Choosing a bike is never easy. Do you pick a Road bike? A single speed maybe? Then there is a mountain bike, a hybrid or even a BMX. Okay, maybe not a BMX.

The issue also seems to be where do you compromise. Road bikes have the speed which, let’s be honest makes cycling fun, but have high running costs if you are commuting and they aren’t ideal if you want to take the kids round the park or put a child’s seat on the back.

Single speed bikes are cheap and easy to maintain, cheap to buy (in the main) and look pretty cool. But if you want to do more than commute or have more than a slight incline to go up, they aren’t suitable either.

Mountain bikes have the gears, and you can take kids on the back but they are generally heavy and cumbersome. Again not ideal for the commuting novice.

So then you move onto hybrids. They have the gears, they are light (in the main) and they have thin enough wheels and tyres to make commuting viable. But they have their downsides. They aren’t cool and they’re sometimes not that fast. However if you are, like most people, not looking buy one bike for commuting, one for sportives, and one for the park then they are the best option.

But I want the lot. I want something attractive and multi-functional. I’m demanding like that. Doesn’t such a panacea exist? Well it does, but it tends to cost. The BMC Alpine is a fast attractive city bike which does everything you want but for the princely sum of £1000 (review here). Not what a first time enthusiast looking to give cycling a try wants to invest in.

Until now there has been no obvious option aside from compromise. But cometh the hour, cometh the Canyon RoadLite.

Canyon have had a rough past 18 months. The business model the German company adopts is to have no retail outlets and go direct to the customer via their website. This cuts costs and moans their bikes are very cheap relative to competitors with models with similar specs. However this means they are very reliant on firstly delivery companies, secondly a good customer service department and thirdly actually being able to produce enough to fulfill orders.

It seems there have been issues with all three which has resulted in disgruntled users not receiving bikes for months. I stress that this now seems to be fixed and it seems there is a maximum of about 6 weeks from order to delivery which is excellent.

This means you can grab a bargain.

So, back to the Canyon RoadLite. Firstly, it’s a bargain. It covers all the needs I mentioned above and for £699. It’s not cheap, but this a £1000 bike if you purchased it through conventional means. It comes with a Shimano Sora 9 speed groupset but you can upgrade to the 6.0 model which comes with Tiagra 10 speed and a lighter frame for an extra £200.

Riding to work on this is a dream which I have done for the past 2 months. Wide gear range, grips the road in the wet, and gets me up a 12% hill every day with the minimum of fuss. I rode with friends around 70 miles a few times (with the customary cafe stop of course) and it kept up more expensive road bikes. Flew up hills, thanks to the forgiving gear ratio (32 tooth cog on the rear) corners very well and stable if not super fast on descents.

Finally, it’s great going to park with the kids. It doesn’t have drop handlebars so you don’t feel silly riding it around the playground and it has 32mm tyres which are fast on the road but good enough on gravel and even through a dry wood.

In summary, if you want one bike which covers all your needs, this is the bike for you.

Yahoo rating 9/10