so for our anniversary, my wife bought us both bikes. she a girls 26" roadmaster mt sport hardtail and i almost got the men's equivlant but noticed a next power x full suspension 18spd mtn bike for like $70. now, i used to make it a habit of buying a new mountain bike every 2 years and only bought specialized and cannondale. my last was a cannondale super v700 softtail circa 97', so i knew this was a huge step down, but wifey paid for them, so i can't complain for the gift.

so who is next and how bad are they? nothing name brand on this bike, a bottom feeder suspension fork and the worst seat ever put onto a bicycle. ever! i tuned it up as best as i can and am very qualified to work on bikes and have rebuilt, restored and owned many. hell, i choose to ride my 59' amf roadmaster single speed cruiser (a REAL roadmaster) cuz my next's full suspension is like riding a wet sponge and i refuse to commute with it or even ride it on road unless en route to off road and even then...

at least it doesn't sicken me like schwinn, roadmaster, mongoose, GT/dyno and any other brand pacific cycle now owns. i also own a 51' chicago schwinn spitfire ss cruiser and am proud to own a real schwinn as well.

Considering my Schwinn was about 6-7x what that "next POS BSO" was, I guess I'm not sickened by it. And considering it was bought at an LBS with 2 yrs service, I guess that doesn't sicken me either.

how old of schwinn? a real schwinn or a pacific cycle schwinn? they only went way down in my opinion after pac cycle took them over. yeah, better than my next obviously, i still think that their entry level bikes could be a lot better.

I thought NEXT was Pacific?

I'm not sure i would trust it on the sidewalk, I sure as helll know I would not trust it in the woods.

My experience with a cheap mountain bike was that they're made for the road if anything. The two times i had it off-road, on easy trails (no jumping, nothing as big as riding off a curb, even), I bent a rear wheel each time. Brakes got iffy after a while, adjustments to shifting were ongoing hassle, but otherwise rideable. I did put a new seat on mine, and like you say, it came with the most uncomfortable seat ever- a scheme to sell you that other seat. Anyway, just ride it on the road till it drops dead, or leave it out and don't lock it up or something.

I took a Next Full Suspension bike out mountain biking one time. While it was fun, when i got back the bike was pretty much dead. The front fork was bottomed out and stuck, the crank was bent, right pedal spindle was bent, and the bottom bracket started squeaking terribly. In its defense, I did jump with it, went on some pretty gnarly trails, crossed a few streams, and did stuff it simply isn't designed for. We started calling them single use mountain bikes.

Only thing that surprised the heck out of me is the wheelset, it stayed quite true and strong.

Those Power-X's are awful. Way worse than the other X-mart bikes, and you can enjoy the implications of that statement for a bit.