Return your Woom 1 (shipping prepaid) to the company within two years of purchase, and Woom will put 40% of the returned bike’s original purchase price toward the next bike, one size up. (In this case, either a Woom 2 or a Woom 3.) You pay a one-time enrollment fee of about $60, but the discount would be renewed up to your purchase of a 26-inch-wheeled Woom 6. Though not as polished as the Strider or Co-op, this lightweight, low-slung bike will get most kids up and happily gliding along—and won’t bust the budget.
Our test kids generated slightly greater speed with the REV 12’s fat, inflatable tires, which are semi-knobby and offer good off-road traction. The bike’s 24-inch wheelbase, common to most of our picks, gives the bike a good mix of stability and agility. The tire valve stems also feature child-resistant valve caps—which you push down to turn like a child-safe lid on a bottle of pills—to keep your toddling tyke from mistaking them for raisins. The kids also liked the customizing sticker pack that came with the bike—letters, numbers, and illustrations of dinosaurs, birds, bunnies, and robots.
The Perfect Fit frame’s design has a raised handlebar that enables you to ride in an upright position. In addition, while you’re seated at a stop, both feet can rest flat on the ground. All these specific design elements, increase your confidence as you ride this Huffy cruiser bike. Cost depends on build quality, size, functionality, and additional features like electric assistance and cargo space.
Is there anything I’m going to run into while taking this apart, cleaning it up and getting it ready? The chain is rusted, so I’ll probably buy a new one also, but are there any tips or tricks to restoring a bike? She doesn’t necessarily like the color so I’m planning on taking everything off, sanding it down and repainting. I’m handy with a wrench around my truck, but I just want to make sure there isn’t anything ridiculous I’ll have to do and/or replace to get it ready for her. The Dynamite series empowers them to take it off-road with friends on these colorful bikes. Most electric folding-bike options come with a 250-watt motor and enough torque for safe but fast acceleration.
Considerations will differ per rider depending on a person’s specific situation and expected uses of the bike. Price, weight, and folded size tend to be the deciding factors for most buyers, but if you’re not picky about those, consider performance and ride quality. Choose a folding bike with a comfortable riding position, stable handling, and appropriate gearing for your typical routes. In terms of construction, huffy bicycle the Banana Bike was nowhere near as easy to build as our other picks. It comes with axles and accompanying hardware pre-threaded and attached, but the trick was attaching them to the front and rear forks so that they weren’t too loose or too tight. This required some attentive wrenching with two wrenches (the bike came with only one) and paying close attention to the diagram on the instruction sheet.
The handlebar grips are marginally kid-scale with a grip circumference of 3.5 inches, and the seat is also right at the edge of what a little kid would need at a large 5.5 by 8 inches. You can easily raise and lower the seat via a quick-release lever from a minimum height of 12.25 inches to huffy bicycle a max of 15.5 inches (a shorter max height than both our main pick and the runner-up) while you can raise the handlebar stem 3 inches. The Banana’s super-light foam tires and wheels work fine on paved and carpeted surfaces, but were quite slippy on kitchen linoleum and hardwood floors.
The bike is nonetheless handsome, and it performs well once it’s dialed in, allowing a kid to start and stop comfortably, ride easy or hard and fast, and to bail without issue in the inevitable wipeout. At 23 pounds, it’s one of the easier folding bikes to carry, so it’s ideal for folks who live in a walk-up building or for those who have limited storage space. The Liberte features an 8-speed Shimano drivetrain for smooth gear shifting and the ability to tackle various terrains with ease. The bike has a 400Wh battery with a 69-mile range and fits riders 4-foot-11-inches to 6-foot-5-inches. With all that, it’s still a great folder—it feels as nimble as a regular bike when riding, but once you’re done, you can lower the handlebar, and stand the bike on its rear rack to fit into compact spaces.
However, many folding bikes have adjustable components, such as the seat post, stem angle, and handlebars to improve fit and comfort. Many folding bikes use 20-inch wheels to ensure they fold down to a manageable size and stay relatively light when commuting or traveling on public transport. If you plan on riding longer distances, 700c wheels will offer a smooth ride and maximize your pedaling input. The Strider 12 Sport comes without a rear linear-pull hand brake—the ideal kind for a balance bike. Most kids can indeed stop a balance bike even on moderate hills with nothing more than their feet or simply step off the back of the bike, but a good squeeze of a hand brake can stop them faster. Strider does sell a $20 simple add-on foot-operated brake, which can also help teach coaster braking skills.
This allows riders to pack a full-size bike into a case that is under the TSA size limit for oversized luggage. Most folding bikes come “one size fits all” with lots of built-in adjustability. A model with a lot of versatility might even be suitable for more than one member of your family. Ryan McFarland, John Bradley, WeeBikeShop’s Ivan Altinbasak, and most everyone I interviewed consider training wheels to be about the worst thing you can put on kids’ bikes. Making a turn with training wheels with too much speed can throw a kid from their bike. Typically, too, training wheels encourage parents to buy bikes far too big for their kids.
Folding bikes, not surprisingly, have become increasingly popular among urban commuters, frequent travelers, and apartment-dwellers—all the kinds of riders who might have limited storage space. Cannondale’s $225 Trail Balance bike (it comes in boys’ and girls’ versions, which are identical apart from the colors) is unique, with its single-sided lefty-style fork, made famous on Cannondale’s big mountain bikes. The Woom’s beautifully cast aluminum forks are attached to a unique steering limiter, which is little more than a strap and a thick O-ring bushing. The limiter offers progressively greater resistance once the handlebar approaches a 90-degree angle, preventing the rider from making jarring and potentially over-the-handlebar stops. When your kid no longer needs it, simply pop off the O-ring and let it dangle.