converting bikes originally intended for drop bars - the shorter top tube means you need a massive stem to get the grips in the right place. And even though that puts your hands where they were on the drops, it still feels odd. Maybe because of hand orientation on the flat bars.

I did exactly this conversion to my wife's Cannondale Synapse (she never got on with drops), and it has always felt odd to me, though she likes it. She has a 130mm stem on a 48cm bike.

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