The bad:
The springs on the stock seat are useless, I added a cheap suspension seat post to the stock seat and now it is sane, I dare say enjoyable.
The brake calipers are super close to the spokes, as the pads wear I’ve had to trade rubbing a pad or rubbing the spokes until I replaced the uneven pads. The pads also wear pretty fast, the stock organics only lasted about 400 miles, but they may do better if you don’t enable class 3 speeds.
The top (fastest) gear is still not enough for the top speed, it is hard to keep up with pedaling in PAS 4+. I plan on swapping this for a better one.
The controller can’t handle getting splashed, at all. A puddle splash was all it took for the PAS to start freaking out, it would cut in and out while riding and suddenly try to take off while walking. I put a short piece of pex tube under the controller behild the battery connection plate to raise it a bit above the drain holes and I haven’t had a problem since but I feel like it should have better water resistance than it does.
The good:
The range is decent, I get over 20 miles with PAS 3 and below and about 15 miles with PAS 4.
The power is ok, it struggles uphill and as the battery gets low it struggles against the wind, at full charge it feels very powerful though. Overall I don’t even break a sweat for my 11 mile hilly commute.
The derailer is great, feels very responsive, I haven’t had to adjust anything from when it arrived.
Overall I’d buy it again at the $1k price point I paid but you can get much better used bikes for that price. It’s a good entry level bike, the suspension seat post is absolutely necessary though.
Is this something which can be photographed? I’m having trouble understanding how this can happen, unless the disc brake caliper body is exceptionally wide or if the spoke angle is exceptionally steep.
There really isn’t much clearance there and with uneven wear the caliper kept getting closer to the spokes every time I centered the rotor to the point where it starts rubbing. Honestly this seems really bad if it gets snagged on a spoke at high speed.