hybrid bikes

A new bike marque to the Road.cc office, this one. The unisex Halcyon Akita is billed as a 'hybrid trekking' bike, with the emphasis on value for money. At £300 it's pitched at the same market as Edinburgh Bicycles' Revolution hybrids, and the lower end offerings of some of the big brands. It has a lot to live up to.

Kona’s Dr Fine is one of the new breed of disc brake equipped, flat bar urban bikes. Kona say the twist here is that the Dr Fine offers the rare combination of internal hub gearing and powerful hydraulic braking. So how fine is this Kona?

Whyte are new to the urban bikes game so you might expect them to be doing a bit of learning in the first model year of their C7 (multi terrain) and R7 (road) ranges. There's no feeling that the £1,099 Coniston is half cooked though, it's a versatile all-rounder that's fun to ride and up for the dirt as much as the tarmac. The price might put some people off – specifically the hordes of bike-to-work buyers – and it has to be said that for the kind of riding that you'll be doing on a bike like this, the cheaper Caledonian makes more sense in many ways.