Review: RockBros MTB pedals

I've been teaching my kids to mountain bike, and unfortunately that involves a lot more hiking and pushing than riding.

On any given ride with the kids, my walk to ride ratio might be as high as 3:1 (push 1st kid up, walk back, push 2nd kid up, walk back, now pick up my bike and ride). SPD shoes aren't really any good for that much walking, so I decided to switch to the Rock Bros platform pedals for riding with the kids.

With a dab of grease, the pedals went in as easily as any other pedals I've ever used, which is good --- cheap they might be but at least the threads are precision cut. The riding on them are much worse than SPD shoes with SPD pedals, but much better than running shoes on SPDs, though not by as much as I'd hoped. The pedals come with gripper screws on them to provide some grip, but in reality, for someone used to spinning, these pedals are worthless for anything other than mashing down on. And when it comes to bunny hop, I can hop even less on these than I can on SPDs, which says a lot!

They're fine for what I'm doing, but I'm afraid that anything technical and I'm going to wish I had SPDs. Grant swears up and down that they don't affect efficiency, but I beg to differ. I certainly wouldn't want these for road riding.

But they're brightly colored and very visible. Can't complain, especially for the price. If you're looking for platform pedals, get these.