That Fathom seems like an excellent deal. If I was near the $1000 range, that’s what I would go with. I started about a year ago with a Rockhopper sport. It was a great bike but I got obsessed pretty quick and decided to upgrade to full suspension instead of upgrade the Rockhopper. I picked up a Stumpjumper Comp about a month ago and couldn’t be happier. If I had started with something like the Fathom 2, I may have stuck with it for a while longer because it has a lot of the features I was looking for in an upgrade.