Today I have a video that's a little bit different, and it's about that bike that costs $699. I'm even going to tell you one way you can even get the bike for $649.
And that, is not very much money for an electric bicycle.
I like electric bikes that are powerful, that have great components, that are very high quality. Can you get any of that in a bike that's $699?
This bike is called the Z1 and it is sold under the Eunorau Brand. The reason I wanted to do a video on this bike is because of your comments.
Ok, maybe not you specifically, but somebody watching previous Bolton Ebikes videos.
This sounds more like a demand letter than a request.
We're going to address this problem and see, are there are bikes that are under $3,000, under $1,700, under $1,000, that are any good.
What do you get when you only pay $699? Or maybe $649.
There's one other thing I really feel compelled to mention, and it is, what else could you get for $699 in the world of ebikes?
You could get the Eunorau Z1. If you have one of the Bikonit warthogs you could literally buy, a spare battery. Some bikes that I sell have a battery that costs $699.
The same price as an entire bike. I've seen other companies such as Pedego and Juiced that have batteries that cost well over $1,000.
I do think some of those might be a little overpriced, but you get my point. When it comes to other ebikes, you don't get very much component wise for $699.
Many people of course are familiar with the RadPower bikes and I sell upgrades for those bikes. Let me give you an example of a typical upgrade scenario.
Because they want a little more range, a little more performance, they'll buy a new motor, they'll buy an upgrade kit which includes a new controller and display.
They'll buy a new freewheel to put on their new motor, sometimes they'll buy a freewheel removal tool, and then sometimes they'll buy some hydraulic brake calipers.
The sum total of those upgrades would be $716. You could upgrade your RadRover for $716 or you could have another bike.
So let's go through the 5 review points that I'm doing for every single bike. Price, Power, Range, Technical specifications and warranty.
Is this worth $699? And to that I'm gonna have to say, YES! I think this is worth $699. This is not the same as a more expensive bike.
It is a little bit different, but it is a usable bicycle, a usable electric bike, it works, it functions. Price, I have to give it an A for awesome because there aren't very many options that are inexpensive like this one.
This is only a 250 watt rear hub motor. And if I was in Europe, hey it's a $699 Ebike with the maximum allowed wattage, it would be an A for Awesome score, but we're not in Europe.
We're in the United States where we can have bikes that are much, much more powerful.
And if I go up a hill like this one right here on this bike, will it do it? I've got the throttle pinned and
it is going up the hill, but very slowly I would say at a brisk walking pace. So it's making it up this hill better than I thought.
I wasn't even sure if it could do it. It's just giving you a little bit of an assist. So on flat ground, can it move under its own power? Sure.
Could it move under its own power up a hill with somebody half of my weight? Maybe.
I'm just going to give it a neutral score on power because that's about all you can really expect for $699.
And number 3, is Range. This is the battery on the bike. It's a little bit tiny. This is a 6.6ah, 36v battery and that's not going to get you very far.
I know when the Sondors fat bikes first came out they had a 36v 8ah battery on a 350 watt fat bike.
And they were able to demonstrate with a light person, flat ground, they were able to get 20 miles out of it. This is a little less power, the bike is obviously lighter, it's going to roll easier,
but the battery is about 1/3rd smaller. So realistically I think you're in the neighborhood of 15 miles or so on range. If you're pedaling and using this like a bicycle with just a little bit of an assist.
If you tried to use just throttle you're going to kill it much sooner than that. Going back to some of those comments I read, people said they were commuting 2 miles to work,
3 miles to works, maybe even 5 miles to work. In my opinion, that would beat walking the 2-3 miles to work every day.
But they do have a battery a little bigger than 10ah available as an option separately. So if you need more range there is a bigger battery that can fit on the bike.
I'm going to give it a neutral score because the bigger battery is sold separately and you can't easily just buy it with the bigger battery. Keep in mind, it's only $699.
And now onto number 4, the technical specifications. It has a pretty cool little display. They look really clean and nice
I wish they had some other features. The bike doesn't have that much power so it's not a huge deal but this was one of my little pet peeves on this display.
You have a power button, a mode button. There's no up and down for your assist levels. So if you want to go from 3 down to 2, you actually have to go 0, lose all your power, 1, 2.
It works, it's just obviously not quite as good as a nicer display. But hey, what are you going to get for the price.
We've got leather comfortable grips on here, comes with a bell, there is a 6 speed, notice not 7 speed like you see on most bikes, but only 6 speeds.
Shimano shifter, so it's a step down just a hair from bikes that are more expensive, but not bad.
It does have mechanical disc brakes, they are some random cheaper brand I've never heard of, but they do work.
Rotors 160mm, so on the smaller side, but sufficient for how I would expect this bike to be used. No name brakes are doing their job.
Working just fine. Fairly cheap plastic pedal on here. It does have a rack, and it does have fenders, so that's not bad.
And it does also have an integrated tail light, and an integrated headlight.
So even though it's cheap, it has the bare necessities, plus some things I still see sold as extra options on more expensive bikes. The racks, the fenders, and the integrated lights.
I think it's also worth pointing out that I've used very similar tires to these Kendas on other bikes and I've seen them last a few thousand miles. So I don't think they skimped out on tire quality.
Where they saved a little bit of money was going to the 6 speed setup, the smaller battery, the cheaper pedals. Component wise I'm actually pretty impressed.
For the price point. So I'm actually going to give it an Awesome score because at the price I was expecting more of a "toy". More of a cheaper I don't know what I was expecting. Just something less.
But these are genuine bicycle components, and finally number 5 the warranty. They do have a warehouse in Las Vegas, NV, so they have US based support and parts that are here.
And it has a warranty of 12 months. What I would consider industry standard right now, so neutral score on the warranty. Thankfully you can get parts and pieces for these things, hopefully for a long time without too much trouble.
This bike is only $699, but I still gave it an overall score of 70. So there you have it, this is the Z1 from Eunorau.
I want to know what you guys think of affordable bikes like this. What I'm going to do is put the Z1 for sale on Bolton Ebikes.
And because we just passed over 64,000 subscribers, I'm going to make it available until the end of 2020 from BoltonEbikes.com for $649.
So that's how you can save $50 if you want to buy an affordable less than $700 electric bike.
Now if you want something that's a little bit nicer than this, for just a couple hundred bucks more, then I have just the video for you. Make sure to go check out this video right here on the Lectric XP.