$200 is a reasonable price for a bicycle-shaped garage decoration which gets ridden for 30 minutes per month, which is indeed all that many people want out of a bicycle. Something practical for a 15 minute one-way commute that you ride every day is more like $500 new. Something which you could spend all day every day on would be a lot more.
The question was would you spend that on a device you spend 8+hrs in each day, which is something people often ignore.
This is a device you _live_ in. This is someone's mobility and independence you're talking about. Not a "I spend 30 minutes to an hour a day riding", or a "I commute to work on this" but instead "I use this to enjoy life".
I ride a lot, and am happy to ride cheap bikes, but I probably wouldn't ride a $200 Amazon or Walmart bike for rides longer than 30-40 miles without swapping the saddle, which would add anywhere from $40 to $150.
When our kids were growing quickly, we went through a number of sub-$300 bikes, both new and gifted by family. I ended up doing about one repair every two weeks, including broken derailleurs, junky brakes, jammed wheels, you name it. And our kids did not abuse those bikes.
I ended up buying a bike stand and a basic toolkit just so I could fix those bikes quickly and get the kids back outside. The parts on those bikes were absolute garbage and the reliability was zero.
Meanwhile I have a medium/high-end mountain bike from 1997 that still has some original parts on it, despite having seen time as a daily commuter and a trail bike.
A good thing to look at is resale value. Around here, you can resell a $1200 mountain bike for a good price. But you'd lucky to get much for a $800 bike.
Most bicycles these days are in the $6-7k range easily. I mean you can cycle with a cheap-o but what about your wheels, your lack of suspension? Your brakes? The feeling of a premium amazing handling MTB is something else.
No, there are much better under-$200 bikes on craigslist. :P Get a nice $100 bike from the early 80s and pay a bike store for a tuneup, and you've got a pretty useful bike to ride on all day; gotta friction shift though. Not a lot of great looking wheelchairs on craigslist near me though.
