Originally Posted by GrannyGear
If $1K is your practical limit, DON'T feel that you are somehow being denied the Highest Dimension of the Cycling Experience. Baloney. Greg Lemond would have won on a Huffy (come to think of it, he did).
Questioning others, test riding....all that fun stuff of searching out Your Bike. Beats watching your bald spot grow.
bike manufacturers use one particular frame on a series of models and just change the spec on that frame to give you the price difference within that range. So a $1,000 bike in a range will have the same frame as the $2,000 bike. What will have changed is the quality of the components.
In my opinion- the bikes will be no difference between the bottom and top, but the ride quality and components are affected. Groupset is the obvious and others will be able to tell you of the difference between the groupset on one bike is a great deal worse than the next model up. Wheels, bars, stems, saddles are components that are worth going for a better spec, and these will also differ between models.
Just face it- You are looking for a new bike and you are also going to the dark side. This will not be your last bike. Test the models and see if one jumps at you. If it does not- go for the model you can afford and wait for it to not be good enough in a years time to get the better spec.(Just like the rest of us)