First road bike

Definitely a top buy. I preferred the look of that frame personally over the GT. It is as light as my new aluminium bike weighed when i got it last spring and mine cost over 900 euro (partly shimano 105 groupset but the rest lower quality than the Merida). Room for affordable upgrades with the bike when you do need to make any too (in the future when anything wears out..i'd imagine for the time being you are just looking forward to ride it a good while and not think of anything like that). For example FSA omega crankset is 871kg whereas you can get an FSA gossamer pro for only about £100 which is 750kg (think you'll need swap the BB to use that, not sure, but still, pretty good upgrade bang for buck). Sora, nice high quality and solid but leaves you options ahead, even bit by bit to slowly slightly shave on weight. Wheelsets, for £180 with tires attached you have stuff like Mavic Aksium Elite which are about 1780g, probably a good 200g lighter than wheels supplied with the bike. Carbon seatpost...Deda Superleggero in sales currently 99.95 euro...huge comfort increase cause of carbon shock absorbing qualities and over 100g lighter than a supplied alloy seatpost (one of best buys i made). Hats off putting in the time on the old rust bucket. Your work riding the rust bucket will pay off now with the new bike. No sweat without tears

In my experience the bearings fail in square taper bottom brackets long before the ends wear down.

Double post.

Sealed square taper bbs last forever and much better than anything modern in terms of wear rate. But they are heavy and you are limited on cranksets. I suggest you look at decathlon. Their bikes fill the best buys list for sub 1000 and look really good

Nice info Hawkinspeter. You know it sort of rings a bell as perhaps being what happened after a good couple of years slogging it on my first square taper road bike. Given my second (also alloy) bike is still a little above 9kg i think i'd have to lean to agreeing with you on the weight being fine too especially for a first road bike for this person. 

I'll probably get my bike just sub 9kg shortly with a modest crankset swap and modest-ish 350 or so euro wheel upgrade. Mind you it's taken also a carbon seatpost (another 100 euros) a new stem and bars (100 euros) and 200 euro Aksium Elite wheels already, so it's not a cheap business but it's very good fun and satifsying upgrading a bicycle, when it can be justified 

I don't know what my frame weighs but i'm estimating 1550 to 1600g from my calculations knowing the weight of nearly every other piece. Possibly could be even 1650g. I just think it starts to gets a bit crippling in terms of upgrade potenial with some of the frames that go over 1700. My original was 1860g and if i had wanted to have knock that down to a decent weight i'd've probably had to buy an 800 euro wheelset and all those sort of other bits i bought already for my present bike!

Cheers. Hoping Oxfish gets a nice new bike.

The GT uses a square taper cartridge bottom bracket. What would the opinions of the more experienced here be on that? As far as i know that's a bit more old fashioned and thesedays reserved usually for lower end sub £500 bikes. Just saying. I don't know if they are poor vs the integrated pipe type of design which I think the Merida with it's FSA Omega crank uses.

Anyway neither site you linked mentions overall bike weight. It does mention frame weight and fork weight for the Merida...1650g for the frame, a tad heavy but i guess not off for a £599 bike and 420g for the fork, perfectly respectable i'd think.

Looking elsewhere online overall weights seem very similar between these two in the Sora versions you are looking at (9.7kg for the GT and 9.85kg for Merida). I guess if you are only paying about £599 for either they are good choices (sorry i'm not in uk or familiar with the cycle scheme thing) but if I had £899 I'd probably be looking at other options for hope of a considerably lighter frame. At £899 isn't the Specialized Allez sport one of the lightest frames and forks going for example for that price point? (Can't recall now but seem to remember). Maybe doesn't have disc brakes though if that's a must.

Edit: Sorry firstly i see someone else above focused on the bottom bracket already (checking for all those weights i missed it). Secondly, i think when I mentioned the Specialized Allez Sport i just meant the Specialized Allez regular version that actually starts around the £599.

https://road.cc/content/review/249200-specialized-allez

Above is a review of the 2018 model. I think that bike has a quite especially light frame and fork for a bike of that price (maybe even lighter for the 2019-2020 model). Even the model reviewed above comes in at 9.6kg and has a heavier group and chainset in Claris so it would make some sense.

On paper there isn't much in it between the two, to me the spec for the GT is slightly better on two counts. Firstly the TRP Spyre brakes (which the GT has) are the only decently designed cable discs I'm aware of - and unlike most others they are easy to adjust. Secondly, the Merida has a press-fit bottom bracket and these are notoriously creaky, which could get really annoying. But this certainly isn't £300 worht of difference.

However the spec doesn't tell you much about how the bike will feel and they may ride completely differently. So go and try them and see which you prefer. As I said, there isn't much to separate them.

And if you are planning to commute on it, check that it will take mudguards.

I'd be inclined to go for the Merida as it's a bit cheaper and you don't yet know how enthusiastic you'll be about commuting/riding.

I have my doubts about cable operated disc brakes as I've heard that they can suffer from poor performance if they're not kept well adjusted, though I've never tried them myself. At that price point, I'd be inclined to go for rim brakes instead.

Edit: I've had a quick look at other bikes on Tredz.co.uk, but I couldn't get their website to filter the results properly, so instead I found this on Wiggle: https://www.wiggle.co.uk/felt-fr40-road-bike-2019/

It's got rim brakes, but a better groupset (i.e. gears) than the Merida.

Alternatively, you could get a carbon fibre frame with this one: https://www.halfords.com/cycling/bikes/road-bikes/boardman-slr-8-8-road-bike

Ultimately, how the bike feels to you is more important than the specs of it, so it's well worth doing a road test of whatever you plan on getting.