After 8 years and thousands of trail miles, I've finally ridden the life out of my 2016 Santa Cruz Tallboy.
Time for a new bike.
I'm really interested in this:
Motobecane HAL Boost Comp

Anyone own one?
Thanks

quote from the rider: "I've been riding this bike for over a year and loving every ride on it."




quote from video - "would I buy this bike again, ABSOLUTELY"

You're looking at an aluminum bike with decent components that will probably weigh about 34-35 pounds.   I ride that bike with a 27.5" wheelset and put the bike on a diet with new wheels, tires, carbon handlebars, shorter/lighter cranks, forks, tubeless, and cassette and got the total weight down to 31.5 lbs.  At that weight, it's pretty agile and fun on a trail.  My only complaint is that the bottom bracket height is a bit low and you have to be mindful to avoid pedal strikes.

If you ride as much as you state, you might want to consider upgrading to the carbon bike.   It's about twice the price, but you'll get much better components and the bike will be around 28 pounds.  Buy once, cry once..
I also recommend you do a tubeless conversion.  No need to carry the extra weight of inner tubes.

Motobecane carbon 29" MTB

Before you buy anything, you should check out bikes at a local shop to see what geometry suits you best.  Then you can decide if a Motobecane is right for you.  These Motobecanes tend to have short reach for their recommended heights compared to current Trek and Specialized MTBs.  Motobecane makes up for some of the reach difference by using a long stem.    

My Motobecane is very similar to the current HAL; I bought a slightly older “29er HAL29 SL boost” model (29”; SRAM components).

BikesDirect has great prices, but I went EVEN CHEAPER through their “scratch and dent” outlet: Bike Island.  Some joker had retuned my bike without even assembling it, but they scratched the frame  in the process.  I think I paid $1300 in 2021, during the bike drought.  Yes - the websites are very 1989, and very hard to understand.  But,


I LOVE MY BIKE!  

This was my first full suspension and it was perfect for learning.  Easy to assemble.  Was tuned right from the seller.  Decent RockShox suspension.  

I rode the heck out of it, and am still loving it.

Upgrades:  

pedals and grips are the usual throw-aways.  

After 1.5 years of hard use, it was time to do routine maintenance on the RockShox fork, but every place around here wants $200 + for a rebuild.  For $219 on sale, I found 170mm RockShox 35 Gold RL forks with the Debon Air system. .  Installed those.  Very similar performance.

Dropper works great!  Need a better lever than the Motobecane one.  I don’t use the dropper that much.

The SRAM 1x12 that came on mine in 2021 is not Eagle, and it is not clear what level Bikes Direct used on the drivetrain.  No matter.  I ran over a really big stick a few months back, and broke the derailleur clean off.  Bought a new GX (and new chain) and it bolted right on perfectly.

Tires were WTB.  Not bad.  When I found some Maxxis on sale, I went tubeless.  Plenty of grip.

Look: the Motobecane frames come straight from the exact same Taiwanese factory (Kinesis bicycle) that makes many other brand frames including  Comencal, Jamie, etc.  The bikes are solid and a real bargain for what you get.

I would buy another, but this one is still going strong.

Here is a REALLY DRY review, but at the end, he does show my exact bike (only mine did not come with the dork disk):

I ended up buying a Polygon T8 XL 29.
It's great. I've had to add 2 volume spacers to the front fork but other than that have ridden it pretty hard for the last couple of months problem free.
Bikesonline.com has a far superior website and customer service than bikesdirect

Congrats Squatch!  

One of my riding buddies loves his Polygon and it’s never let him down.  Agree completely on the better quality of the website.

Enjoy