Marin Four Corners 1 Sword

The Marin Four Corners 1 is a genuine touring bike with a wide range of gears, good brakes and a super-comfortable ride courtesy of its extra-wide tyres and all-steel frameset. It looks good, the saddle and bar are well chosen and, in truth, there’s very little to fault. While it’s marketed primarily as a tourer, it would make a great day-to-day machine that will tackle poor surfaces and unsurfaced routes with aplomb and the £950 price makes it a stone-cold bargain.

> Buy now: Marin Four Corners 1 for £939 from The Rolling Fix

Marin Four Corners 1: Ride

Comfort. Oodles and oodles of long-distance comfort is what the Marin Four Corners 1 delivers.

And it really shouldn’t be surprising. The steel frame’s pretty skinny by today’s standards, and steel and comfort have a long history when it comes to cycling.

But in addition to this, you have 45mm tyres providing a huge cushion of air between you and the road – especially as they actually measure over 47mm wide when fitted. These inevitably have a major effect on the Marin’s ride. These are some of the biggest tyres I’ve ridden and are up from the 40mm tyres Marin specced on the 2024 Four Corners. They offer bags of suppleness, combining with the steel fork and compact steel frame to really take the sting out of poor road surfaces, canal towpaths and light gravel.

But just as with the gear levers coming up later, the tyres also take a little getting used to. On a fast and sweeping high-speed descent, they want to go their own way with a little understeer. The opposite is true for tight, very low-speed manoeuvres where the heavy front tyre causes a slight oversteer.

I wouldn’t want to overemphasise this as it’s very easy to counter and it never caused any issues. I suspect Star Trek’s Scottie would say: ‘Ye Cannae Change the Laws of Physics,’ about the momentum of the weighty tyres.

While it feels a bit strange at first, it’s so easy to overcome that I’m not going to mark it down, so much as flag it up.

That said, if I was taking the Four Corners on tour, I’d be happy with 35-40mm tyres – perhaps something like the 35mm Panaracer GravelKing Slick TLC or the 38mm Hutchinson Overide. Both of these would still offer a decent bump-cushioning volume of air, but would shed a little handling-affecting mass.

The geometry is stretched out and the Marin is tall at the front, making it stable while offering a back-friendly and upright riding position. The wheelbase is 1,087mm on our medium-size bike, which is lengthy by any standards, though this is accompanied by a short stem, which stops the steering getting too slow.

When you’re touring, you really do want comfort and an upright riding position. Day after day of long-distance riding can put a lot of pressure on your body (it took me a while after my first extended tour to regain the sensation in the ends of a couple of my fingers…), so you really don’t want to stretch out – and you also need low gears.

The frame angles are pretty typical for a touring bike, with a shallow 71° head angle paired with a steeper 73.5° seat angle. The Temple Adventure Disc 3 is broadly similar, with 71.5° head and 73° seat, with the Genesis Tour de Fer 10 71.5° and 73.5°.

The long chainstays ensure there’s little chance of your heels hitting a rear pannier (unless you’re wearing clown shoes), while the long front-centre (the distance from the centre of the bottom bracket to the centre of the front hub) also makes toe overlap unlikely. My size 42 shoes were nowhere near the front tyre, though with a mudguard fitted they’d have been close.

The long front-centre figure also encourages stability, though with a corresponding reduction in responsiveness.

The reason a touring bike typically has a slacker front end than a road bike is that it delivers slower handling, which helps to keep things stable when you’re carrying kit and clobber. The Marin also carried weight well, with no poor behaviour, even when loaded up with a pair of bulging panniers (not to mention a slightly overweight rider).

You’re never going to be flying along on this bike – its 13.4kg unladen weight sees to that – but as I regularly say, a bit of extra weight on a touring bike is neither here nor there if you’re carrying 100kg of rider and kit.

Climbing is leisurely, but with that 21in bottom gear, you just sit in the saddle and spin your way up. Simple. Meanwhile, on the flat, a kilogram or three really will make very little difference. Though as I say elsewhere, I’d still be tempted to go for slightly narrower tyres unless you’re carrying all your earthly belongings. I rarely do – my knees wouldn’t allow it…

Marin Four Corners 1: Frame and fork

It’s that most venerable of materials for the Marin Four Corners 1. No titanium, no aluminium, not even a sniff of carbon fibre, but simple 4130 chromoly steel. And it’s none the worse for that.

It’s never going to be as light as aluminium or carbon but it’s still the go-to material for a lot of touring bikes – and for a number of very good reasons.

It’s tough, repairable anywhere in the world, and you can still make a steel bike at a reasonable cost. While steel’s repairability used to be mentioned in reviews all the time back in the day, there is a kernel of truth in it. Years ago I met a fellow cycle tourist who did indeed have his steel frame repaired by a welding torch-wielding garage mechanic somewhere in the back of beyond. So, yes, it does really happen – albeit blue-moon rare perhaps. And it wouldn’t be one of my primary reasons for choosing the material.

While the bike has disc brakes, both the frame and fork have quick-release dropouts rather than thru-axles. Yes, I’d have preferred thru-axles, but I don’t feel it’s a major issue at this price, as the technology is tried and trusted and spares for quick-release setups are widely available just about everywhere in the world.

One area where the Marin does excel is the number of bosses for bottles and bags, which gives it some bikepacking credentials too. There are four pairs of bottle bosses on the main frame triangle – including two pairs on the down tube and one pair underneath. That let me run two 500ml bottles and my DIY bottle cage tool kit within the frame.

The compact frame’s short seat tube means you can’t fit a full-size 750ml bottle in a standard bottle cage, though something like the £15 Restrap Side Release Bottle Cage or Giant’s £12.99 Airway Dual Side Bottle Cage would let you use a larger bidon if that’s crucial.

You also get ‘bento box’ bosses on top of the top tube, and bosses for bags or accessories under the top tube for even more storage. The fork is just as well provided, with triple bosses on each fork leg for bottles, low-rider racks or luggage cages.

You won’t be surprised to hear that there are also mounts for front and rear mudguards and for a rear rack – though the Marin doesn’t come with guards or rack, unlike the similarly priced Ridgeback Tour that I’m also reviewing.

Very impressively, there’s clearance for full-length mudguards even with the super-wide 45mm tyres fitted.

If you’re wondering what the port is on the lower part of the seat tube, well, the frame is compatible with an aftermarket dropper post. This is probably of more use when riding off-road, but it’s a handy addition.

Marin Four Corners 1: Groupset

The 2024 version of the Four Corners came with the more familiar Shimano Sora triple chainset that offered a 24in bottom gear courtesy of the 30×34 pairing.

But it’s all change for 2025, with this year’s model getting 9-speed microSHIFT with an unbranded 46/29T chainset and super-wide-ranging 11-38T cassette. This gives a fantastic 21-117in gear range.

The bottom gear is low enough for loaded touring, while the high gear means you’re never going to spin out. There are inevitably going to be bigger jumps between gears than with a standard double chainset, including a six-tooth jump from the 32T to the 38T sprocket, but I never found this an issue when riding, as the gearing behaved impeccably.

MicroSHIFT’s levers do take getting used to, if you ordinarily use Shimano, but the shifting is as good as you get with similarly priced counterparts, and it becomes second nature after a few rides.

Unlike Shimano’s STi with its combined gear and brake lever, the microSHIFT setup has a dedicated brake lever, which is accompanied by two paddles for changing gears. On the right, the larger paddle shifts to a lower gear; the smaller paddle to a higher gear. On the left, the larger paddle shifts the chain to the big ring and the smaller paddle to the small ring.

The brakes are the usual suspects for a drop-bar bike with a sub-£1,000 price tag: cable actuated discs. But it’s good to see that Marin has gone for TRP-Spyre C brakes with 160mm rotors. These are a dual-piston design, and while now more than a decade old, they’re still one of the top cable choices around.

Do they equal hydraulic discs for power and lightness of action? Nope. Would I be happier fixing these with my trusty set of Allen keys when I’m miles from the beaten track? Absolutely.

Marin Four Corners 1: Finishing kit

Just as the compact steel frame, wide-range gears and cable disc brakes are well chosen, so too is the Marin’s finishing kit.

As with most bikes around this price, it’s mainly own-brand kit, but none of it is less than decent, and some of it is very good.

The Marin MTB saddle is quite short, at just 255mm, but for me offers just the right amount of squish and support, with enough length to move around – though this is of course entirely subjective and your mileage may vary.

The bar and tape combo is very good. The bar shows the influence of gravel bike design on modern touring bikes, measuring a pretty standard 42cm (centre to centre) before flaring out to 50cm across the drops. This helps with handling when the going gets tough. The bar is wrapped in Marin’s own Comfort bar tape with shock-absorbing gel pads, and is very good, with no discomfort getting through to my hands or wrists until I reached 60 miles or so.

The 27.2mm seatpost is an unbranded matt black alloy affair, which looks good against the shinier black frame. It’s fine.

Marin Four Corners 1: Wheels and tyres

It’s a tough, functional but weighty wheelset for the Marin, which isn’t unusual for a touring bike.

The wheels pair Marin’s own hubs and double-wall aluminium rims with 45mm Vee Tire Quickstyk tyres, which would cost 40 euros each bought separately, so they’re not an entry-level item.

The tyres are very good – and who doesn’t like a tan wall tyre, which I think sets off the largely black look of the Marin?

The treads have small central blocks that work pretty well on smoother surfaces, with larger shoulder blocks coming to aid on grit and gravel, where they add grip.

The tyres are also tubeless compatible, though the rims of the Four Corners 1 aren’t – you have to go up to the Four Corners 2 for that.

While their width offers great comfort, I’ve mainly toured on narrower tyres than this, unless I was carrying kilos and kilos of kit.

Value

A price under a grand for a genuine tourer that also has bikepacking and commuting capabilities makes this a bit of a bargain. There used to be a handful of touring bike rivals costing around £1,000 from the likes of Dawes, Fuji, Trek, Edinburgh Bike Coop’s Revolution and more, but most have sadly fallen by the wayside over the last decade.

I’m presently testing the Ridgeback Tour which manages a full touring package for just £899.99. The aluminium frame and chromoly fork come with a full range of bosses and this low price manages to include both full-length mudguards and a rear rack.

We liked the Spa Cycles Wayfarer, though it’s now a chunk of change dearer at £1,450. And if you’re happy with rim brakes, Spa also does its Steel Tourer Drop Bar 9 Speed, a triple-equipped bike that costs just £1,120. Both Spa bikes have the option of high-quality handbuilt wheels, which is always a bonus.

Though having a flat bar, the Genesis Tour de Fer 10 has a lot in common with the Four Corners, coming with a chromoly steel frameset and a double chainset – 2×10-speed Shimano Cues in this case – and while dearer at £1,299.99, this price includes front and rear mudguards, front and rear racks and a kickstand, which will account for a fair amount of that difference.

> Best touring bikes 2025 — dream builds for your two-wheeled travels

Conclusion

I loved my time on the Marin Four Corners 1 and was sorry to take it back to Marin when the time came. It’s a genuine touring bike at an exceedingly attractive price. The microSHIFT gearing is spot on, the braking likewise and the comfort from the steel frameset and ultra-wide tyres is excellent. The stretched-out geometry makes for a stable and well-controlled ride, with the flared bar coming into its own on poor surfaces. I personally don’t worry about bike weight that much, though even I would consider going for slightly narrower 35-40mm tyres for anything bar a heavily laden extended tour. Nevertheless, I really think Marin has created a winner here.

Verdict

Great gearing, good brakes, exceptional long-distance comfort and a sub-grand price – Marin has created a winner

> Buy now: Marin Four Corners 1 for £939 from The Rolling Fix

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