KHS Urban Soul

Looking for a fuss-free budget bike for getting around the city?  The Urban Soul from KHS could be it - at £299.99 you'll have to go a long way to find a machine as good for the price.

The Soul comes equipped with a Double Butted CrMo top and down tube frame, single-speed freewheel on its flip/flop track hub (which can be converted to a fixed gear in minutes), an upright fit flat bar, front and rear dual pivot brakes, 700c x 26 tires and an all-round great look. There are four sizes: (S, M, L, XL) so you should find one that fits.

Hang on, £299 for a complete bike! The Soul's price made raised a few quizzical eyebrows when we saw it at the Cycle Show last year. Sure you can get bikes this cheap and much cheaper still, but our experience is that they're usually not very good – the Urban Soul's spec sheet suggests that this bike should have a much higher price tag. For the time being at least it's such a bargain because KHS are selling direct in the UK via their website and that allows them to slice margins thinner - that said, even with a retail margin on top the Urban Soul would still be an ultra-competitive proposition. One note of caution though, at the time of posting it's not on the KHS UK site… KHS tell us that they are taking orders for bikes due in April.

For the money you get a full cro-mo frame with double butted top and down tubes and a cro-mo fork, a set up that allows the bike to be fairly rugged yet keep the weight down. The steel isn't super thin so the ride doesn't have that springy classic steel feel but it does take the high frequency buzz from the road, and that mated to the conservative geometry of the frame makes for a very tame ride. That isn't a bad thing for what this bike is designed for, in fact it works very well in keeping you on a straight course even over badly pitted roads. If it could be adapted to attach gears this bike would work very well as a tourer, where stability is called for. Novice riders will find confidence in it and everyday urban riders will be able to pay more attention to traffic.

The rest of the Urban Soul has obviously been put together to represent value and although most of the components are unbranded, they don't seem to be too shy of quality. The handle bars and stem are fairly generic cross country mountain bike alloy units. The stem is a sensible length which is part of the relaxed steering - think canal long boat, and the bars are narrower than you would find on a mountain bike (540 rather than 600) so you will be able to thread yourself through stationary traffic without clonking too many wing mirrors.

Long drop callipers offer enough clearance for full mudguards to be fitted but would work much better controlled by levers with a slightly higher leverage for a bit more power and a softer feel, but they are fine for everyday duties which this bike is intended for. The grips are an Oury copy which are a little on the fat side, especially with winter gloves but are comfy and the soft tactile rubber keeps your paws glued to the bars.

Matching the colour of the brown grips is a comfortable saddle, made by Velo, with the shape normally found on a much more sporty bike – it reminded me of the Charge Spoon. The saddle was a great success for a bottom used to riding on such narrow perches. I hate the huge squidgy sofas normally specced on cheap bikes which feel dead comfy sat stationary in the show room, or maybe for the first 10 minutes before the savage rubbing files the skin from your nether regions. Plus it gives it a more gentrified, traditional look, along with the understated graphics and dark green paint job. Metal caged pedals made it look more expensive and kept wet and muddy feet firmly rooted (especially after our Road.cc Christmas ride along the Avon canal towpath eh Tony!).

The hubs are a little bit compromised, we like the track style nutted axles adding precious security to your hoops but the bearings on our test rig were a bit on the rough side (although positively smooth compared to the Colnago Super Singlespeed costing over 4 times as much!) A 16 T freewheel is screwed on to the rear hub as standard although you can flip the wheel round and screw on a fixed cog if you so desire. The Weinmann rims have a slight areo profile making it look more urban and the extra material in the rim made sure they stayed true over the couple of months and the numerous pot holes that this bike has ridden over. Black wall Kenda tyres do a good job of keeping the puncture demons at bay and the 26c carcass means a bit more forgiveness when bumping up kerbs.

Interestingly, if you do chose to go the fixed gear route and you fancy pulling your tricks out at the park with only a few alterations this bike would make a good freestyler. Other than a 19T cog and lock ring, you will need a shorter mtb or bmx stem, and the brakes taken off, this un assuming town bike can do bar spins! This makes it a very cheap freestyle bike, relative of course because BMX bikes still offer much better value for money.

Verdict

A simple singlespeed work horse that will reliably escort you about town. It is also a dark (green) horse that would make a good fixie freestyle bike too with some minor changes.