Automatic or Manual Gear Change?

Chere is thinking of getting a hybrid and is considering whither to get automatic or manual gear shifting, we give our opinion on the automatic gears and we don’t really like them

Question: I am a newbie and wondering about automatic verses manual shifting for a hybrid-any reviews and opinions of specific models, ect. would be wonderful.

Hi Chere,
We wrote an answer to a similar question a while back, you can read it here.

We don’t really think automatic gears are a good idea, on many occasions you need to select a gear sooner than the automatic will do it, and select a gear that the automatic will not think is good for that moment.

If you are riding across rough ground you need a lower gear so you can peddle faster over it. You can see a short climb coming up and you know you can power over it in the same gear, the automatic will want to change down as it can’t anticipate what’s coming. Sometimes on a short descent its nice to pedal down to keep your legs turning, now that would confuse the automatic gears to either change up if you were pedaling fast or change down if pedaling slowly, neither of which you would want.

Our opinion is to stick to normal manual shifting as you are in control of your gears when and were you want them.