hi every chris here up in the mountains checking out this particular e-bike here that i've been
testing for the last three days it is from a company called vv it's a 26 inch e-bike mountain
bike here it does have dual suspension a 350 watt motor 160 millimeter mechanical disc brakes and a
range of realistically around i would say 30 to 35 kilometers maximum 21 speed semano gas and
the weight of it is approximately about 20 kilos or so so in this in-depth review i'll be putting
it through its paces some road tests i'll let you know exactly what kind of range i can get out of
how it is to ride the power of the motor and climbs and anything else that does come up so
we have 26 inch rims with this one the tyres on them they are cst brands so 26 by 1.95
a rear hub motor in this one is 350 watts maximum and we do have mechanical disc brakes these are
160 millimeters it does come with a kickstand which is on the bike out of the box and it is
sturdy enough to hold it up without any problems at all this right here is our controller so it's
external this one so none of the batteries or the controller is inside the frame which is a shame
now it does have a rear shock or really a dampener here now it's a no-name brand one
this gets very little travel but at least it is something our seat is fully adjustable with a
quick release mechanism and there is a rear reflector but no rear tail light with this
the front mechanical disc brake just like the rear is 166 millimeters
now we do at least get a front headlight now i've seen this headlight used on many e-bikes before
out of china probably about five of them now it has four leds within it it is very bright
you can actually see it in daylight too and at night it does light up the path ahead of you
and does a very good job the shock at the front is a no brand one and we have approximately two
and a half inches of travel with this particular shock and i'll be testing it out in this review
and let you know how it performs included which you do need to screw in are of course our pedals
now these ones are made out of a hard abs style plastic there are reflectors in these now if you
wanted to swap them out for metal pedals or higher quality ones it's easy enough to do so
so if you guess with this one we've got shimano's tourney 21 speed setup which is three at the front
and seven gears at the back and here you'll find the release mechanism which is just a
quick release for the foldable part of the bike so this is where in the frame it is divided in two
and you can fold it in half to stow it away if needed or get it into a car now this the quality
of it and the quality in general of this frame is not quite as good as what i've seen on some
of the other e-bikes out there overall it's okay it's just some of the finish with the materials
and the paint job you can see some rough edges on it just for example around here you can see a few
little dots and rough edges with the finish of it the paint job however that is not bad on this bike
this is what it looks like when it is completely folded up so this aids in the
ease of stowing it away under a stairwell or to put it in say the trunk or the boot of your car
you would have noticed that we've got our battery pack right here so it's eight amp
hours it takes approximately four to five hours to fully charge right here is the charging port
and you do need to plug it in here so this is waterproof the zip around it as well keeps the
water out so you don't have to worry about this being rained on it should not be an issue at all
at least the good thing about this is that you're able to replace the battery or get another one too
and plug it in straight away you just unzip it put it inside but i don't really like the aesthetics
of this having an external battery pack strapped on the front is to me a lot uglier looking than
having it inside the frame like we do with other e-bikes so handlebar width is pretty much standard
here for a bike like this we don't have any lock grips now i've actually swapped the grips out
because i did install the handlebar accelerator here which you can do that's an optional extra
it's included in the box and just check with your local laws if you're actually allowed to run this
so without even peddling you can use this to accelerate and get yourself away so here is our
gears right here that's the seven at the back and then over the other side we have the three
at the front there and then our controller which allows to see our power level so each one of these
five red dots there represents twenty percent battery so right now you can see i've got a
hundred percent so when one of those batteries lights goes out that means i'll be at eighty
percent or between eighty and a hundred percent so low medium to high assist levels is controllable
here with the plus and minus keys if you hold down the plus key that will then turn on the front led
headlight the handlebar height is adjustable right here so with an allen key you can increase this to
raise or lower the handlebars according to your own preference so the seat right here pretty
much a standard cheap mountain bike seat it has a little bit of padding in it and overall in my
time riding it i've done now 22 kilometers with just one ride i haven't had any issues with it
so there's a crank sensor in this of course so when i start to pedal it then detects that
and gives me some assistance so we've got the low medium high settings here and as mentioned before
that is my battery gauge now my knees they are quite a distance away from the handlebars here so
i don't see any problem with me having my knees strike them unless i was to turn super sharply
but your normal kind of turning circles that really is not going to be an issue
i have a little bit of a rossbot here the front shock is handling this just fine you
do feel it and hear it clunking around now gear changes typical shimano that it is pretty good
they seem to be reasonably smooth and crisp and no real issues with them there so comfort wise
not bad and i do like the fact that i can just use the accelerator here
to cruise along without needing to pedal at all but it's quite slow it's only around 20
kilometers per hour that it gets me up to at least that's within legal limits of course
now just along this stretch it is quite bumpy these pavers that they do have along
this coastal path and i can feel again the shocks they are doing something at least
taking out some of the bumps and much better than a bike that if it didn't have any shocks at all
you would definitely be rocking all over the place so it helps to smooth out the ride a little bit
just along this stretch i have a gentle ride and i'm only using the accelerator here i'm
not pedaling at all the motor is on the high setting and you can see it's doing a very
decent job of this but i'm doing approximately 20 kilometers per hour here and it's able to
handle this climb now you can hear the motor a little bit it seems to have a reasonable amount
of torque but what i'll do next is go to a place where i've got quite a steep climb and we'll see
then just how this motor is going to handle that if i need to pedal and i do believe i will have to
and right now or even less than that it's now starting to run out of puffs so i do need to
start pedaling and i can feel now it's giving me a boost so if you're going to have a lot of
steep climbs around your area then you are going to have to pedal a little bit and put some effort
into it at least you're getting some fitness then out of this bike now this climb is quite
difficult normally without the motor assisting me i'm definitely feeling it helping push me up here
i'm on the highest possible seating too by the way so i made it about a 350 meter
climb over about one and a half kilometers the bike has done surprisingly well it was so much
easier to ride over this and up without even really working up too much of a sweat
so how does it handle light trails like this not really too much of an issue now i normally ride
these technical trails around this area on a 29 inch trek full suspension and i wouldn't really
tackle them with a cheap bike like this but i wanted to test it out so a little like trails like
this with a few little rocks and things fine you can hear the suspension clanking away now and then
giving me a little bit of travel on the front the rear very very little travel now there's
a bit of a drop upper here which i'm a little bit nervous about taking on an e-bike such as this one
with limited travel let's see how this goes it could be good blooper reel if i crep out down this
wow that was pretty rough going
and then now riding down this trail again
it's rough going but i need to make it down to the coast again
okay so i made it down that rocky trail in one piece and to the end of the coast here
in summertime you can see how busy this place gets absolutely packed full of people now
so braking test now going to go down this hill once i reach a certain point i'll let you know
and i put full emergency braking on just to test out those 160mm millimeter mechanical disc brakes
so once i reach this post here on a full break now
all right not as bad as i thought it was going to be
of course if this had hydraulic brakes braking performance would be a lot better
so before my camera gets blown away and i'm blown off the mountainside here let's talk
about the range that you're able to achieve out of a mountain bike like this so my first ride i
got 22 kilometers with two steep climbs second charge second ride 25 kilometers
this was me monitoring it with gps that i do on my watch so i think the range is okay considering the
climbs and things if you're on the flat mostly you don't have a lot of big hills to climb up
then i think it's possible to get around 30 to 35 kilometers out of this now my weight i'm
about 81 kilos at the moment if you are lighter expect even better range if you're heavier then
your range will be less of course so to get up to this point here in the mountain to climb up
i did end up losing one bar of battery which is 20 so those climbs really do burn through it
however the 350 watt motor made this climb an absolute breeze normally when i get to the top
i'm sweating like crazy i have to work really hard without any motor of course in the lowest
gear the granny gear pedaling up that hill and i did it on the third gear and i just rocketed
it up without really any problem not breaking up too much of breaking out too much of a sweat there
if you think you can still do those climbs without putting any effort into it no you still
need to pedal a little bit on the steeper climbs definitely now just using the accelerator you are
able to get around places like town and wherever you need to go at around 23 to sometimes about 25
kilometers per hour out of this particular bike now the suspension we get about one
inch of travel not even that really on the rear which is a little bit which helps out with some
of those bumps the front shock that's about two to two and a half inches only but at least it's
better than nothing right if this didn't have any shocks at all going along some of these trails
that i've just been testing out and riding would be very hard going quite bumpy however i would not
be riding this down really rocky terrain it's simply not the quality of bike for that build
quality wise it is a little bit cheap in some areas like the latch mechanism but it is strong
it bolts on it's not going to unfold on me when i'm riding here which is the main thing but you do
notice a few little rough spots all up the design of it is really like they took a 26 inch normal
foldable mountain bike and then bolted on the extras so the battery pack having it here for me
is a little bit ugly i wish it was part of the frame or there was another way they've done it or
maybe put the battery here or something still it does take around four to five hours to charge the
eight amp hour battery and as mentioned a possible range of up to say 30 kilometers is achievable
with this the gears from shimano working well the brakes in the beginning i did find
a little on the scary side until i beat them in they do need about 15 to 20 kilometers or so
of just using those brakes before they then start to grip a lot better they're only mechanical discs
if they were hydraulic they would certainly be better but it would push the price of this e-bike
up speaking of pricing it does sell for around 800 euros this particular bike
and well there we go that is the full story behind the vv 26 inch foldable
e-bike thank you so much for watching this review i do hope to see you back in the next one