Eskute Wayfarer Electric Bike Review

The E-Bike revolution on a budget

ProsCons
Affordable.
Can tackle inclines with ease.

Weather resistant.
Not great for offroad terrain.

Lack of cadance sensor can
take a while to get used to.

Bike comes in a little tall so
some riders may find this a
struggle

The Wayfarer is an electronic city bike by Eskute, coming in at just under £1000 it’s potentially one of the cheapest options on the market for E-bikes right now and with the sharp rise in energy and particularly petrol prices more and more people are turning to e-bikes to aid in their commute or just to get around town.

The bike comes mostly prebuilt but it took both me and my partner a few minutes and a read of the manual later to get the bike up and working, the instructions though detailed with a lot of pictures are very badly translated leading to some interesting reading. 

In terms of design, it’s certainly a looker. Coming in at 25kg this is by no means a light bike but what it lacks in lightness it certainly makes up for in the design, even now 1 year on this bike still looks the part and certainly turned heads due to the rather unique design ESKUTE took here, I think much like marmite you will either love or hate it. It’s got this nicely curved body which allows even the shortest of riders to easily mount and unmount from the bike, Some people may find it a little tall while riding but for me, this felt perfectly sized.

Its alloy frame and rather fittingly named ‘Long Ting’ 360Wh internally mounted battery sit snugly, it doesn’t rattle and can quickly be locked and unlocked to allow for charging off the bike if desired. The pannier rack is good quality and has come very much in handy while riding to and from the shops with the essentials but keep in mind its 125 kg weight limit while riding. The mudguards and kickstand are easy to attach and feel fine quality wise but certainly nothing to write home about. Contact points are a mixed bag: the saddle is decent enough, not enormously padded but its at least nicely designed and wide enough at the back your not going to get a numb bum almost instantly, the bar grips are on the wide side but feel pretty tactile and the ability to switch the right-hand side out for a twist throttle was a nice touch if desired.

The transmission is a Shimano Tourney rear mech with an easy-to-use bar shifter, I really wasn’t used to this style of gearing system but quite quickly got used to it and came to love it, changing up and down gears was a breeze and its short chain meant it was much less venerable to slipping off mid-ride during a gear change.

The motor powering the pedal assist on this bike is the 250w Buffing motor. It’s a brushless rear hub motor with a cadence sensor controlling it. There are five levels of assistance, this motor kicked out a lot more power than I initially expected. Even on its lowest pedal assist level, the bike would propel you forwards with quite some force. I found this a little hard to get used to as I wasn’t expecting it at first so I tended to disable the assist when kicking off and enabling it after a short period. This is most likely down to the high level of torque the motor can put out meaning you can get up hills with little to no worry but it would have been nice to feel a slightly smoother torque up from a stationary start. The motor will keep you speeding along at a steady 15.5Mph even as I would tackle the biggest of hills.

To control the bike you are provided with a simple LCD Interface that shows you the current speed, distance travelled and the pedal assists level. It’s easy to read and simple enough to use with the battery indicator being very useful at times when on a longer ride needing to preserve your battery for those pesky hills. Under the display, you have a switch and a button. The button blares the obnoxious and downright annoying horn that will defiantly get people out of your way though I found it a little too easy to accidentally hit startling even myself at times too. The switch enables both the front and rear lights which are useful if not very powerful the throw of the front light is enough for an evening right but if you planning to ride at night a more powerful light may be more appropriate for you.

How have I got on with the bike daily? The simple answer is I have loved it and everyone I have shown the bike to has said the same thing ‘Wow this thing packs a punch’ and it does! The front suspension fork is ok for riding around the town and absorbing some of the smaller potholes but when it comes to dirt trails or off-road tracks you’re going to start to feel every twig or loose stone due to the poor suspension. But saying that it’s not what the bike was built for. If you want to go off-road Eskute does do a bike better suited for that and a separate review can be found here They claim the battery to have a 40-mile range which is pretty insane and I found that to be largely true even on hilly terrain near me I was getting close to if not more than the advertised 40mph using the lower levels of pedal assist.

I found getting around to be so much easier with this bike I can complete a 60-minute ride to my local park and truly not break a sweat if I didn’t want to and of course even if I did I could just disable the assists and be on my way. The bike feels sturdy in its frame and overall build quality too so I never felt like it was going to ever cause me problems.

Charging is super simple it can be done either on or off the bike as required and charges quickly which is always a nice bonus.

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