Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

Overall, the bike looks gorgeous. The sharp looks are honestly a large part of why I picked this, and I was not disappointed to see it in person. The paint has a sparkly pearl white finish underneath a very uniform clear coat, with no runs or imperfections. I expected the accent trim to be simple black decals, but even this is embedded into the paint job under the clear coat. Everything seemed to be assembled very well, with no problems out of the box. The LED headlights and taillights are very bright, and make for a great night riding experience, helping you to be seen on the road. The horn, while a bit ridiculous sounding, is usually good enough to warn pedestrians on walking trails. I found the battery life to be excellent, provided I was not traveling up steep hills. With the stock gear ratio, pedaling alone gets you to around 7-8mph, which is a bit too slow for my liking. It’s enough to help the motor up hills and when accelerating, but it’s difficult to use primarily as a bicycle, as it feels like a mountain bike stuck in first gear. The motor generally gets me up to around 13-14mph. This is a bit shy of the Amazon listing’s claim of 18mph, but a quick check with the wheel off the ground confirms that the speed is limited by the computer to 25kph, or around 15mph on my unit. The speedometer has no unit conversion, so you’re stuck with a readout in kilometers. The bike also claims to have three distinct modes, but I’ll be darned if I could tell any difference between them. All three modes provided the exact same amount of pedal assistance and allowed me to use throttle in addition. I’m fairly tall at around 6ft, and found the seat height to be far too short. I wound up ordering a taller seat post, which made the bike feel much better to ride. I also modified my bike with an aftermarket crankset, swapping the 44t front sprocket out with a 56t one, allowing me to pedal up to around 13-14mph, more closely matching the motor’s ability and making the bike feel much more balanced. To hack the speedometer to show MPH, I found it’s possible to open the programming mode by holding the mode button while turning on the bike. While there’s no unit conversion option, you can change the wheel size it uses to calculate speed. The KPH to MPH conversion factor is .621, so 14” wheel *.621 is around an 8.69” wheel. I changed P2 (wheel size) to 8 and P3 (offset) to 1.08, which gets pretty close to the correct reading in MPH. Ultimately, if you’re looking for a really good seated electric scooter, I would highly recommend this, as it’s wonderful for that purpose. As a bike, the limited gear ratio makes it a bit limited while pedaling unless you modify the bike with a larger chainring sprocket. I think the pedals were meant to help get it started, and then used as footpegs the rest of the ride. The inclusion of functional pedals means this may be legally classified as a bicycle, making it road legal in many states and therefore it could be ridden in areas where scooters may be banned or frowned upon. I hope Sailnovo can make an improved version, with more user configurable options in software, a higher gear ratio, and an included taller seatpost in the box.