What type of bike is best?

In the world of bicycles, there are many different styles and variations that offer a very specific set of abilities and comfort ranges.  For example, a road bike is built to be as aerodynamic as possible and offer as little rolling resistance to the road as possible. Whereas a downhill mountain bike is built to be extremely strong where it needs to be, with massive shock absorbers to take up as much of the terrain that you face.

When choosing what type of bike you are going to buy, it is imperative that you first take a good look at what type of riding you will be doing the most.  If you are going to be racing in triathlons and road courses then a dedicated road bike is what you are going to want to buy.  If you are going to be riding around as your main source of transportation, then a good bike to choose would be a good quality cross bike.  These bikes can sometimes include shock absorbers but most of the time the offer a nice comfortable ride that doesn’t take a lot of effort to get going on.  Now on the other side of the spectrum, mountain bikes get even more specific in what style is needed for certain riding styles.  For example, gravity bikes are designed with one thing in mind and one thing only, and that is to be able to be sent down mountains at ridiculously fast speeds and to be able to handle massive obstacles and be able to have enough suspension travel for riders to be able to hit jumps on these courses of up to and over 60 feet.  From there things begin to become slightly less crazy with your downhill bikes and then to your cross country bikes.  These still allow for a large amount of suspension travel, but the angles of the frame allow for an easier time in acceleration on flat and inclined slopes.  These bikes can also feature high tech accommodations like adjustable locking suspension and adjustable hydraulic disc brakes.  To be honest some mountain bikes easily have more design and technology developmental hours than some motorcycles.  On the most common and relaxed side of the mountain bike realm, we have the normal trail bikes that can be found in either full suspension, hard tail or static configurations. 

Every bike type listed before all have advantages depending upon what types of riding you will be doing, so the more research and thought that you put into what styles of riding you will be doing, the better off you will be.