Kona Honzo

- Yeah, good choice for that. There You have it, that's the Kona Honzo.

Kona Honzo: $1800 May wait time. Specialized fuse comp: $1800 wait time tbd.

The bikes I looked into when I got one last year were the commencal meta ht, canyon stoic (adding this as it came out after I purchased one), Kona honzo, and nuke proof scout. Something in this range will grow with you and give you a really well rounded hardtail that can do everything from tech, flow and dirt jumps.

I just went through this before settling on a Kona honzo. The advice I got was to spend as much as you can reasonably afford. There's a big jump in quality from <1k bikes to ~2k bikes so I would lean into the higher end bike you have listed there.

-I have a Kona Honzo, happy to recommend. The newest one has updated Geo and parts compared to mine a few years ago but still ticks all my boxes for a good price. Little less aggressive geometry than the Komodo and cheaper too.

A bought my 2020 Kona Honzo for a little less than that and am very happy with it. Finding one may be a challenge, however. [Here's a photo of it.](https://i.imgur.com/AWOkp44.jpg)

Makes the descents so much more confidence-inspiring. This can be added afterwards rather easily. * Thru Axles - I didn't really care about the benefits versus QR, but I knew that if I wanted to be able to upgrade my bike in the future this is where the industry is going. I was considering the Kona Honzo, Giant Fathom, Ragley Mmmbop and Commencal Meta HT.

I have a 2022 Kona Honzo and I've loved it. Great bike, I've never felt like I was going to go OTB with the 67 degree head angle, but that's just me.

The Fuse is a great bike. I re-started my MTB hobby this year on new hardtail Kona Big Honzo DL rolling 27.5x2.8s. It was a great bike to learn on and could take anything that I'd dare to throw at it, especially once I swapped the fork for a Pike.

I've never ridden a SQ but I have a similarly slacked out hardtail (Over forked Kona Honzo with a -2 degree angle headset). Really fun on singletrack descents, even less extreme ones, but wouldn't be my first choice if I were doing pavement/gravel roads on a regular basis. On the other hand if you're riding with a 6 year old efficiency won't be your first priority, and you could always put faster rolling (less knobby) tires on it. But I think the key thing is that it's made for riding fast on singletrack downhills.