I have two separate bike shops in my basement, have been working on bikes for decades and have had hundreds and hundreds of bikes pass through my paws. Have seen it all from inexpensive Walmart bikes to custom built $15k Tri-Bikes and I can tell you after buying 4 of these* bikes over the years, they are quite wonderful. When folks ask me where they can get the best value and quality for their money, I always steer them to BikesDirect. I am definitely not a fan of the gross mark-ups of framesets whether they be steel/aluminum/Ti/Carbon just because a known name brands "logo" was slapped on the downtube. I've been doing this too long and have ridden too many bikes, both name brand and no-name, to honestly tell you otherwise. I've been training,racing,commuting on Chinese carbon/aluminum and steel for over 10 years and they are excellent.........all of them. Folks get really offended because they feel the need to defend their name brand name bike after they find out that the Trek, Cannondale, whatever, was/is made in the same exact factories side by side as the Chinese/non name brand version. If you want to spend the money, go with the better Groupset, that's where it really makes the difference. As an example, my brother who is the head mechanic at a shop here in Chicago EP'd me a Cervelo S3 with SRAM Red. I rode that a few years but also had a Chinese carbon frameset that I bought for $370. Tapered head tube.......yes. Internal routing.........yes. 950gm frame/350gm fork.........yes. I built that up with SRAM Red and put a Chinese carbon clincher wheelset on it. I also rode that for a couple of years swapping between the Cervelo and it. That pup rode just as well if not better than the Cervelo. Sold the Cervelo and never went back. I now have two Chinese aero carbon track framesets (one for racing/one for fixed road training) and two Chinese carbon road framesets. I got the second one for $300 shipped after bartering with the seller. These easily rival (quality) any name brand carbon bike out there and absolutely trounce them on price. Oh, and after putting thousands of miles on 3 Chinese carbon wheelsets (one tubular/two clincher) I would never pay double to triple for a name brand carbon wheelset again.
*BikesDirect