If we're going down the road of what to steer clear of I had three full-size folders before getting my Brompton - all in the mistaken belief that that they'd be better to ride.
I really didn't want a Brompton and looked at other small-wheeled bikes before finally deciding it wasn't for me and buying a SH Rabbit.DE bike. there doesn't appear to be much on the interwebs about them, but it was essentially a single hinge fold and was either a Dahon Clone, or it was said that Joe Murray had gone to them with the design as he owned the copyright.
Cost £250.
Anyway, long story short - it was great to ride, but the hinge caused me no end of problems. It squeaked really badly, never seemed particularly happy and I wrote to Rabbit and managed to get another pin after the threads stripped on mine. All in all, I liked the bike. I could lift it off the train and unfold it in the air, so it was ready to push along a platform by the time the wheels hit the ground. I#d then slap the cam closure shut and it would be ready to ride in less than about 2 seconds. There weren't many about and it rode well. Unfortunately, I got side-swiped by a car on Marble Arch roundabout and the bike got a little bent out of shape. Rather than spend money trying to put it right, I bought a new bike.
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So then I bought a Dahon Matrix - the one with the lockjaw. This looked even more like a normal bike than the others because it didn't have a massive hinge on it, but did mean you had to carry an allen key with you at all times to operate the two locks. had this about 4 years and then the frame snapped. Mechanical disc brakes - clearly not as good as hydraulic, but I think a marked improvement over rim brakes in the wet. Bike rode well enough, but I had no end of trouble with the wheels - the rear spokes just kept coming loose and I spent maybe £90 (£10 each time) having the rear wheel re-trued, and probably about £60 on the front. In the end I gave up and bought some Mavic Crossrides at £150.
Cost £800 + £150 + £150 = £1,100.
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Now I alluded to my mistrust of Dahon in the above post, and while
@Cycleops will probably be along in a moment to tell you that I was over the weight limit for that bike, I only found that out as I was trying to make a warranty claim. The weight limit was 95kg and I was 96-7kg. It was right about the time that Dahon was in trouble with people leaving to set up Tern.
Evans wouldn't help as they no longer imported them and I was left with the option of sending the bike to China for assessment (at my cost) - with a warning that it would take at least 3 months to even look at it, and there were no guarantees that anything would happen.
As riding a bike saves me around £250 a month in car parking and tube fares, I figured I was better off just buying something else than losing £750 in fares and THEN having to buy something else anyway.
A guy at work had a 2008 Dahon Matrix that I knew he'd only ridden for 3 weeks and was looking to offload it, so I bought that for £150 and ran it for a year until the frame snapped on that.
Cost £150.
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So overall, I spent £1,500 on full size folders before moving to the Brompton. I've had that now for around 2 and a half years and short of the rear wheel splitting, I've had no major mechanical faults and couldn't be happier.
It's no slower in almost all conditions - I rode it into London from West Ruislip and back one day when the trains weren't working properly (round trip of 40 miles) and it was comfy enough. And I rode it 17 miles along a canal tow path to Hayes to meet my missus - and this is the one time I'd wished I'd had a bike with bigger wheels. Most of it was OK, but then it turned into a grass/earth track and was rutted with tree roots and potholes. The last 10 miles or so of this ride were particularly uncomfortable. And that's where the Brompton really struggles - on unmade paths or badly maintained roads. It's much more affected by lumps, bumps and dips than any other bike I've ridden and this drastically affects your speed.
It does take longer to fold and unfold, but I've never yet walked up to a train and not been able to get on it because of the bike - which happened to me on numerous occasions with the Dahon/Rabbit. And though I no longer have to do this, I also used to drop my daughter off at the child-minder's as part of my morning routine which meant putting the bike in the car. We have an A6 Avant and a Mini-Convertible. I had to use the A6 to put the Dahon in - which meant my wife had to use the Mini, but now I can get the Brompton into the back of the Mini with the seats up.
All round, it works so much better for me and I wish I'd saved money just getting a Brompton in the first place.