I bought my Pocket Rocket Pro in 2008 and it's now been to Honolulu three times and Spain (Granada and Barcelona) once. I am 56 years old and not very good at bicycle mechanics, so my challenges have been with assembly and dis-assembly. It's not nearly as simple as I thought it would be! And I sent Bike Friday a lot of suggestions for the manual. I've also had problems with the tires seating on the rims, and the tech guy told me that there had been other problems with that. When the bike and rack arrived in suitcase, I weighed it, and it weighed about 40 pounds. I'm able to add in shoes, handpump, kryptonite lock, pannier and a few clothes before I hit the 50 pound airplane limit. It is not easy to lug around airports and through the transit system. On my next trip (to New York) I am definitely taking a cab from airport to hotel. The ride is great. I spent all the extra money to get the lightest bike and well fit to me. I can carry it up stairs as needed, and it does well on hills. I live in San Francisco so I am used to hills. My other bikes are a Waterford and Gunnar; lots of gears and light, also. After three years I can say that I'm very glad that I bought the bike -- I love riding it. I've had much more fun on my trips, being able to do both recreational rides and buzzing around town. The bike's just harder to put together than I had hoped, but I am learning a lot and I'm sure that's good for me too!

After having ridden my Pocket Rocket Pro (27-speed with Ultegra components) for 3 months and more than 1500 miles around Boulder, Colorado, I would purchase the bicycle again with no reservations whatsoever. The bicycle has been just great and an absolute pleasure to ride. It also travels very well.

I am 52 and bought the Pocket Rocket Pro for exercise and century rides on extended business trips. It feels very similar to my regular high-end road bike. It might (?) be a whisker slower, but if it is, it’s not slower by much. It is comfortable, handles well and is very stable at speeds up to 40+ mph, brakes well, and is fast. It has a nice lively ride. The welding looks very good, and the paint job is superb. I have no qualms about using it as an alternative to my regular road bike now that I am home either, something I did not expect.

My Pocket Rocket Pro performed superbly on rides that covered a mix of terrains (mountains and flatland) and a healthy range of distances. My first significant ride was a century ride that involved 4300’ of climbing about two weeks after I received the bike. The bicycle did fine, in spite of some difficulty with my saddle (see below). My cycling thereafter typically consisted of daily 10-20 mile rides, with weekend rides of ~40-miles with as much as 4,000’ of climbing. I pushed the bike and myself pretty hard on these rides and loved the way it responded. The Pocket Rocket Pro is definitely a beautiful high-end road.

In addition to the quality of the ride, the speed and ease of assembly and disassembly (packing) is very important to me. If either of these steps were to take too long, I wouldn’t have time left to ride a bike on a typical business trip. The assembly and disassembly procedures are both straightforward, and the directions in the manual bike are very good too - this is critical. The felt packing bags and split plastic tubes that came with the bicycle for protecting it in the travel case are really nice, do their job well, and materially aid in quickly and securely packing the bike; they also reflect attention to key details on the part of Bike Friday. The second time I re-packed the bike it took about an hour, and the next time it will take 30 minutes or less (a few annotations I made in the manual the first time I packed up the bike really helped). The assembly time after three assemblies is comparable to the disassembly time: ~20 minutes for assembly and another 10 minutes to double check, pump tires, etc. In contrast, the travelling bike a sibling bought from another company did not come with a manual or DVD; it took us several hours to repack his bike even though we had photographs of his bike from when we unpacked it. The Pocket Rocket Pro is a clear winner in terms of the speed and ease of assembly and disassembly.

The travel case has worked well too. First, it has protected the bike well, even when opened up by TSA. Second, it is roomy and can take a regular floor pump if the base plate can be removed. The bike and case alone only weigh about 30 pounds by themselves. The bike, the case, the tools for the bike, a rear rack, water bottles and their cages, two frame pumps, and the floor pump together weighed in at 50.0 pounds. The floor pump and the rear rack are the main reasons it has taken me more than 30 minutes to disassemble and pack the bike so far – without them I would be under 30 minutes.

My service experience with Bike Friday has been very good-to-excellent. I ask a lot of questions, and Sandy in customer service fielded my questions patiently and knowledgeably. The fit of the bike is spot on. I ordered the bike about a month before leaving on my trip to Boulder, and it arrived on schedule to fit a narrow time window before the century ride; I greatly appreciated that. I had ordered a straight stem riser and a standard stem to have the option of adjusting the stem, but my Pocket Rocket Pro came with the custom ultralight stem. This could have been a significant problem, but wasn’t: the custom stem was sized just right, I like it, and I’m glad I have it.

I’ve also been pleased with other matters associated with my Pocket Rocket Pro. The online service guide is excellent. The bike’s tool kit is nice. The DVD that came with the bike is good too, even though I find the manual to be quite adequate.

The bicycle does have some idiosyncrasies. It seems to be a bit more sensitive than my regular road bike to having the right saddle in the correct position even though the specs on my Pocket Rocket Pro were taken from my regular bike; my two-year old saddle on my regular road bike just didn’t feel comfortable on the Pocket Rocket Pro – I still don’t know why. The nut on the bottom bracket hinge needed to be slightly loosened to fold it up the first time I packed the bike, and this took me a while to figure out. I bought a crescent wrench for this, but the spanners in the tool kit that comes with the bike can loosen this nut. The quick release on the stem needs to be tighter than I expected to prevent the handlebars from creaking and to prevent a shudder while braking on steep descents. The seat mast clamp also has to be tight to stop the seat from sliding down, and the first time I tightened the clamp I broke the clamp bolt. I’ll get a replacement bolt and clamp to be covered in case this happens again. The front brake cables clack against each other while riding, but I’ve addressed this with a few strategically positioned twisty-ties. I also want to find a way to keep the chain from dirtying the protective felt bags when the bike is in the travel case. With a bit more experience I am confident I’ll resolve all these matters.

In summary, I love the ride of my Pocket Rocket Pro and how well it travels. The service from Bike Friday has been consistent with its fine reputation. The Pocket Rocket Pro was the right bike for me and I am extremely glad I purchased it.

Simply put, my PRP is an outstanding value. My BF salesperson helped me configure it to achieve the best balance of performance and price, and in eighteen months of continuous use--for my commute from NJ to NYC--I have only grown to love it more each day. Previously, I had owned a high-end folder from a much larger, more well-known firm (based in California, with factories in PRC and Taiwan), which was poorly designed and shoddily crafted, despite it's $1k-plus price; I had thought ALL folders were plagued by the same limitations.

Despite my misgivings, I doubled-down, and spent a few hundred dollars more to get a PRP, sight-unseen. Money well-spent, as it turns out--and a bargain, considering the intensity of BF's involvement with each customer.

The Friday PRP is one of the finest bikes I've ever ridden, and has not spent a single day off the road due to malfunction--which is as much a testament to BF's straightforward design philosophy as to any other factor. And even though it's something of a specialty item--individually built, meant to pack for travel--practically every component is off-the-peg, so replacements and upgrades are simple (again, a marked contrast to my last folder, which had numerous proprietary, hard-to-find parts). Others here have commented on the ride quality, so I won't belabor that point, other than to say that my PRP is astonishingly stiff, even when sprinting out-of-saddle.

Made to measure, it fits me better than any other bike I've ever owned. And I could go on... Good as the bike is, my experience in dealing with BF has been even better. They have been responsive to any questions I've asked, and when my bike arrived new with some of the wrong components installed, BF went out of their way to resolve the problem to my absolute satisfaction.

I can recommend a Bike Friday totally without reservation, and have to anybody who's stopped to ask about my bike. In short, as difficult as I am to please--and I am notoriously picky about my bikes--the Bike Friday has exceeded my wildest expectations. Words fail to express my admiration for the folks at BF and their terrific travel bikes. Would that there were higher numbers; I would rate my ownership experience an eleven.