Fatbikes

Fatbike is a mountain bike with extremely wide tyres. It has the ability to go everywhere you want it to take, but it comes with a price. Wide tyres also mean greater friction and these bikes are not the lightest to drive. It’s not a surprise that in the winter time these bikes are at their best and snow makes driving even more fun.

So, fatbikes are fun to drive, they can go everywhere they need to go and you can drive these things all year round. But fatbikes are not cheap, if you want a decent quality bike, it’s going to cost you over 1000 euros. And the problem is that it’s fun to drive and that’s about it. You don’t buy these bikes for every day commuting, unless you enjoy sweating even on a short trip. And if you are not in a hurry. With exception of a snowy winter day, when every other bike is harder to drive and FB is the only reasonable choice for your trip.

Our recommendation is that if you want to buy fatbike as your only bike you should buy one with electric assist.

Fatbikes tyre

Tyres are exceptionally wide starting from 94mm and above, even wheels are from 44mm and above. Other significant feature of the tyres are low air pressures that are as low as 5psi or 0,35 bar. That is almost 20 times lower than on road bikes’ narrow tyres. But on almost every occasion suitable pressure is somewhere between 8-10psi or 0,55-0,7 bar.

There is also middle-model on the market that has wider tyres than on a normal mountain bike but significantly narrower than on fatbike. These bikes can be usually found on online shops with a search term “Fattie”. Like a little fatbike, or a chubby mountain bike. Fatties’ tyres are about 60mm wide plus minus few millimeters.

With control that wide tyres give, it also means more friction as mentioned above. This means that on every case and on all types of bikes: the wider the tyre, greater the friction, more energy on getting forward.

Wheel size on fatbike is normally 26 inches, but since the tyre is huge, the final size is closer to 28 inches.

Fatbike availability on the market

Fatbikes have come more and more popular over the past few years. Little known fact is that it was invented already on the 80’s. Even though fatbikes have been popular, there is not that many models available. The reason is simple: it’s a good bike if you happen to live in north pole. However you can find few dozen fatbike’s with prices starting from 1000 euros ending at high end electric fatbikes with big price tag.

If you are not willing to spend big money on fatbike you should keep attention on spring sales, since the main season for fatbike is winter, it’s reasonable to bring new models to stores on fall and sell leftovers at spring. Best sales offer fatbikes with as low as 600 euros price tag.

We recommend also on checking the mountain bike offers. Some of the online stores do not categorize fatbikes separately and there might some good gems on mountain bike sections. Also those middle-model’s, “Fatties”, almost always can be found on mountain bike sections.

Size chart for Fatbike

Sizes for the fatbikes are the same as on mountain bikes, so this is the same chart. If you already have a mountain bike that is fit for you, you can confidently buy fatbike with same size.