himespau 

Anyone use spd m424 pedals? I'm looking at moving into clipless for my bike while I commute (and do other rides both on the road and off - it's an old hard-tailed mountain bike), and liked the idea of the platform around the pedal like is present on the spd m424 so I could go with biking shoes most of the time or regular shoes if I need to make a quick run to the store (I'm car free and only have the one bike).

Since they're a mountain pedal, I thought I'd have better luck posting here to find people who use them (or maybe no one does).

My one concern is will they work with a shoe with a recessed cleat? I was planning on going with either these or the spd m520 that everyone says is a very good beginner clipless pedal (I have plastic clipped pedals now, so hopefully it won't be that big of a learning curve to transition from remembering to pull back out of the cage to remembering to unclip).

A problem with the clipped pedals I have now is the clips are heavier and, flip down when I pull out of them, so I'm always having to try to flip them over to put my foot back into them in traffic when I'm commuting, and I'm done with that and don't want to have to do the same thing with a dual platform/clipless pedal like the spd m324, so I want something I can clip into on both sides.

I really like the idea of the m424, but I also like the thought of using a shoe that has a more recessed cleat. I see that the resin platform on the m424 is removable, so if the cleats in the shoes I get are too recessed I can just remove it, but then it feels like I'd have ended up spending extra to get essentially a lesser version of the m520 (or is that really the case, I just assumed that the quality went up as the numbers increased) and some platform bodies taking up room in my storage.

Anyone with experience who wants to offer their input would be greatly appreciated. Thanks for your help.

Wanderer

I think you would find the 324s more to your needs. Jensen frequently has them for 50.

himespau 

Yeah, I've seen those, but I don't like having to flip the pedal over all the time (which I have to do now with my clip). I'd rather go with only clipless than do that.

Wanderer

After getting used to them - it's an automatic non issue - plus you don't have anything else to mess with, no matter the footwear.

himespau 

I guess I'm just not seeing what the benefit to having one side platform and one clipless versus having the platform all the way around the clipless mechanism (except that the mechanism in the 324 is probably more exposed). I know it's not hard to flip over to the right side (I do that now all the time with my clips/straps on one side), it's just that I don't like having to take the 10-20 seconds or whatever of coasting required to do so in heavy traffic. That's one of (if not the) main reasons for me to want to go clipless from the cages I have now. If the SPD m424 won't work for shoes with recessed cleats that's something else (or if the mechanism sticks up far enough about the platform that it'd make uncomfortable bumps in my shoes when I tried to wear regular shoes).