The Featured bike for this week is the Jamis Commuter 4. This bike has everything that is awesome in the hybrid world wrapped into one package. A sleek stylish aluminum frame is how this package is delivered but the awesomeness of this bike is in the features.
This bike comes equipped with a set of nice aluminum fenders. Speaking from the perspective of someone who hates the struggle of finding a good fender to fit your frame these fenders are not cheap and plastic, and they hold their shape. Also they are made for the bike so fit perfectly and have matching paint. In addition to the fenders the Commuter 4 comes with a matching rack as well with a built in bungee cord included.
The Commuter 4 comes with Slidepad technology included. Slidepad is a new braking system that comes exclusively on Jamis Bikes. This new system allows the bike to have front and rear brake calipers but only one brake lever. This system is not the same as a brake splitter where one lever activates two brakes, the beauty is that the rear brake activates the front brake under heavy braking. This allows the bike the be simple and safe as there is only one brake lever to worry about but has the power of two brakes. The best thing about this system is it is virtually impossible to lay on the front brake in error and flip over the front end of the bicycle.
The features don’t end there on the Commuter 4. We discussed the frame, add on parts, and the braking but what about the gearing. Is this bike a standard 24 speed hybrid? Or is it a typical internal 8 speed commuter? How about one better, Infinite gearing… Some might not understand what this means but basically this bike has a nice wide gear range as a standard hybrid would but how many speeds are there? This bike is equipped with the NuVinci gearing system. This gearing has infinite increments within its gear range so no matter where you put the shifter it will be exactly how high or low you want it. The Nuvinci System is a difficult this for me to describe in a short blog post but I will link their site here so you can learn more about it.
Basically this bike has the whole package. But the icing on the cake for this bike is the price. Most NuVici geared bikes run close to $2,000 Jamis has made this bike affordable even with this awesome package. The Commuter 4 has a list price of $1,050, the cheapest price point for a bike in this category.