The best winter commuter bike for all budgets

Winter can be hard on both bikes and wallets, so I’ve broken down some recommendations for the perfect winter commuter bike into four budget categories, from no-budget to big-budget.

0:00 Introduction
0:21 The No-Budget Winter Bike
3:04 The Low-Budget Winter Bike
5:41 The Mid-Range Winter Bike
8:23 The Big-Budget Winter Bike
10:02 Bonus Tip!

#cycling #bike #commuting

A huge thanks to my sponsors this year. They support this channel, so please support them. They also make amazing products that I use every day and endorse without hesitation.

Priority Bikes: I happily rode the Priority Continuum Onyx through many Canadian winters before they signed on as a sponsor: https://bit.ly/3tzXTee

Two Wheel Gear: My favourite bike bags and panniers, and the best convertible backpack-pannier that I’ve ever used: https://twowheelgear.com/?utm_source=youtube&utm_medium=shifter&utm_campaign=tombabin

Buy my book Frostbike: The Joy, Pain and Numbness of Winter Cycling: https://rmbooks.com/book/frostbike/

I don’t really do proper product reviews, but here are some products that I’ve tried on this channel that I like. (Of course, you don’t need anything fancy to ride a bike, other than a bike, but these are Amazon affiliate links, and I get paid a small commission if you buy them 😉)

• If you ride a bike in the city, you need a good lock. Litelok is a good option: us.litelok.com/SHIFTER
• If you wear a helmet and like to be well-lit, consider the Lumos: ridelumos.com/shifter
• Hindsight sunglasses have mirrors so you can see behind you while you ride. Plus, they look good: https://collabs.shop/f9hvof
• Love these RedShift Acrlight Smart LED Pedals: https://redshiftsports.com/collections/arclight-pedals?aff=40
• Crane Bicycle Bell (the ding is sublime): https://amzn.to/48gsHQ2
• Bicycle Cargo Net (why did it take so long for me to buy one of these?): https://amzn.to/31s1Ovu
• Vaude Cover II Rain Poncho (for higher-end, try Cleverhood or People’s Poncho): https://amzn.to/3jLkift
• Peak Design phone case (the one I use, paired with the Peak Design phone mount): https://amzn.to/48giWS6

Follow me!
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tombabin
Twitter: https://twitter.com/tombabin
Threads: https://www.threads.net/@tombabin (@tombabin@threads.net)
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@tom_babin

by far the most common question I get asked on this channel about riding your bike in the winter time is what kind of bike should I ride and so that’s what we’re tackling today the perfect winter bike no matter what your budget is hey everybody I’m Tom and this is shifter a Channel about Urban cycling bike commuting and the ways we get around our cities and if you like this video please consider subscribing so scenario one is the no-budget winter bike and this is probably the most popular kind of winter bike because this is what most people use when they just love riding in the summertime and they want to extend their season into the winter and if this is working for you great keep going for it I think that’s amazing but and of course there a butt this can be risky and I’ll tell you why winter can be really hard on bikes and take this for me and my experience if you have a beloved bike and you don’t take care of it in winter time winter can destroy it all that snow and salt that gets put on the roads and the slush and the mck it can get into your components it can rust them out faster than you would believe and before you know it you’ve taken a beautiful bike and it’s no longer ridable but that doesn’t mean it’s impossible so if you really love your summer bike and you have no budget to buy a second bike for winter here’s some advice on how you can make it work the most important thing is to clean it well and clean it often you really got to get that muck and that mud and that salt especially off that bike so however you can clean it which leads to the next question which is how do I clean my bike in winter when like all the outside Taps are turned off so they freeze yeah this is not easy there’s a little tricky ways to do it so for years what I would just do is go inside fill up a bucket with warm water in the kitchen sink bring it outside and use that to scrub my bike down a little bit uh I know other people who take a bike to the car wash occasionally and give it a nice hose down you can also use those pump sprayers that people use on their lawns uh this is good for a nice dusting uh I find it doesn’t have enough pressure to really get the the hardcore muck off there but all these can certainly work or just get a wet rag and wipe it down so you’re gonna have to put a little effort into it and so yeah it’s doable make sure you do it I also know some people who swear by putting wax or a special winter Lube on their chains in the winter time this can help you know repel some of the water and the moisture and the salt and the grit so I think that’s a good idea another investment you should make even if it’s a minor one is a fender if you get some kind of Fender on your bike it will help keep your pants dry of course so that’s really important as well and the last point I know I said this was the no budget option but maybe it’s just like a minuscule budget option is like invest in some winter tires if you can there’s a couple of different kinds you can just get winter tires just like on your car there are winter bike tires that use different rubber that uh responds better in the cold and so it’ll give you a bit more traction but if you can’t afford it I always recommend studded tires they make a huge difference in the slippery conditions you can use just one on the front or one on the front and the back they make a huge difference they will give you so much stability in the Stow of the ice that’s a few things you can do to keep your beloved summertime bike going all winter long on no budget keep it clean keep it well maintained do a little bit of winterizing on your tires and you should be good to go scenario 2 is the lowbudget option now really this is for those of you who want to save your summer bike you don’t want to risk it in the winter you have a little bit of money to spend on a second bike for the winter time and this is an amazing winter bike even though it doesn’t look like much the idea here is to find an old bike that’s really cheap and give it a few customizations for winter I borrow this bike off of a friend of mine but it’s very similar to a bike that I happily rode for years through many Canadian Winters I want to talk about a few things here the first is the frame now this is a 45 year-old Norco frame it’s very important to get an old one why because it’s cheap but not only that it’ll hold up so something from the early 2000s some from the ’90s ‘ 80s you should be able to find an old mountain bike in your city I don’t know in my city these things are everywhere uh they’re undervalued I don’t think people appreciate how good bikes are from that era so these frames are really solid and they’re super cheap you can probably get pick one up for next to nothing the second thing to think about is the frame material aluminum is great in the winter time because it will resist rust but this is a crali steel frame but make sure it’s just a nice solid frame okay and the maybe the most important part and this is the conversion you want to make the little modification single speed now bear with me in this I know gears are lovely to have but in the winter the railers suck the snow and the grit gets in there and they will never shift right you’ll be fighting with them constantly they require a ton of maintenance and they will drive you crazy so the goal here is to simplify this bike as much as possible get it down to a single speed yeah you’re going to have to push it a bit more because you’ve only got one speed but it’s winter you’re going slow anyway you’re not setting any land speed records in the winter time make it simple and it will last so it doesn’t frustrate you all winter long it’s definitely possible to convert a bike to a single speed yourself uh you can see here he’s just used his existing uh front chain ring he’s got a smaller one at the back and he’s got a tensioner to keep his chain nice and tight there are other ways of doing it talk to your local bike shop it’s definitely possible to do it yourself and a couple of other final points make sure it’s got fenders of some kind John’s only got one on the back here I guess he likes to avoid getting the SC skunk stripe up his back I like to have them on the front and the back to keep your legs a bit dry and brakes uh disc brakes are great but also they’re expensive and a little sensitive sometimes in the winter time so he’s got Rim brakes on here again I think what matters here is Simplicity you want cheap affordable durable one that’s not going to drive you crazy this is a great winter bike and if you have very little money this is what I think you should go for old mountain bike frame wider 26in tires single speed fenders Rim brakes you’ll be good to go for years scenario 3 is the mid-range winter bike and this is the time where I talk about the bike that I ride every day in the winter this is my venerable priority Continuum Onyx and I won’t spend too much time talking specifically about this bike because I I have a whole video about this bike and there are other brands making similar bikes but what are important other components I want to tell you about here the ele M to go into making this the perfect winter bike for me so the first thing is it’s an aluminum frame so it resists that rust like I talked about earlier that’s super important I think the most important bit here is the drivet train so this does not have a chain it has a carbon belt and why that’s important why the carbon belt drive is important to me is because again it won’t rust the chain won’t get all gummed up with that salt and uh grit and uh rust out or require all kinds of Maintenance this belt drive requires almost zero maintenance which you know even though I have a YouTube channel about cycling I kind of hate doing bike maintenance so anything that lowers the amount of time I have to spend cleaning or scrubbing or retightening is good to me so that’s why I like this carbon belt drive if you live in a really cold climate make sure you get the one built for cold just a little word of warning there carbon belt drive here is paired with another important element which is the internal gearing so internal gears I find much better in the winter than a derailer because all the gearing is inside uh it’s protected from the element so it’s going to run no matter what is going on with the conditions outside side so that is amazing this is an involo variable speed drive so rather than clicking into different gears like most bikes it kind of like tightens and loosen so you have like infinite gears um there are good things and bad things about this uh this model um it when it gets really cold like we’re talking minus 30° C it does really get uh slow and sometimes it’s even Frozen up on me so uh bear that in mind there are ways around that of doing maintenance but you know I’m terrible at maintenance and you don’t have to go with this one there are lots of internal gear models out there you know I’ve got a other bike with a Shimano Nexus which I just love um if you want to go with the rolloff hubs I think that would be a great option hey maybe you want to try one of those new gear boxes everyone’s talking about I think they could all work the point is that they all have the gears inside that are protected from the snow and the elements couple of other little things that I really love on this bike it’s got full fenders which is really important for me and it has Hub Dynamo lights so the lights that are powered by the movement of the wheel which means I never have to like think about charging external lights you may notice I have an external light here because in the really dark days of winter I don’t trust drivers around here so I do have some extra lights other brands out there that make bikes with some of these elements in them but these are the elements that make this the perfect winter bike for me and I just checked before I came out here this model retails right now for about $1,200 us which is really reasonable for a good commuter bike okay the fourth scenario which we’ll call the big budget option yep it’s Fat Bike time so fat bikes are amazing machines for the winter if you’ve never had a chance to ride one in the snow go for it they’re super fun and just the way you can Crush some of those snow Banks is just so like Elemental it just feels great now I don’t own a fat bike so Q stock footage that’s going to run right now but what makes it so special is those big fat tires the extra girth uh the low pressure means you can just sort of float a little bit better over the snow and so it keeps you more upright more stable you can just get through more things than skinnier tires can do which is a great option in the winter time the downside is that they’re pretty spendy now there’s a pretty good aftermarket for fat bikes in most winter places these days so you should be able to find a used one if this is the route you want to go but a few things to consider if you are thinking about a fat bike one is those fat tires do create extra drag especially if you’d run them at low pressures and so you’re going to have to like work a little bit extra hard to push that machine through if you live in a city with that gets a lot of snow you’ve got to also be aware of that fat bikes are great for snow that’s up to like maybe 4 in anything deeper than than that if you’re getting up to 5 six in there’s just no way any bike is going to get through that so if you’re using it as your commuter make sure your City is maintaining the roots that you’ve got to use and they’re at least packing the snow down or removing some of it the ideal conditions for a fat bike are like a couple of inches of groomed snow and so if you’ve got that then a fat bike will just be a dream on your commute and having said that I should say too that maybe even more important than the bike that you ride is the city that you live in if they’re offering good safe bike infrastructure and they’re maintaining it in the winter that’s going to do better than any bike could ever do I just had to throw that in okay one bonus tip those are the four budget scenarios I light out but there is one little sneaky thing in here that I’ll throw in and that is electrification any of these options will be made easier in the winter if it’s an ebike especially I will say a fat bike one of the things that I found in winter is that it just takes a little bit more effort to get through the snow I don’t know if it’s the cold has some impact on your muscles but it just feels like a little bit more work in the winter time and with a fat bike you’ve get you have that extra rolling resistance to overcome as well you know the easiest best way around this an electric bike of course the cold will reduce the range of the bike but if you’re commuting get to work plug it in should be no problem so we’ll call this the uh bonus option is if you can make any of these options an ebike it’s going to make your winter just a little bit easier and one final point I’ll leave you with is that what’s more important than any kind of bike to Winter cycling is your attitude I know winter cycling can be intimidating but it doesn’t have to be people all over the world are riding their bikes through the winter all the time you don’t have to be a masochist you don’t have to to be an athlete just get out there and give it a try work things out as you go and I think you’ll figure it out if you’re looking for more advice I’ve got a whole playlist of videos about winter cycling and maybe check out my book frostbike there’s a link in the description down below thanks for watching good luck out there and I’ll see you next time