Kidvelo Rookie 14 Balance Bike

The Kidvelo Rookie 14 Balance Bike is a lightweight bike for 3-6-year-olds. Its big selling point is that it can also be fitted with pedals, so your child can learn to ride on a bike they're already familiar with.

There have been countless major developments in the world of bicycles since I was a child, but I'd argue few as significant as the move away from stabilisers and towards balance bikes.

> Buy the Rookie 14 Balance Bike from Kidvelo now for £235

I was most struck by this on the day my daughter learned to ride with pedals. I say 'learned to ride,' but what in fact happened was that I handed her a bike with pedals and she rode away on it, leaving all my visions of father-daughter, rite-of-passage teaching behind her in the dust.

She had ridden a small balance bike from around two or three years old, and moved on to scooting around in the same way on a larger bike with the pedals removed. On one occasion, I reattached the pedals, but she didn't get on with them. A month or so later, we tried again and she rode the thing. I have no idea what happened in the interim, but that is apparently how it goes.

The balance bike teaches balance (obviously) and leaning the bike when manoeuvring. This means that when pedals are finally added to the mix, they can be the rider's sole conscious focus as everything else has already become second nature. Even the pedalling action itself isn't really so radically different from the kind of running-in-the-saddle movement your child will have been using to propel the balance bike.

So that's really the thinking behind the Kidvelo Rookie 14. The child learns the feel of the bike, gets to grips with the brakes, and then you just slot on a drivetrain for a new method of propulsion. Two bikes in one.

The bike

My two test subjects for this review were aged three and six, which is rather fortunately the exact age range for which the bike is recommended.

It was on the large side for my three-year-old son, but perfectly useable as a balance bike. He was visibly more comfortable on his smaller balance bike, but that lacks brakes and he is now fast enough that their absence is becoming an issue.

This highlights what the Kidvelo Rookie 14 is for. It is a transitional bike. It boasts front and rear V-brakes with short-reach levers, so your child can get used to operating them before you implement the big switch.

As it turned out, my son wasn't ready for pedals, but my daughter pedalled it merrily enough and it didn't seem at all undersized.

One thing that struck me as a slightly odd omission for a bike that is – by definition – for riders of varying heights is a quick release clamp on the seatpost, particularly as Kidvelo appears to stock them. Even if you don't have two differently sized kids taking turns on the same bike, you can guarantee you'll want to faff with the saddle height pretty frequently. However, Kidvelo explained that, "In pedal bike mode, in order to satisfy ISO8098 we can’t use a quick release seat clamp. We would if we could. In balance mode we could, but not with pedals fitted and we really wanted to pass both standards."

It's a minor annoyance that demands having an appropriately sized hex key to hand, but understandable.

That is of course not the only reason you'll need a hex key.

Conversion

The worth of this product to a great extent hinges on how easy it is to convert from a balance bike to a pedal bike, and the process is pretty straightforward if you aren't a complete idiot, like I am.

Set up as a balance bike there's a flat plastic footrest on the frame. Remove a bolt and this comes off, to be replaced by a unit featuring the pedals, cranks and chainring.

Meanwhile, at the rear of the bike, a short chunk of the driveside seatstay can be unscrewed, allowing you to thread the chain through. At this point you can seat the chain, secure the chainring unit and restore the little seatstay panel. And you're good to go.

It's all pretty straightforward if you don't, for some bone-headed reason, try to attach the pedal contraption to the underside of the bike. (It goes on top. Just like it says in the instructions. This is the only way the chain will stretch far enough and you can probably waste a certain amount of time tetchily scratching your head if you get this simple detail wrong...)

Certainly by the second time you swap things around, it's not much more than a five-minute job – which is just as well, because this is most likely a switch you'll find yourself making multiple times. Learning to use pedals isn't always a one-shot deal, so you'll probably have at least a couple of false starts and abandonments that will necessitate reverting to the balance bike setup.

This would be my only real concern with the system. It didn't feel to me that the bike pedalled quite so smoothly after the second conversion, for no clear reason that I could discern. This may have been my imagination, though, because it certainly pedalled quickly enough that I couldn't keep pace on foot during the photography session.

One of the very long hex bolts that goes through the pedal unit also got quite stiff when almost fully tightened, and I was worried about rounding it off.

It didn't feel like a system that would massively enjoy being added and removed, again and again. That said, three conversions in, there have been no major issues, so I can't really fault it.

Value

Whether set up as a balance bike or a pedal bike, the Kidvelo Rookie 14 is a really lovely looking thing, and perfectly functional in both arrangements. If £235 seems quite an outlay, you can quite legitimately argue it's two bikes in one.

It's a very similar price to another convertible balance/pedal bike, the £229.99 Strider 14x Sport (which we haven't reviewed), but the pedal mechanism for that is sold separately for £64.99. The LittleBig 3-in-1 bike, meanwhile, looks cheaper at just £175, but again the pedal kit is separate. It's £55, so add that to match the Rookie's spec and you match the Rookie's price too at £230.

You can find plenty of regular 14in pedal bikes that cost more than these, anyway, so it's certainly not an outrageous price – particularly for something light enough for the inevitable parental carrying. It's 4.7kg, or 6.2kg with pedals.

Overall

If you suspect your child is very close to pedalling, I'd be tempted to go straight to something with a permanent pedalling mechanism and perhaps just familiarise them with the bike with the pedals removed. However, if they're a bit younger and pedals still seem a way off, the Kidvelo Rookie 14 should help smooth the transition nicely.

Verdict

Great way for kids to learn pedalling on a bike that's already familiar