Guides
The vocabulary and the decisions, in plain English. This is the part of the site that exists because everywhere else assumes you already know.
This is the part of the site that exists because everywhere else assumes you already know. Bike listings are written in a private vocabulary — groupset, cassette, clearance, 1x, 700c, stack, reach — and almost nobody stops to define any of it.
These six pages define it. Not by telling you not to worry about the technical stuff, which is the standard condescension, but by explaining it properly. Understanding what you are buying is the product here.
Everything in Guides
How to Choose Your First Drop-Bar Bike
Six questions, in order, that get you from 'I want a bike' to a specific model in the right size.
What Is a Gravel Bike?
A road bike with room for fatter tires. That is genuinely most of it — here is the rest.
Bike Groupsets Explained
The word every bike listing uses and nobody defines. What a groupset is, Shimano's ladder from Claris upward, and how much it should change your decision.
Bike Size Chart: What Size Do I Need?
A real manufacturer size chart, how to measure yourself, and what to do when you land between two sizes.
Is a Gravel Bike Worth It?
For most first-time buyers, yes — and here is the specific case where the honest answer is no.
Bike Jargon Glossary
Every word a bike listing uses without explaining it, defined in one plain sentence each.
Where to start
If you are at the very beginning, read these in order and you will have made every decision by the end:
- What is a gravel bike? — the category most first-time buyers end up in, defined in one paragraph.
- How to choose your first drop-bar bike — six questions in order that take you from “I want a bike” to a specific model.
- What size do I need?— the only decision you cannot undo later. Do this one properly.
- Groupsets explained — what Claris, Sora and Tiagra actually mean, and how much they should change your decision.
- Is a gravel bike worth it? — including the specific case where the honest answer is no.
- The jargon glossary— keep it open in a tab while you shop.
The rule these pages are written to
Every page on this site is measured against one test: could someone who has never owned a drop-bar bike read this start to finish and act on it, without opening a second tab to look up a word? If not, the page is not finished.
In practice that means the plain word comes first and the technical term second, always. “The gears — the groupset, in bike-shop language — are the part you will notice most”, never “the groupset is Shimano Sora, a 2x9 setup”. It means table headers say “Tire room” rather than “clearance”. And it means that the first time a page uses a term like cassette or tubeless, it either explains it inline in one sentence or links here.
Why the vocabulary is like this
It is worth knowing that none of this is designed to exclude you. Bike terminology is old, it is largely descriptive, and most of it made obvious sense at the moment it was coined. A groupset is literally a set of components sold as a group. A cassette is the cassette of sprockets that slots onto the rear wheel. 700c is a French wheel measurement from the era before standardization, which is why it is a strange number.
The problem is not that the words are difficult. It is that everyone using them forgot there was ever a time they did not know them. That is a normal thing for an enthusiast community to do, and it is the reason a page like the glossary is one of the most useful things on this site.
What these guides will not do
They will not tell you a bike rides beautifully, because we have not ridden it. They will not give you a fit — a proper bike fitting is a professional service and worth paying for if something hurts after a few weeks. And they will not pretend a specification is published when it is not: how we pick covers where every number on this site came from and what we do when there is no number to be had.
Questions people actually ask
What is a groupset in cycling?
The gears, shifters, brakes, chain and cranks, sold as a matched set by one manufacturer. When a listing says 'Shimano Claris 24 speed', Claris is the groupset. It is the single most informative thing in a bike listing, because it tells you both the quality tier and whether a bike shop can service it with parts they already stock.
What size bike do I need for my height?
Start from the manufacturer's own chart, because sizing is not standardized across brands. As a worked example, Tommaso lists 5'6"-5'8" as size S, 5'8"-5'11" as M and 5'11"-6'2" as L. If you fall between two sizes, size down — a slightly small frame adjusts upward via the seat post and stem, and a frame that is too big cannot be fixed.
What does 700c mean?
The wheel diameter used on almost every road and gravel bike. It is a leftover from an old French sizing system, which is why the number looks arbitrary. In the modern unambiguous standard it is a 622mm rim. A tire written as 700x40c is 40mm wide on that rim, which the same standard writes as 40-622.
What is the difference between 1x and 2x gearing?
The number of chainrings at the front. A 1x ('one-by') has a single front chainring: simpler, lighter, nothing to mis-shift, and no front shifter to learn. A 2x has two, giving a wider total gear range — which matters if you live somewhere genuinely hilly. For a first bike either is fine; 1x is one less thing to think about.
Do I need to know all this to buy a bike?
No, but knowing four things will stop you buying badly: your frame size, what groupset is on the bike, what tire width it clears, and what brakes it has. Those four decide almost everything about how the bike will feel and whether a shop can look after it. Everything else on these pages is useful context rather than a requirement.
Sources
Specifications come from the manufacturer or the retailer listing, dated. Where a figure is not published, we say so rather than estimating it.
- Shimano — Component product list — Shimano's own component lineup, from which the road groupset hierarchy is read (accessed July 23, 2026)
- Shimano — A guide to 1x and 2x gearing setups for gravel — Manufacturer explanation of one-chainring versus two-chainring drivetrains (accessed July 23, 2026)
- Schwalbe — Tire sizes and the ETRTO designation — How the 40-622 style ETRTO number maps to '700 x 40c' (accessed July 23, 2026)
- Tommaso — Imola road bike product page and size chart — The manufacturer's own frame size to rider height table, read directly from the listing (accessed July 23, 2026)