I'm one of those rare specimens who has actually ridden both an $8,000 genuine article and its $800 Chinese reverse-engineered counterpart. And for me, there is NO discernible difference in the ride quality of the two!

I built up an $800 replica aero carbon frame I bought from China. It's a beaut!

A bike shop let me test ride the $8,000 genuine aero-framed road bike on which my $800 replica is modelled. That was after I'd returned - after renting it for a week - a $2,000 roubaix-specific road bike made by the same company that makes the $8,000 aero one. The rental bike was 4 levels down from the $8,000 one on that company's pecking order of bikes. I couldn't tell any difference in the ride quality between those two either.

I don't believe there is more than 2% of the entire universe of bike riders that can honestly sense the subtle nuances of difference that a few micrometers thickness (or whatever) might make in the layup of a carbon fiber bike! I like to think of myself as a pretty perceptive person. But I certainly can't perceive those subtle differences. And I'm grateful that I'm in the majority on that score.

I don't race. Never have. Never will. I may not have ridden thousands of bikes in my life. But I know when a bike's riding quality feels nice to ME and when it sucks to ME. And that's what I go by. How a bike feels TO ME! I'm not persuaded one iota by what the glossy bike porn in the magazine ads try to persuade me to believe. And the Poindexters in white coats and pocket protectors might as well be talking Latin for what all their arcane jargon means to how a bike feels to ME.

In my opinion, I suspect there are a lot of people who disparage lower-priced Chinese carbon bikes that have never themselves actually ridden an $8,000 genuine Trek in a side-by-side comparison to its lower-priced Chinese cousin - "Chrek". Instead most people take the lazy way out and unquestioningly swallow the ad men's Kool-Aid. I'd like to turn those easily suggestible people on to this fascinating episode of Nat Geo's Brain Games. Watch it if you ever get the chance. And learn!