My current (suspension) fork A2C measurement is 410mm. Both replacement offerings are available in 440mm, but the Carver is also available in 410mm. From what I've read, 30mm isn't a huge enough difference to be really concerned about the change in steering angle.
The first obvious difference is the price, the Soma I've seen priced at a few retailers for around $150 or $160 ish. While the Carver through Bikeman is priced at $79. Even though the Soma is about double the price, it's not prohibitively expensive.
I may run a front rack or basket(no fenders), but I'm not worried about having a certain setup, so just some/ any eyelets will be fine.
The bike will be ridden decently hard, I have a lot of good mountain biking trails of all levels of difficulty local to me.
Both forks seem to weigh close enough to each other as well.
Is the Soma price tag just paying for brand name tubing? Or is it likely that the Soma is really quite a bit nicer than the Carver? Butting, finish, welds etc. From people's experience on the forums, the Carver forks are quite good as far as cheap forks go.
Just looking for overall thoughts on these choices...
Oh yeah this is the bike:
