>>1925995Gonna give my two cents but my bike ended up costing $1249.00 CAD
I just came back from my local bike store after placing an order for pic related (Trek Dual Sport 3 Gen 5). I was in a similar situation to you for the past few weeks but after speaking with the some retards from my local Trek store and the more sensible people at my local store, I settled on this bike instead.
I've never had a proper bike before so I was thinking of getting a Marlin 5 gen 2. I definitely didn't want a road bike since I wanted to do some offroad stuff but nothing extreme, but I've never actually done real mountain biking before. When asking the guy sales rep at Trek if the Marlin 5 was a good "starting point", he instantly tried to upsell me to a Roscoe 6, which was nearly twice as much.
When I called my local store after leaving Trek, the guy I spoke to was brutally honest with me and said that he loves his Marlin 7 (2022), but solely as a casual MTB. He said to look into the Dual Sport line before our consultation. When I got there today, we spent probably 45 minutes purely talking about bike routes in Toronto and what I would actually be using the bike for, to which he said that he wouldn't even recommend the Marlin 5 - 7 if you're doing any road biking for more than 45 minutes.
If you're going to be riding on serious terrain for most of your time then the marlin is pretty good, hell I'd even say just go for the Marlin 5 and upgrade over time.
