Specialized Diverge: Smartweld vs. Carbon
 

Has anyone ridden the Smartweld and Carbon Diverge frames back to back? I've read some outstanding reviews of the other Smartweld models. BikeRadar says the SmartWeld is 3% more compliant than a Roubaix SL4 and the Carbon 6%. Those figures must have come from Specialized. At least as compliance goes that's a shockingly small difference. I'm wondering about any real world impressions from anyone that's ridden both.

http://www.bikeradar.com/us/road/new...st-look-42032/

Of course the carbon version will be slightly more compliant, but only YOU will be able to determine where the compliance vs cost of the two materials falls, for you. Ride them both and make an informed decision.

Nobody else can provide the answer to that scenario for you.

cheers

Trouble is almost no one stocks this bike. The one place I've found that does have it only has the A1 and Carbon in stock.

My comment and have written about this is...the Al bikes that Specialized are making are watershed in my experience. I just built a Al Secteur Elite for light touring with panniers and it has a better ride than my carbon Roubaix SL3 Pro. I am astounded because the Roubaix SL3 in particular has class leading ride quality...a great bike. And yet, the Al Secteur absorbs road shock better inexplicably.
For all intents the Secteur is a Al Diverge without disk brakes and honestly why I chose the Secteur over the Diverge because I didn't want disk brakes and wasn't going to run a tire size larger than 28c.

If you are on a budget in particular don't race competitively, my advice is get the Al Diverge if you need tires larger than 28c and your bank acct will think you.

I have an A1 Aluminum Secteur Elite and coulnd't be more happy with it, don't know how it compares to carbon though.

At that price point you're looking at a mid high end bike where in my opinion the next step up won't be a huge jump in noticeable quality. For example you may get something that's x amount % more compliant but the % is so small it will be hardly noticeable unless you're an elite racer and every second counts.

Same thing goes for components, the 105 may switch gears .6 seconds faster than a Tiagra but the real question to you is if that's going to make a difference in your performance based on your personal needs.

In my experience if they're already pretty close in ride quality you'd be better off getting the cheaper bike and running higher quality tires (Open Pave's if I had my choice) than you would with the more expensive model and something with a harsher ride like gators (what I typically ride).