 So if you clicked on this video and you're a Merida Reacto 6000 user, you might be assuming what this video is going to be about. This attachment here, which I can't get what they're doing, it's kind of a good idea, but the bike light itself, this is officially the worst bike light I have ever used in my entire life. It kind of flashes, it kind of doesn't. I'm constantly knocking it when I'm picking up the bike, putting on a saddle bag and it's constantly going on. It's a big mistake, but it's not what we're going to be talking about in this video, believe it or not. So let's get into it. Welcome to the Friday vlog series. And it is an exciting day today because the RCA Peddler kits after a 10-week wait finally arrived at my house today, RCA members. Make sure you check your mailboxes over the next few days, and we will split this video into my favorite number of parts being two. Part number one. Part number one. This Cockatoo is getting in the way of my part number one. So part number one on this very misty, noon some morning, Merida bikes. They have made a mistake, in my opinion, regarding the Reacto 6000. You can probably guess what it's going to be by looking at it. And part two of this video, as you can see the kids walking out of the house, not in their school uniform, we're homeschooling at the moment. What is Neil Stambry up to? I want to talk about what we're doing on the RCA channel in part number two. So part number one, Merida bikes, in my opinion, have made a mistake with the Reacto 6000. Now this mistake is not as big as the mistake as we discussed a couple of weeks ago regarding the Giant, where they could easily make that bike faster, more comfortable, all around better, without having to change the price point so much. They could literally charge their customers $100 more bolt on some nice ties, and that would vastly improve the customer experience. With Merida bikes, however, while I still believe this is a mistake, I can kind of see where they're coming from, you see. The Merida 6000 is 4,200 AUD complete bike with Shimano Ultegra. That is $1,100 less than its giant propel competitor, and arguably cheaper than a fully built up windspace T1500, if that had Shimano Ultegra too. So price point wise, to get this fourth generation aero frame, basically the same frame that the pros use. It's just a couple of hundred grams heavier, which is mostly in the fork. For $4,200 complete bike here, dare I say this bike is affordable. Affordable? But let's, this video focused on the number one issue, and that is this bike has some really heavy, slow wheels disabling the ability for this frame to come to life. I am not denying that Fulcrum make excellent wheels, but close to two kilograms with some mediocre continental Grand Sport race ties and a shallow profile, circa 35 millimeter rim. To me, these wheels feel like training wheels. And look, training wheels are good. If you want to slow yourself down in training to make your training harder, but the vast majority of people, they buy an aero frame because they want to go fast and putting slow, heavy wheels on a fast aero frame. I kind of feel like it's dishing up carrots without the peas. It's disgusting. So what I thought we'd do here in this video is let's test the reacto and the windspace, which is behind me here on this false flat section at 400 watts, like we did a number of videos ago now. But what I'm going to do is I'm going to put the windspace hyper wheels on the Merida Reacto 6000 to see what's going to happen. And might I add, it did change the weight quite a fair bit, too. With the hypers, she's definitely lighter. Always with the same speed plate pedals, 8.67 better than 9.1. As you can see, it's a lot lighter now, sounds a lot better. I've got grease all over my hands and all over my peddler jersey. I don't like doing things with my hands. The windspace with the bricks is that heavy with the same speed plate pedals as always. We have eight point four. And I've also, you can see my car behind me. I've brought my giant propel because if you watched my video a couple of weeks ago, you will know, we changed the tires over to the Schwalb once. And can I just say it on the pronunciation of Schwalb? What are you talking about, you idiot? It's your wobble, sharp wobble, show wobble. Because people keep pulling me up on this in the comments section. I have spoken to the Aussie distributor about how to say this. Please tell us how you pronounce it, probably. Schwalb. Say it again. Schwalb. And since then, I have been practicing a lot. Schwalb. So maybe to mitigate this situation, let's just call them wanes. So after I added the wane ones, it added $200 AUD to my overall purchase of $5,300 of the giant propel, now totaling $5,500 AUD. We took the Merida Reacto 6000 now, sold the Fulcrum wheels with tires for conservatively $400 AUD brand new and purchased some windspace 50 millimeter hyper wheels at 1600 AUD with some nice tires. Add in 200 AUD, we have $1800 less $400, which we sold the Fulcrum wheels for, which equals to $1400 on top of the $4,200 brand new Merida Reacto 6000, now totaling $5,600. So we've got the Merida Reacto here, the giant propel in the car and the windspace right there with the bricks. Now let's test all these three and see how we go. But before we start testing, I wanted to thank today's video sponsor being native. Now, the first thing I did when native reached out to me was check their ingredients, was their deodorant, aluminum and paraben free tick. The next thing I did was say, I'm interested. Can you send me some to try, which they kindly did. Now I've been using their deodorants for just over a month, and this is not one word of a lie. My wife, Alice, for the first time in many years on two separate occasions while hugging me actually said, you smell nice. It actually took me a while to figure out what the difference was, and then the light bulb moment. But I am quietly confident that I was using the eucalyptus and mint when my wife passed on those lovely compliments. However, all three of these deodorants have kept me feeling fresh after exercise, and I'm now a big fan. If you're keen to jump on board, native's three deodorant packs are normally $36 USD. However, if you use my link and code in the video description area, you'll get them for $24 USD. That's 33% off. With my code, you'll also be able to get 20% off their magnificent body washes and toothpaste. I'm trying to get me changing the pedals, basically. You feel fast. You know, mate, how I am running with repairs. Oh, no, running repairs. No, no, shooting YouTube videos, actually. Just behind you there, but I'll be out of your hair soon. Oh, there'll be loads of them turning up. Yeah, I know. The windspace is full brick mode. Let's see how it goes. So I've just completed the windspace. First up was the merida, but I feel like the wind conditions might have just changed a little bit while I was on the windspace. So I'm going to redo the merida one more time and then we'll do the giant and then we'll be done. All right, second run on the giant complete. Let's go look at the data. So before we look at the data, if you're getting value out of this video, having a laugh, getting some enjoyment, if you could give it a like, that would be greatly appreciated. It helps the channel out. Now, as always, these tests have been completed using the Asioma power pedals, fully calibrated on each bike, of course, on low wind days. And speaking of the wind, I wanted to quickly pull up the wind conditions for the day so you can see what I mean by low wind days. And on this particular day, it was blowing at 11 kilometers per hour, southerly winds, which is roughly six knots with 16 to 17 kilometer per hour gusts. Now, the thing about the Gindia climb, which we often do, the closed road climb, I really like testing on that segment because it's very well protected from winds. And on low wind days, you don't tend to even notice the gusts. However, this segment, TT, like you mean it, it is more open to the elements, which just goes to demonstrate. We always say this, this test, it's not perfect. I know that, but I still believe it gives us something, particularly when we're talking four, five, six second plus differences. So let's look at the data and you can see some interesting numbers there, but what I am going to do here is put a line through the first two Merida tests and a line through the final giant test. Reason being, when I was on the windspace T1500 after being on the Reacto, I all of a sudden noticed the gusts had died off completely. So I felt the need, so we had fairness to test the Reacto again and with the final giant test, a car ever so slightly drifted into the bike lane. So I just touched the brake slightly, which reduced my momentum. I made up for it with power, but as I rubbed off some momentum with the brakes, I think we'll rule that one out completely. So moving forward, I'm also gonna put in the wind conditions for the day. They're always going to be light, but knowing the direction and gusts for these more open to the element tests is critical for us to compare to other days. But the most interesting thing we can note here is the Merida Reacto is now the fastest. In fact, I PR'd that segment and it destroys the Merida with the stock fulcrum wheels. When we completed this test a few weeks back, albeit the wind conditions will have been slightly different. The giant propel, advanced one, performed as I expected, but what was really interesting to note, perhaps above all else, is the windspace with the fulcrum bricks on didn't lose too much of its speed. Say in comparison to when we tested the Merida with the fulcrum stock wheels versus the windspace with their very own hypers, there was a massive time difference between those two bikes then. But for the purpose of this video, the Merida Reacto is a much better, faster bike with the windspace hypers on. It's gone from getting eaten alive by the windspace T1500 a few weeks ago to now guiding me to a personal best time for the TT, like you mean it, segment. So this has left me with two thoughts. Thought number one. You've got an excellent frame. Fourth generation, highly engineered versus say the propel second generation, T1500. First generation, excellent frame, let down by some average wheels. Add a thousand bucks to the price point, bolt on some really nice wheels and I could almost guarantee you will create a much better customer riding experience. Thought number two for the triple headed review and I'd be keen to get your thoughts. I think we can all agree that the windspace hyper wheels are the best wheel set out of the three. And to test all three bikes against each other on their stock wheels, particularly the Merida Reacto, the T1500 is just gonna have an unfair advantage with the windspace hypers. So I am thinking for the triple headed review, which includes four segments. Let's do all tests twice, all on the windspace hypers. Now some people have said you should do the test three times so we've got more benchmarking. Unfortunately, I only have one set of legs. So we'll stick with the two and I think this is gonna be the best way moving forward. So we can assess which frame set is the best performing but as always I'll be keen to get your thoughts below and let's get into part two of this video. So for part two of this video, I thought I would do it in front of my magnificent local beach, Sunshine Beach in Queensland, Australia. Wrong way, see a little bit more of the beach now. And I wanted to let people know that may not have been informed. You might have missed the video that the RCA training tip show, which we used to host on this channel every Wednesday, now occurs on a different channel. We've got an Road Cycling Academy specific channel. Neil Stambry, the expert bike fitter and I are still doing weekly content over there but we've got a unique piece of content that being Neil Stambry. Him and his wife have just had their second child so he's had six months off the bike and he's now looking to get his cycling fitness back and I'm gonna be coaching him. So we've got a series called Zero to Hero. A lot of people are getting behind it so that's why I thought I would share it with you now. You're keen to check it out. I'll link it up in the video description below. Neil's actually joining us for the next intake of the Uplevel Road Cycling Course in August. So we're pretty pumped to have him on board officially the RCA and I'll catch you in the next video.