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Comment by flyrain | Hacker News Reader

Most of them are under $200 in Amazon

There are many different classes of wheelchair. Most of the really cheap versions are medical chairs for people who can't move on their own for whatever reason, think the kind you see at hospitals or nursing homes for wheeling people around. This type is for people who can't walk but can still sit upright on their own and can move the wheelchair on their own. They're lighter, rigid and have higher efficiency than the medical type. They're also semi custom or adjustable to fit the user better than the temp/medical kind.

Would you buy an under-$200 bike off of Amazon? Especially one you spent all day on?

I don't know about Amazon, but $200 is the price of a reasonable entry-level bike in any large surface store so yes?

I know this is HN and people will likely look down on anyone riding a <$2000 bike, but come on.

I ride a lot, and am happy to ride cheap bikes, but I probably wouldn't ride a $200 Amazon or Walmart bike for rides longer than 30-40 miles without swapping the saddle, which would add anywhere from $40 to $150.

The question was would you spend that on a device you spend 8+hrs in each day, which is something people often ignore.

This is a device you _live_ in. This is someone's mobility and independence you're talking about. Not a "I spend 30 minutes to an hour a day riding", or a "I commute to work on this" but instead "I use this to enjoy life".

Most people don't ride their bike every single day, sometimes for 8-12 hours per day.

If you did, you probably wouldn't be particularly happy with a $200 bike.

$200 is a reasonable price for a bicycle-shaped garage decoration which gets ridden for 30 minutes per month, which is indeed all that many people want out of a bicycle. Something practical for a 15 minute one-way commute that you ride every day is more like $500 new. Something which you could spend all day every day on would be a lot more.

When our kids were growing quickly, we went through a number of sub-$300 bikes, both new and gifted by family. I ended up doing about one repair every two weeks, including broken derailleurs, junky brakes, jammed wheels, you name it. And our kids did not abuse those bikes.

I ended up buying a bike stand and a basic toolkit just so I could fix those bikes quickly and get the kids back outside. The parts on those bikes were absolute garbage and the reliability was zero.

Meanwhile I have a medium/high-end mountain bike from 1997 that still has some original parts on it, despite having seen time as a daily commuter and a trail bike.

A good thing to look at is resale value. Around here, you can resell a $1200 mountain bike for a good price. But you'd lucky to get much for a $800 bike.

Most bicycles these days are in the $6-7k range easily. I mean you can cycle with a cheap-o but what about your wheels, your lack of suspension? Your brakes? The feeling of a premium amazing handling MTB is something else.

No, there are much better under-$200 bikes on craigslist. :P Get a nice $100 bike from the early 80s and pay a bike store for a tuneup, and you've got a pretty useful bike to ride on all day; gotta friction shift though. Not a lot of great looking wheelchairs on craigslist near me though.

Smart phone under $200, would you want one?

Go to someone who doesn’t know anything about smartphones and he’ll say sure hit me up.

That’s me, I know nothing about wheelchairs, hence why I’m asking.

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