Hornit Airo balance bike review

If a bike can be scored on the look on a child's face when they walk in a room and see it, this bike would get top marks straight away. That might seem daft, but if your kids are desperate to ride a bike because they think it looks amazing, then everything becomes a lot easier and a lot more enjoyable.

Cycling Weekly Verdict

Easy to ride due to it's weight and light steering, comfortable with the saddle and thick tyres and visually appealing too. This bike won the first battle by virtue of our children wanting to play with it as soon as they saw it. They kept on wanting to ride it due to its ease of use.

Reasons to buy
  • +

    Lightweight

  • +

    Light steering motion

  • +

    Simple set up straight out of the box

  • +

    Fat tyres help with comfort

Reasons to avoid
  • -

    Paintwork chipped in obvious place

  • -

    Allen key needed for any adjustment

You can trust Cycling Weekly. Our team of experts put in hard miles testing cycling tech and will always share honest, unbiased advice to help you choose. Find out more about how we test.

The advantages of balance bikes and the ease with which they can get young children on to two wheels are well documented. We can't recommend them enough. When you think about the separate factors involved with riding a bike, it quite quickly becomes very complex.

A balance bike does away with most of those, allowing the child to focus just on balance and steering as they simply propel themselves by using their feet to scoot along, a perfectly natural movement for them.

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Simon Richardson
Magazine editor

Editor of Cycling Weekly magazine, Simon has been working at the title since 2001. He fell in love with cycling 1989 when watching the Tour de France on Channel 4, started racing in 1995 and in 2000 he spent one season racing in Belgium. During his time at CW (and Cycle Sport magazine) he has written product reviews, fitness features, pro interviews, race coverage and news. He has covered the Tour de France more times than he can remember along with two Olympic Games and many other international and UK domestic races. He became the 130-year-old magazine's 13th editor in 2015.