Urbanescappee - since you are interested in travel with the bikes, I’ll share my thoughts, even though I am not a former owner. My wife and I are avid cyclists and have owned our Bromptons for almost five years. We use them exclusively for travel, which is why we acquired them, and we are extremely pleased.

Others have mentioned the advantages of the quick compact fold and luggage block but I wanted to weigh in on the gearing which works great for us. We have six speeds with the smaller -12% chainring. This gives us a low of about 29 gear inches and a high of about 88 gear inches. With this gearing we can climb any hill we have faced (if we ever encounter a monster we will walk it up, hasn’t happened yet) and maintain a speed of about 24 mph spinning a cadence of 90. Can go faster if we want but on 16” wheels I find 24 mph to be plenty fast. The step between gears is uniform and naturally a bigger step than with bikes with more gearing, meaning your cadence will vary more as you change gears - has not been an issue for us. I often use both shifters simultaneously but most people will do one, then the other, which is fine but up a hill I like the quicker shift.

We have the stock saddle, stock grips, marathon tires, firm suspension and find the ride and position to be comfortable, not an issue for us. No doubt we were ready to get off the bikes after 70 miles through Rioja with portions on the Camino de Santiago but most of our rides when travelling are much shorter. For exploring a city (sometimes adding a quick bus ride, water taxi, what have you) and easily travelling by any mode between towns, the Brompton is without peer.

One other point - we do not have rigid cases but instead use the Brompton soft case. This allows us to roll up the case, strap it on top of the T-bag and ride off. We have supplemented the padding by using an accordion folding egg crate camping pad (Thermarest Z-lite) which folds and stow in the bottom of the soft case. We have travelled multiple times to Europe and throughout the US and Canada and have never had an issue transporting our bikes with this set up.

Can’t understand anyone having trouble with the fold - try it five times and you will have it mastered.