Lovely day here again to be testing out an e-bike now this is one from a coal mile reviewed one of
their city bikes but this is now a mountain bike which is more my style i'm a mountain biker myself
but i do happen to have a trek rail 5. now this model here from them is the rocket bear 1s it is a
mid mounted mid motor this one which is 750 watts up to 160 newton meters of torque super powerful
shimano gears and we do have hydraulic disc brakes with this a front shock which has approximately
three inches of travel rear shock so it is full suspension and the rims on this one are 27.5 with
cst tires that are 2.4 inches wide so in this review i'll be going over the top speed the
kind of range you can expect out of it what it's like to ride the five different assist levels and
anything else that comes up in my various days of testing out this bike so let's first go over the
design in detail here i really like the aggressive stance of this bike here and the geometry it's a
large frame it's a heavy bike it is 35 kilos with that mid mount motor that's a very powerful motor
this one 750 watts 160 newton meters of torque maximum output from this it's 48 volts and it
is from a company called buffen and the curious thing about this setup is the whole crank moves
by itself it comes with logan brand hydraulic disc brakes so 160 millimeters at the rear
and slightly larger 180 millimeter discs at the front the shock at the front is an sr suntour it's
the xmc30 and it does have approximately three inches of travel and the rear shock this one
has approximately one inch of travel it's a lot stiffer than the front suspension but i do like
the setup and the layout of the suspension it's very similar to what i have on my trek rail five
the pedals i've used they are metal femi brand ones that i've not seen before and you notice
that they're welds around the frame and the paint job the finish of it is excellent but there are
some areas like right here this plate that covers over where the gears are with the motor that do
feel a little bit cheap and these two screws here they're not even painted blue which i think they
should be to match of course so the front wheel does have a quick release we don't have one for
the rear and we've got 27.5 inch rims on this with cst patrol tyres these ones are 2.4 inches wide
then for our gears here the rear cassette does have eight different cogs in there so we've got
an eight speed set up with this and it's shimano altus and they are using a shimano chain which is
good to see and what's really interesting to note is right here we do have the sensor here so it
knows when we change gears and it takes the power of the motor for a split second so it removes some
of that torque on the chain here to hopefully increase the lifespan of it so we don't have
no crunching of gears under full load however it does rattle around and i sometimes hear it
working up against the frame there now we do have most of our cables all routed internally through
the frame there's a rubber gasket around here so these cables are not going to chafe up against it
and you'll see that we've got these large plugs that means everything is modular here that if you
need to replace the screen you can just simply plug in a new one you don't have to hunt around
for where it connects which is great however having all these plugs on the outside here
does look a little bit ugly it's not exactly aesthetically the best looking way to do it
the seat is comfortable enough it's a typical mountain bike seat so there's not a huge amount
of cushioning to it now you can raise it right up it can also drop it right down i do like the fact
that the frame goes down a lot lower than where the handlebars are and this is great for writing
down trails so you can really get that seat out of the way and we have a large removable battery this
one is 17.5 amp hours it takes approximately five to six hours to charge now under a little rubber
cap here we do have our plug for charging it there's even a little status led indicator here at
the top so when you press this you can clearly see the remaining battery percentage in there without
having to remove it which is great now this is lockable so it does come with two keys so you can
lock it in there and that means it's secure no one can just walk along and go and steal that battery
now i really like the design of this battery it is so easy just to slot it out from the side
so it's not complicated some of the other ones you have to kind of get it up and then out and
you got the frame in the way not with this there's also a rubber gasket around where it plugs in
it does also come equipped here with a front headlight as you can see this is an led one
so if you press the plus button and hold it down for about four seconds it will turn on the same to
turn it off it's relatively bright it does light up the path of head of you it's sufficient enough
for that but we don't have a rare tail light with this bike i mean most don't the rocket bear
1s comes with lock grips either side and they are not going anywhere no problems with those
so we do have this an accelerator now you can remove it if you want to you have to remove the
grip of course you can slot that off and simply unplug it the rest of the bike will work fine
then our controller so this is the power button right at the top we've got the plus level the
minus level for the pedal assist but also for this to accelerate and then i use the information to
cycle through the different modes on the screen now the screen on this bike is fantastic i'm not
doing it justice here it's reflecting a lot because it does have glass that's over it
it's fully laminated it's an amoled screen and it gives us a very clear indication of the power
our speed right there trip and the odometers you can cycle through the different modes you can see
the max speed average speed time and then back to the odometer there battery life is clearly
indicated now when you are riding you often see this drop right down but that's because it's
measuring it from the voltage and when the voltage drops it then drops quite a bit there so you can
see sometimes it'll report sixty percent you'll go oh i'm losing a lot of battery
but then when you're on the flat and you're peddling along it will probably bounce back
then to eighty percent of what it really is then on the right we've got our gear selector
so this is to go down the gears that is to go up we have a bow for safety and our rear brake
and you're probably wondering what system does it use a torque sensor or a speed sensor so
no it's a speed sensor here that you will find connected up to the rear wheel i'm just starting
out here in mode one now this will get me up to about 10 kilometers but it's really going to be
dependent on the german so from the high gear it could even get me up to 25 kilometers per hour
just a mode one so you don't even need to pedal you can just use this to accelerate and away i go
so that is just moving the crank there with the motor as if i was pedaling basically simulating
me pedaling which i'm not doing at the moment now when i do start to pedal once it detects that i'm
moving it gives me then the assistance now i'm not getting a lot at the moment because i'm just
in mode one but if i change this now to my two it's then powering it's a lot easier and this
rough gravel here and things like that not a problem for a full suspension bike like this
i will test it out on the trail soon and also show you the max speed that you can get
out of this which is surprising it's very powerful as you can imagine with a 750 watt motor
now for a maximum speed test i've got it in level five fully charged the battery this is day three
with this e-bike and oh got a person in the way here so this is a nice big open stretch to test
out that top speed so i'm just gonna push as hard as i can with that pedal assistance
up to 35 kilometers per hour right now
42 44 45 47 48 almost running out of road so that is quick enough so you should be
able to get it up to 50 if you have a straight enough stretch that's clear
so it's my little climb test here now so this is about a 25 to 30 degree gradient
this climb and i tested out with the scooters and e-bikes so i'll start off in level one here i'm in
the low gear and i'll see how it feels just using the accelerator so that's pretty slow going but
i'm just in the level one now if you increase to level two right up to level four here look at that
it's doing it without me even having to pedal but i want to do some pedaling and test out the pedal
assist so once you start pedaling for just a few well a few seconds it detects that you're moving
and it then gives you that assistance and you really feel it now it's got a lot of torque and
you feel it kick in it almost pulls you back a little bit there's almost too much power
i really do like this i'm upsetting the dogs there i really do like how when i change the gears it
cuts out for a second to make that gear change very smooth without grating any gears putting
any stress on that chain not even my trek rail 5 does that when i change gears now you can easily
really put some stress on those gears so level one is going up this just fine level two now
you can see there's a little power bar and that is showing just how much power
it's using there's a gauge there you don't know exactly how much but up to
750 watts so that's easy i'm having to work a little bit and now level three even easier
four and level five this climb is really easy i'm even gonna go up a few gears here i mean
i'm powering up this this is probably one of the best climbing e-bikes that i have reviewed now
very good at these climbs and it's got more power again than my trick rail5 it's incredible
the way this climbs so good i'm just powering up this
so i made it up here the top the climb was just so effortless it really was easy compared to what
i am used to and if you were riding up this and got up to this kind of altitude the height here
where i am now on a normal bike you'd be a bit of a sweaty mess by now and i'm not actually
too bad at all because it was so easy going so i'm gonna write a little bit of light trail here
we'll see how it handles it now i have noticed that the rear shock it doesn't give a lot okay a
lot of travel it's only got about an inch at best not even that really a little bit less it seems
very very stiff now the other thing to point out too is that the kickstand the stand here
it's loosened off now i've tightened it up a few times but it seems that the stand itself
made out of alloy i've stripped the thread in it or it's just stripped because of the weight
of the spike the sheer weight of it so we'll see how it handles this i'm just drop my seat
post right down here of course make sure it's nice and low and i really do like this you can
get it down into a super low position that's great for completely getting it out of the way
and you can get your balance just a little bit better when going down some of these trails here
so i still have it in mode four so i powered it here just then and a little hard going rocky a
bit of course along here some little light bumps so i wouldn't take this down any serious trails
the front shock does a good job i just mentioned that rear shock it's almost non-existent really
doesn't feel like it's doing that much so you could probably swap it out or upgrade it
but really do you want to go down that path of upgrading parts so here is the drop here
see how it's going to handle it with a 27.5 inch wheel should be okay oh not too bad probably the
best out of these cheaper e-bikes that i have reviewed and now let's see how it feels going
up this trail here so i've got it set to level four which is quite powerful in the third gear and
i'm now rocketing ahead so this should definitely help me out almost feels like i'm going a little
bit too fast with some big rocks around here so if you get your balance forward a little bit
you're able to do this climb up these trails that i wouldn't be able to tackle
on a non-electric assisted bike so for these kind of rocky climbs you can do it but
it is very hard going with that front shock and especially no rear travel
rear wheel tends to bounce around a bit but hey i'm able to do this
so now for my typical brake test i'm going to go as fast as i can
we'll try not to go over about 40 kilometers or
and as soon as i get to that post i'm gonna break full breaking pressure just wanted to point out
first five kilometers these brakes were quite poor as they needed bedding in so here we go
makes a bit of a strange noise not bad but i still think i need to
beat these brakes in a little bit more i've only done 10 kilometers
and i'll be testing this bike out for another few days to really get those k's up
now what about the expected range out of this so i've just been burning around here going up a lot
of climbs i've just been powering around in full speed most of the time and i do find the climbs on
this thing is excellent however it takes a toll on the battery so i'm only looking at about 40
kilometers with my weight and the kind of running that i'm doing around here now if i wasn't going
up so many hills if i didn't use the pedal assist level say four or three and i kept it to two or to
one i do believe then 50 kilometers is possible with this now they claim 60 on average i think
that 16 may be a little bit far-fetched unless you ride around on the flat mostly you're not going
off-road and you don't have a lot of climbs there so a lot of things i like about this bike here
the screen that's so good it's huge very large it gives me a lot of information and the best
part about it is just so clear to read so much better than the screen i have with my
bosch cx-powered trick rail 5. and speaking of things better than that bike too i like the fact
that it has a sensor that when you change the gears it cuts the power to the motor this is
something that trick need to look at and bosch i think it's really good to have so it cuts the
power for a split second and that makes the gear changes a lot smoother i'm being eaten alive here
by flies that's a good thing there now we just got typical kind of low end shimano altus gears
with this it's nothing amazing the brakes in the beginning were a little bit scary until i beat
them in after about five kilometers just to burn off that layer that's on them and now the braking
is okay i don't find this too much of a problem we get lot grips the front suspension does have
about three inches of travel rear suspension is poor so it only gives me about an inch of travel
if that not a lot there i just find it's a bit too stiff i do hope they can think about
changing that rear shock there the battery is very good the fact that you can just slot it out
very easily and it's lockable there so no one's able to steal it and it charges in only about
five hours five to six hours to fully charge 17.5 amp hours isn't actually too bad for that
now there's a couple of areas that i would definitely look at changing on this bike and
that is the stand don't bother with the kickstand because it cannot really handle
the weight of this bike weight wise this thing is ah it's a monster okay it's 35 kilos that is
very very heavy for a bike so the front end just to pop it up a curb or some rocks
isn't so playful this bike because of that there but it's all about this the rocket bear 1s the
climbing performance that powerful motor that's the big positive for me out of this particular
model here so thank you so much for watching my review here of eco miles rocket bear 1s