Functional bikes. Not Porn not Anti

Citation needed

While it have a Shimano drivetrain, it's the shifters that provide the biggest difference in shifting performance, those bike usually come with Sunrace shifters in the lower end model.

Those model are hard to shift, more prone to break, and wear out sooner than later, it also felt quite sloppy.

The other factor that @M_V forget to mention is that even the cable and housing can make the whole bike feel very sloppy and spongy, simply fitting a full Shimano cableset does wonder.

I still go for the b'twin because of their warranty, which is still immersiby better than the like of Halfords and their bicycles.

No citation but personal experience.

I find these type of low low end shifter pretty horrible to work with. Index points are vague and inconsistent, they need much more input than the cheapest of Shimano or SRAM units. Cable replacement is sometimes impossible.