Originally Posted by
NameTaken
As a person who once started a post proclaiming my love for the cheap suspension fork on my Roam, a year later I have to agree with the anti cheap suspension fork crowd. It's just not worth having in my opinion. I racked up roughly 700 miles on the Roam I bought last year before I sold it. I rode about 70% paved trails and 30% rails to trails (Katy Trail, gravel etc.) and kept the fork locked the vast majority of the time.
100% of your riding was on surfaces that had no use for suspension.
Cut across a bumpy field sometime and the suspension fork has value, even a cheap one.
Hop off curbs, hit a pothole, ride a rough poorly maintained paved surface, cross bumpy maintained hard packed dirt fields, etc etc and the cheap suspension fork has value.
Ride clean pavement and maintained rail trails and it's doing nothing for you.
I find that when I ride rough pavement for more than a few miles, my hands and arms feel better with a suspension fork than without it. Some people like the natural flexibility in a rigid fork and prefer to 'feel the road' through the handlebars and that's cool, but I don't find it's enough to smooth my ride out to my liking.
It call comes down to this though...
If you like it, you're right! If you hate it, you're right!