Ecotric Review: Are Ecotric’s E-Bikes Actually Any Good?

With over 50,000 units sold in North America, Ecotric can rightly hold a claim to be a popular electric bike manufacturer.

Ecotric sell all kinds of electric bikes at attractive price points, all with a 30-day at-home trial period and an 18-month warranty. But are they actually any good?

Are Ecotric Bikes Good?

Despite being in its infancy (the brand started in 2017), the company has a decent reputation for selling good electric bikes.

With a host of models in their armoury, Ecotric covers all the electric bike bases. From electric mountain bikes for exploring, scouting and generally enjoying the great outdoors to folding electric bikes for getting places in the city – there’s an Ecotric for almost every e-bike rider.

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Each Ecotric electric bike uses a tried and tested format for affordable electric bikes. An external battery is mounted somewhere on the frame which in turn powers a motor located in the rear wheel of the bike. Hub motors like this can provide excellent assistance, in both throttle and pedal assist modes, but come at a snip of the price of more expensive mid-mount or crank-based motors.

To ensure all tastes are catered for, the company uses motors with different watts in their e-bikes. Some models are equipped with more basic 350W motors with more expensive models running 1000W motors for faster acceleration and better hill climbing performance.

Ecotric has a slightly bemusing way of naming their products, with many being assigned an animal name. From the Dolphin to the Seagull to the Leopard and the Bison, the name does (sometimes) give an indication as to the intended use of that particular model.

The folding e-bikes seem to be well-regarded by customers, with the standard 20″ model, Dolphin and Starfish variants amongst the best budget folding electric bikes available today. Ecotric produce a folding fat tire electric bike in order to meet the demand for that product line too.

Is Ecotric a Good Brand?

Shopping on the Ecotric website is a fairly pleasurable experience. All the need-to-knows are set out in the place you’d expect to find them and the simple black, white and orange colours mean it’s easy to digest them.

To our eye, the Ecotric website is let down by the strange way products are listed, less than clear product descriptions, information buttons that didn’t work and even the odd typo. There are plenty of dead links or 404 pages to navigate your way around too.

Clearly, those things aren’t going to inhibit the performance of an Ecotric electric bike. A misspelt word isn’t going to take the smile off your face when you whizz past cars standing bumper to bumper on the way to work. Plus we suppose this level of presentation is reflected in the price of the e-bikes.

Speaking of prices, it’s nice to see that Ecotric offer a seven-day price match on their products. In today’s e-commerce world of flash sales, voucher codes and refer-a-friend programmes, it’s comforting to know that should you buy an Ecotric electric bike, you should be buying it at the lowest possible price.

Finance is available on Ecotric’s website too. You can choose to pay monthly over a period of time or split your total amount into interest-free instalments.

The company’s electric bikes are shipped free to all mainland US states and Canada. Shipping and delivery times range depending on the product but most items should arrive with customers within eight working days.

Pleasingly, Ecotric electric bikes are shipped 95% built. What this means in practice is that you will need to install the front wheel, mount the handlebars and attach the pedals before riding. With basic tools and a little know-how, most people should complete this within 30 minutes or less.

Just bear in mind that any returns that are unrelated to the quality of the product, damages during transit or the shipping of an incorrect item will be charged 20% of the overall order value.

Where Are Ecotric Bikes Made?

Although it’s not printed in black and white on their website, we’d wager that all Ecotric electric bikes are made in China or Taiwan. That’s not a slight on Ecotric’s product, just a fact of life in today’s globalised world. There’s a well-ridden path of electric bikes designed (read commissioned) in the States and manufactured in various places in Asia. Indeed most electric bikes sold in the US are made in places like China and Taiwan.

Those looking to buy one of the electric bikes in the UK will be out of luck. The brand only ships in the US and Canada currently. This is the same for customers in Europe.

Does Ecotric Make E-Bikes?

Every Ecotric model is classed as an e-bike. Whilst Ecotric doesn’t state this explicitly as far as our research suggests, all Ecotric electric bikes are sold as Class 2 e-bikes – that means their assistance is limited to 20mph, both in pedal assistance mode and with the included throttle.

Ecotric Bikes Review

If the rider reviews on the Ecotric website are anything to go by, there are many happy Ecotric riders out there in the wild.

Many of the brand’s electric bikes have five-star reviews with many mentioning value for money and how fast the item arrived at their front door after purchase.

Best Ecotric E-Bikes