Balance Bikes - are they worth buying

Balance bikes rule!

Both of my kids have strider-style bikes (cheap copies) and they've been great at about £25 a throw. The more expensive options look great but I don't believe that higher quality componants will really enhance the experience a great deal.

Depending on the age/size of the child stripping the drivetrain off of a regular bike works fine (unless you want to enter them into any balance bike races, where convered bikes are not usually allowed). My daughter started using her's at 18 months and would have been way too small to use a convered bike. She's now riding a pedal bike but we still use the balance bike if we're walking anywhere so that's another advantage.

Absolutely agree that a balance bike is a great way to easily learn to ride.  All of my children have used them and have done well.  Buy a second hand one off ebay.  That's probably the cheapest way forward.

After 3 years I easily sold our Islabike Rothan for as much as we paid for it. You can't get much cheaper than that.

Stabilisers are counterproductive, I'd strongly recommend against using them.

We got a Strider balance bike as it seemed to go lower than all the others.  It gets used every day, no problems.  A brake would prevent some heart-in-mouth moments when going downhill but we've had no accidents so far.

They're fantastic.  Both our kids learnt to ride on a wooden "likeabike" and by their 4th birthday were straight on to pedal bikes.  If you can't stretch to a likeabike, look for something with limited handlebar movement as kids steer too much.  Helmet essential - I still recall my eldest colliding with the stone gate post, thankfully the hat took the hit.  Gloves are useful and are a great present from relatives / friends.  The wood bikes limit the damage to your house.  Can't comment on brakes - as our bike did not have them.  Oh...and get ready to run fast, as you can reach a hell of a speed on even a modest down hill tarmac park path on these things.

We've had great success with a balance bike. For the first kid we did as you thought, bought a kid's bike and didn't mount the pedals the first 6 months, while he played with it and found his balance. Then we mounted them and after a few hours of training and worked great.

Next time we bought a "real" balance bike, the cheapest I could find at about 50 GBP. It's more nimble and fun, I think, but both variants probably works fine for learning. As long as your kid thinks it's fun it'll be great (and I don't think you can force "fun" on anybody).

(Never used training wheels for the kids, hated them myself.)

They are great. We got a German brand from amazon called Bike Starz which are very good quality for sensible money. Island bikes are nice but over priced IMO.

Cannot recommend balance bikes enough, bought our nipper a second hand Isla bike rothan, Isla are still pretty expensive second hand but on the plus side you can sell them on for a good proportion of their original price.  Best advice I had is that is's definitely worth paying the extra for brakes.  The transition to a pedal bike was surprisingly quick (although I made a point of getting hold of a pedal bike of similar size to his balance bike).

The balance bike was definitely the way forward for us. He took to it no bother and gave him his first taste of idependence. The transition from the balance bike to a bike with pedals was only hindered because we bought a bike slightly too large to start him off with. Even then it was just a case of giving him a go once a week or so until the penny dropped.

 I would wholeheatered recommend the balance bike route over the stabiliser route.

If the child is particularly diddy you may struggle to find a regular bike sufficiently small to lower the seat enough to allow the child's feet to touch the ground.  And their legs need to be bent quite a bit to scoot along. I do think the price of my lad's Tiny Bike was the best bike-related 50 quid I've ever spent.