The 2019 Mongoose L100 Meets the Skatepark 3

It's not uncommon to find someone in the Vital BMX forum looking for their first BMX bike. It's also not uncommon to find forum regulars steering them towards the Mongoose Legion L100. Fortunately, everybody else did the legwork for me here, but I still wanted to check one of these out in person. I was recently in Raleigh, North Carolina - home of Mongoose BMX bossman Leigh Ramsdell - and told him to build one up and meet me at his local park. 

The bike looks good. This is the 2019, which is just now available. Leigh had the army green version, but it's also available in silver. A few of the things that immediately stood out to me were big tires - 2.4" to be exact, a nice looking set of tubular two-piece cranks, and a dialed Pivotal seat. 

Leigh built the bike up specifically for this shoot, so it hadn't yet been ridden - hence the lack of battle scars.

I expected to see some of the standard issues you regularly run into when putting a complete bike to work - bars slipping, forks / pedals bending, etc, and was pleasantly surprised when none of those unfortunate events occurred. 

Keep in mind that Mr. Ramsdell is a BMX lifer and definitely knows how to properly put a bike together. But, very impressive nonetheless. 

The session wasn't a long one, but it was long enough to be impressed with what I saw. Leigh looked completely comfortable on the bike and was airing quarters pretty much immediately. This bike is clearly aimed for entry-level riders, but it's nice to see it can hold up perfectly with a full-sized adult man airing concrete quarterpipes on it. To me, this says that a new rider could get this bike and learn the basics, without digging back in the wallet right away. That's good. 

The 2019 Legion L100 features full chromoly frame, fork, and bar and is available for around $300. I'm not sure where they're cutting corners to get to that price point, but that's some serious bang-for-the-buck. In fact, you can currently pick up the green one on Amazon for $276.52 (the silver version is currently $317.54).

If you or someone you know is in the market for their first BMX bike, do the research, check out the options, and see what suits you best. From what I saw during my session with Leigh Ramsdell, I'd certainly recommend looking into the L100.