The whole point for me was that I wasn't fit enough for a normal bicycle and didn't have the motivation to work up to it. With the ebike it feels like I can go anywhere I want and still get some cardio exercise doing it. If they're recommending an expensive non-ebike, that's just silly.
As an avid cyclist too, I think the biggest misunderstanding is you mentionned "trail", which you are probably confusing with "non paved path". That Bike Shaped Object mentionned up there would totally be destroyed in a few hours of riding any challenging trail at a decent speed. The fork would bend and lockup itself, the brake pads would be dead before reaching the bottom of the hill.
Another problem with buying such a lowend bike online is they are very often badly assembled. You might find quickly that it becomes noisy because some parts were installed without enough grease, or components may become nearly impossible to remove because of oxydation when it will become time to replace them, and it may just be unsafe because something hasn't been torqued to spec. I once had a thorough look at these kind of bikes and a sticker on the fork clearly stated it was not really rated to be used off road. Thanksfully the CE norms have been done so that bicycles do not explode on potholes filled roads so even a bike not made for off-road is made to survive common abuses on and off the pavement.
My biggest issue with these kind of cheap e-bikes with stupid barely functionnal gimmicks such as (badly) suspended fork and chinese low end electric system is they often turn very quickly to the landfill because something end up being non functionnal and the owner do not know how to fix it himself and which component to replace wit. So to the eyes of many what you really bought appears to be waste (or soon to be) which would have been better replaced by something that might last better. Take the same bike, replace the suspended fork with a steel rigid fork and remove the electronics and you have a bike that can be ridden for years with decent maintenance. But how many people will do that instead of sending it to the landfill and replacing it with the same shit when it gets to this point?
Having said that the good thing with cycling is you don't have to have the newest more expensive bike to enjoy riding and as long as you do it within the capabilities of the bike. And suprisingly a bike can be operated for long while being in a very bad state as long as speed is kept low, squeaking and grinding his way to your destination.
> "trail", which you are probably confusing with "non paved path"
This terminology difference might be meaningful in biking circles, but the places I go are designated as "trails" both colloquially and often by various governments.
> Take the same bike, replace the suspended fork with a steel rigid fork and remove the electronics and you have a bike that can be ridden for years with decent maintenance.
Wouldn't it be too heavy as a normal bike? From what I understand, ebike frames work out cheaper because they don't have to care about not making them heavy.
Well terminology is important depending on who you are talking to. Some governments may call that trail but riding down a black track at Whistler or Champery is different than just riding along on a non technically challenging gravel road/path. Besides, trail bike is a term used by the bicycle industry for a category of bikes that are much more capable than a cross-country mountain bike on challenging terrain and downhills while not being as much extreme as a Downhill bike with double crown forks which are pigs uphill.
As for your other question it really depends on the kind of e-bike.
Well integrated e-bike from bigger companies have the engine in the bottom bracket area so you can't remove that and the battery is usually so integrated inside the frame. Most cheap e-bike like yours, if it is the same as the one I see on the viribus website, are regular cheap alu frame on which they have strapped a battery on the standard 2 bolts usually dedicated for the water bottle holder cage and the engine is on the rear wheel. So the frame is pretty standard in that regard. Remove the battery and swap the rear wheel for a regular rear wheel and you have a conventional very entry level hardtail.
I made a good and realistic recommendation for the price range, that would leave OP well off in the long run.
I understand that you could say the ebike part is a hard requirement but, well, I don't think someone who knows so little about mountain biking or biking at all is in a position to make that kind of hard requirement in an informed way.
I also understand that you could read this as really pompous, but please consider what someone saying otherwise amounts to:
"I NEED an ebike mtb, but I also know nothing about mtbs or ebikes"
Suggesting a normal bike to me is not good or realistic at all. Electric is a hard requirement because the whole point is that I don't have the time or motivation to build up to riding steep hills and long distances without power. I can do that right away now, and it's rewarding enough that I keep doing it and getting exercise. I also wanted something suitable for dirt and bumpy terrain, so, a mountain bike style made the most sense.
I used to ride a road bike occasionally but the difficulty turned me off. If I'm stuck with an unpowered bike I just won't ride.
The problem is that “mountain bike” means two things. To an MTB rider, it’s a vehicle optimized for mountain riding where the top priority is rider’s safety.
To everyone else, it’s a category of vehicles capable of off-pavement riding on trails. They should be referred to off-pavement bikes.
Mountain bikes are like SUVs. Only a small % of people take either off road or in any way challenge their capabilities.
But the same can be said for most bikes. Very few folks actually run the tour de france or any other competitive race. People get all excited by capabilities or let those who do know and use those features influence their buying.
This is simply untrue. For the standard of bike that someone who knows bikes would call a mountain bike - they are ridden on trails regularly. People are not spending 3k+ on a really inefficient and slow bike to ride around their cities and neighborhoods.
You presumably are not actually knowledgeable about mountain bikes and riding them?
"No true mountain biker would ever call this a mountain bike"... yet go in any sporting goods store, anything with fat tires and or a suspension, upright handlebars, thumb shifters, it's likely labeled a mountain bike and would probably disintegrate on a downhill or cross trail. It's still a mountain bike to 95% of people.
And yes, I used to cross trail several times a year in MO and mtb park (duthie hill) downhill (stevens) when I moved to Seattle, then watched several people get massive concussions and stayed with snowboarding.
If a thing becomes mainstream it gets diluted. The top 1% definition of a thing is not the thing exclusively.
Pal, come _on_. Read my initial comment, and any other comment thereafter. I was very clear and explicit that I was giving this criticism from the perspective of not "anybody" but rather someone who actively mountain bikes.
You're still not understanding. Those bikes you were talking about - while they may be marketed as 'mountain bikes' (a term anybody can use for anything) - are not fit for the purpose of mountain biking (a set of well establish sports and related types of riding).
You have now moved on to confusing the way marketers lie in their descriptions of bikes in order to sell to the ignorant, with the actual and established sports that comprise mountain biking and the bikes used therein.
> The top 1% definition of a thing is not the thing exclusively.
Everybody who mountain bikes (more than once har har har) does so on an actual mountain bike. It's not the 1%. It's more like the 99%. People don't repeatedly take these wallmart bikes down trails. Nobody survives that setup long enough to make it in to the group you can by any good standard call mountain bikers.
Go to your local trail that isn't some fireroad or featureless single track, and tell me how many people you see on shit bikes like this.
You know, I'd normally agree with you about this diluted point as it relates to many other things, but I can't here. For example - car racing is not just formula 1 or other top tier engineering categories. The vast majority of car racing is amateur and hobby stuff in comparatively low or very low spec vehicles. The difference is that you can "technically" compete with a formula one car on a racetrack in a 1997 nissan micra with 40hp. The micra can cruise around the track basically indefinitely, stopping only for fuel - and complete the race days after the f1 car. A road is a road.
This is not the case with mountain biking. All non mountain bikes basically explode on contact with mountains. It's self selecting such that people who continue to mountain bike past the first outing or two, must do so on a purpose built good quality bike.
It is in this distinction, that you are missing the point.
It's unacceptable to me that when I have _clearly_ been talking in the context of real mountain biking, you are now deciding, it seems, to take the totally walked back, side stepped, and frankly revisionist approach of only now saying "well technically these bikes are labeled mountain bikes so I'm right". Nuh uh.
> I was very clear and explicit that I was giving this criticism from the perspective of not "anybody" but rather someone who actively mountain bikes
Yeah, and everybody else was pretty clear and explicit that that perspective is irrelevant to, like, 95% of people.
Edited to add:
> You have now moved on to confusing the way marketers lie in their descriptions of bikes in order to sell to the ignorant, with the actual and established sports that comprise mountain biking and the bikes used therein.
That's not the problem. The problem is that you started out by confusing the "actual and established sports that comprise mountain biking and the bikes used therein" with this discussion, which was an ordinary amateur consumer talking about ordinary amateur consumer products and reviews thereof, and every time someone tried to steer the discussion back to the topic at hand, you've gotten more and more snitty-snotty about your irrelevant No True Mountain-Biking Scotsman perspective.
