WTF?! AMD’s decision to diversify their product portfolio comes hot on the heels of Nvidia’s announcement of the ground-breaking RTX 3000 series. Is AMD admitting defeat and surrendering the GPU market? (that’s a joke – hopefully)
In addition to their main website detailing their processors, AMD operates a special fan store that sells AMD-themed merchandise. Mostly hats, shirts, water bottles, and the like. And from now on: bicycles, for some reason.
The two bicycles on offer are the AMD Custom Cruiser Bike and the AMD Custom Mountain Bike. Both are available for the surprisingly reasonable price of $299 and cost only $50 to ship to anywhere in America, but they won’t ship anywhere else. Both come in black and white frames with orange accents and AMD detailing. The mountain bike also has an option for some pretty snazzy bright orange wheels.
As far as bikes go, though… they’re both kind of lame. Although it’s a little lazy to judge them without testing them out myself (hey AMD, send me a review model – I dare you) they’re pretty simple and uninteresting. I say this as an avid road cyclist and hobby mountain biker.
The mountain bike is probably the worst offender, but I’ll admit you’ll struggle to find many useful mountain bikes at $300 anyway. The bike has dual suspension, a three by eight gearset, v-brakes, and 26” wheels.
The biggest problem is probably the brakes, they simply don’t look trustworthy and because they’re v-brakes they’ll suffer if the track is muddy or dusty. The tires look like they’re a little lacking in traction, too. The result is that the bike is too dangerous to take down a technically difficult trail, but if you don’t, then you’ll never use the full suspension and gear range. At this price bracket, I’d recommend a hardtail for endurance riding instead.
The cruiser bike, which is a commuter or town bike, looks to be okay. It also has 26” wheels but that’s where the list of features stop. The only brakes are the pedal-backward kind and there’s only one gear. These aren’t necessarily bad things, if the money has been invested in making the frame lighter and thus more comfortable to ride. What bugs me most about this bike is the geometry. It looks like it seats the rider quite far back and low down. It’s not a riding style many cyclists I know like much, but if it suits you, well, this isn’t a bad bike.
To answer the question I posed at the beginning: what do you want more, a new GPU or a mountain bike? I’d have to say a mountain bike because the biggest thing impacting my gaming performance tonight isn’t my 2070’s performance, it’s the massive bruise down my right arm from crashing on a trail this morning. But, uh, I’m gonna have to pass on AMD’s mountain bike. Maybe stick to CPUs, AMD?