Critical Cycles Dutch Style Step-Thru 7 Speed Hybrid Review

With a mid-century vintage feel coupled with the lightweight performance, high quality construction and the most comfortable ride, the Dutch Style 7 speed hybrid bike is truly the product every woman – serious about leisure riding, maintaining fitness or commuting around town – must possess.

Whether you are running errands around your neighborhood and carrying groceries or going to your office with a suit on, you can do so on this curved, open and step-through frame. This is a classic and proven design, suitable for all women who don’t plan to ride with special riding clothes; they can even ride with their skirts on.

With a Critical Cycles Dutch Style Step-Through 7 Speed bike, there simply won’t be any excuse for not getting out of your car, off your sofa, and out of your cubicle. If you haven’t ridden a bike before, this is the perfect bike to get started. Get your fitness level on the right track with this elegantly built, long lasting, and high performance bike.

Critical Cycles 7-Speed Dutch

Quick Feature List

  • Tig-welded steel geometry step-through frame
  • Kenda Kwest 700c tires with smooth rounded tread and large water dispersion grooves
  • Shimano 7 speed drivetrain with grip-twister shifting mechanism
  • Vintage bell, headlamp and rear cargo rack included
  • Dual caliper alloy brakes

The full feature list can easily be found on Amazon.com. In the next parts of our review we provide a more detailed overview of the outstanding features that make this bike a must have for every woman who plans to ride it for commuting around town.

Step-Thru Tig-welded steel frame

The step-through looped frame is especially designed for easier getting on and off the bike, making is suitable for women who want to ride with their skirts on. The steel tubing and geometry frame provides the perfect upright riding position and gives you utmost comfort while the upright handlebars will make sure you keep your eyes on the road ahead while riding. The tig-welded steel frame offers you lightweight performance and increased efficiency on roads, while being durably built to last a long time.

Kenda-Kwest tires

The Kenda-Kwest tires that come with this bike are surely of great value. Separately valued at $50, these tires with smooth rounded tread and large water dispersion grooves will give you increased efficiency, yet enhanced stability and improved grip. The 700c tires, at the same time, will give you efficiency as close as a road bike.

Shimano 7-speed drivetrain

The Shimano 7 speed drivetrain will give you enough gearing ratios for taking you up the hills or speeding on flat lands. The grip-twister shifting mechanism allows you to shift gears without losing control of handlebars. The gears shift flawlessly and displays on the twister which gear you are in to give you smooth and comfortable ride.

The perfect vintage feel

Featuring mid-century style bell, headlamp, and rear cargo racks, the bike gives the perfect vintage feel. These are not just for style but highly functional as well. All these extras add great value to the bike.

A range of options

The Dutch Style 7 speed bike is available in a choice of three colors including British racing green, cream and black as well as two sizes, small and medium.

Reviews from Amazon

Users simply love it for its great quality and comfortable ride, flawless performance and versatile frame design. The bike received an overall rating of 3.4 out of 5 stars on Amazon with 39 customer reviews till date.

Most users were satisfied with the quality of ride and great customer service. Most negative reviews were because of shipping problems faced by many users due to which some of their components arrived broken or poorly in shape.
Features of Critical Cycles Dutch Style 7 speed Hybrid Bike

Pros of Critical Cycles Dutch Style 7

Here is what users mostly love about this bike:

  1. The bike is almost fully assembled. Only a few things need to be installed.
  2. It comes with all the tools required for assembly.
  3. It provides a very good quality ride.
  4. The vintage look and the style is really expressive; many users received compliments on their bike.
  5. Users mostly liked the bike rack, which is solid, long lasting and also very functional. Solid means you can carry heavy bags of groceries, books or anything without any problem. It saves additional money in buying a separate rack.
  6. Customer service is great and they give almost instant replies.
  7. Inexpensive.

Cons

Here are some reasons why this bike has received negative reviews:

  1. It doesn’t come with any instructions on how to assemble it. Although it’s almost 90% assembled, the rest 10% is hard for anyone who has no idea about building bikes. Users mostly had to take it to their local bike shops for assembly.
  2. The brakes also need to be tuned to work properly.
  3. The kickstand is too long and the bike won’t stand on it. However, it can be fixed by bending it with the foot.
  4. The light and bell look cheaply made.
  5. One user commented about poor packaging. However, the company has since taken steps to provide more secure packaging to prevent damage to the components.
  6. One user commented about gear changing noisily.
  7. The steel frame rusts easily especially the bell and rear rack; so, make sure you don’t ride in rainy weather and keep it out of moisture.
  8. There are no suspension forks, hence, the bike may not be easy to handle bumps along the way, even on paved roads.

Summary

Overall, the Critical Cycles Dutch Style 7 Speed bike is totally worth what you pay for. If your budget is in the low range and you want a bike that can reliably take you around town, this is the bike you must grab. Although it lacks features and is not a very high performance bike, it is pretty good for casual commuting around town, especially if you want an affordable option.

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