Woman's geometry road bike suggestions - small hands - budget £2k-ish

[vickster]

For bikes I'd suggest you measure the reach and stack of the Galaxy and look for similar / appropriately tweaked numbers in the new bike. Off the top of my head Liv made much fanfare about proper female-specific geometry a while ago; these will all by trendy mass-market placcy jobs though so you won't get a nice steel frame from them.

Be aware that a lot of brands' offerings for female rides are just smaller frames in different colours (with no attention paid to different geometry) and often the geo on small frames gets really squirly with stack reduced while reach hardly diminishes (necessary with 700c wheels to avoid toe overlap (making the geo proportionally more aggressive). Another thing worth considering is that some better brands now offer smaller wheels (650b) on smaller frame sizes; which helps keep things in proportion.

If going with discs I'd strongly suggest you get hydraulic; and if taking this route IIRC both Shimano 105 and Tiagra shifters are offered in short-reach variants (I think the model numbers have a 5 at the end - so ST-R7025 is the short-reach version of the ST-R7020).

From the narrow range of bikes that interest me personally, the Fairlight Faran looks really nice, or if you want a placcy fork the more road-oriented Strael always gets glowing reviews. From a technical / design perspective Fairlight appear really on the ball and are also notable in their approach to sizing - which offers a good range as well as two variants of each frame size to cater for differing leg/torso ratios (which is typically where women differ most notably from men). They also have a sizing calculator which you might find of use and seems pretty close for me based on my measurements and preferred fit.

Finally there's the gorgeous Singular Peregrine - all steel, more traditionally styled and apparently pretty well proportioned in the smaller sizes (again due to using smaller wheels); although these all seem to be quite long of reach / short of stack so less intrinsically suited to those of us with long legs and generally more aggressive.

HTH

The OP does say she'd be happy with a carbon frame.
Liv a great place to start for smaller carbon framed (they do have different geo to the men's Giant range)

 

[wafter]

The OP does say she'd be happy with a carbon frame.
Liv a great place to start for smaller carbon framed (they do have different geo to the men's Giant range)

Indeed - while a steel frame was also mentioned by the OP hence the qualification in my post.

 

[Sea of vapours]

My partner is 5'0" (1.52m). A few years ago she acquired a new bike specifically to provide ease of braking via R7025 (the short reach version of Shimano 105 R7000, as suggested above). This worked well, both in terms of the reduced effort in braking due to hydraulics and the slightly reduced reach. It transformed her cycling; no exaggeration there. She also has 34cm bars (fitted later) with the hoods angled in a bit to produce a 30cm hood-to-hood measurement, which has further aided finger reach to the brake levers due to her hands not going 'round the outside' so much; her arms now line up properly with where the levers are. The bike she has is a Canyon Endurace in 3XS.

Unfortunately, Canyon seem to have stopped making a 3XS. Having looked recently, Liv's smallest endurance geometry bikes are quite a bit bigger, than her 3XS, though just about tolerable at her height, so that may well be true for your wife too, being a giant, 2" taller.

The advice above regarding bikes with 650b wheels is very good, with one caveat, that being that 650b road tyres are very rare. That's 'rare' in the sense that the only ones currently available are Continental GP5000s in either 30mm or 32mm, last time I looked. They're great tyres, so that's fine whilst Continental continue to make them. If they stopped, the bike would effectively be useless once our stock of tyres runs out :-\ So, do consider that if you find a bike with 650b wheels!