The problem with most e-bikes is that you will never find a bike that does everything perfectly. While a large cargo bike can carry gear, it’s too big for commuting. Tenways AGO-T Step by step, in the Dutch style, he tried to square many of these circles by gluing almost too much force to the frame.
It’s marketed as a bike for city life, but for cities where you’re not dealing with flat, well-paved roads. It has a powerful engine and battery that provides enough power to tackle the steepest hill with ease, and a decent shelf for cargo capacity. But all that extra power comes with accompanying weight, and so while it’s meant to be flexible, it’s also heavy.
The e-bike market is homogeneous enough that I won’t look at a unit unless it has some eye-catching features. The AGO-T’s spec list sold me on the test ride, given the bulky stuff bolted to its frame: a Bafang M420 mid-drive motor with 80Nm of peak torque (though you’ll get less than that everyday). daily use); Gates carbon belt; and Enviolo’s stepless change center. You also get hydraulic disc brakes, a Selle Royal seat, an integrated front light and an integrated rear light mounted on a pannier rack.
With a single-stage frame, most bikes often have something a little therapeutic. But the combination of panels to hide its many mechanisms and the elegant ‘Jungle Green’ paint job set the AGO-T apart. In fact, I’d go so far as to say it’s a pretty stylish way to get around town, even if it’s built more for power than maneuverability.
You can expect to pay a pretty penny for these kinds of features, and the AGO-T is priced at £2,699 (about $3,500). That’s a lot of money for a bike, but not unreasonable given the equipment on display and how it’s packaged very neatly. You can get a cheaper alternative like the Gazelle’s Paris C7+, but you’ll see trade-offs like a weaker engine.
The AGO-T has a range of 100 km (62 miles) with a motor-assisted top speed limited by law to 15 miles per hour. That being said, I rarely felt like I was going too slow on this one, and often had to slow it down.
The last few e-bikes I’ve tested have had basic digital displays that offer little more than your speed and how much the bike is helping you. By comparison, the AGO-T’s full-color LCD display is almost too much to see, especially given its enormous size. The UI also has a lot of negative space and it looks more like an instrument cluster in a car. Sometimes less is more. Yes, TFT LCD is not ideal when you are in really strong sunlight.
The top shows the time and battery level, and the middle shows the speed in miles per hour or kilometers per hour. The bottom third shows the level of assistance (from 0-5) and then there are two boxes that go through a series of data points: Average speed, top speed, trip time, range, amount of CO2 you haven’t burned, and trees you’ve saved proportionally. I’m not sure I’ll always need the last two data points available to me, and I’m not sure what the basis for that claim is anyway. Especially when such dimensions are more suitable for applications than the main display.
As for the app, it’s like every other e-bike app that you’ll probably never look at other than to satisfy your curiosity. There’s a built-in GPS that you can use by mounting your phone behind the handlebars, or better yet, push directions to the bike screen. Unfortunately, the quality of the GPS offered is much lower than Google or Apple Maps, with many local landmarks not listed. Similarly, the turn-by-turn directions on the bike screen only consist of turn signal and distance, which is a far cry from what a good GPS can offer. It’s a feature that could be world-class and just suffers from being adequate.
The AGO-T weighs 31kg (68lbs) and you’ll feel every gram of that weight when you hold it. Unless you’re built like the baddest person you’ve ever seen at the gym, I don’t recommend carrying it up and down the stairs. If you live in a poorly serviced apartment building, I don’t think this is the bike for you, but if you can keep it safely at ground level, go for it. It’s like having an SUV that’s great when you’re driving around town, but terrible when you can’t fit into a small parking space.
Its weight means there’s a bit of drag when you’re on the road, especially at low speeds where you have to work harder to maintain balance. There is often an accessibility argument about e-bikes that help empower people who are not physically strong. Such a bicycle may fall into this obstacle, given its weight. But on the move, the AGO-T is designed to glide around roads rather than zooming them. This smoothness makes sense because you’re looking at it to get from A to B, as well as take a few bags or kids with you.
Tenways markets the AGO-T on the premise that it can take anything a city can throw at it. Given the power of the Bafang mid-drive motor, I had no doubt that it could handle the steep hills in my home town of Norwich. When I test e-bikes or scooters, I try to climb a hill with a 22.4 degree incline, which regularly beats lesser bikes. But with the AGO-T, I really had to turn gears down because it felt so easy and weightless with the help up to the max. Even after fixing everything, I think it’s the first time I’ve been up that hill and I haven’t broken even the tiniest hint of sweat.
However, this comes at the cost of the lineup, and after starting to struggle with the hills, the estimates began to drop quickly. That said, you can easily get 30 miles on a single charge, which should be enough for most days, right?
Tenways also claims that the AGO-T can handle rough terrain on this bike, so I took it through some dirt trails. The adjustable front forks and suspension seat meant the bike smoothed out some pretty bumpy terrain. Obviously, I wouldn’t want to take this off-road, but I was surprised at how well it handled gravel roads and dirt roads littered with tree limbs.
As an urban cruiser that can eat up hills like cotton candy, Tenways’ AGO-T is a bit of a fantasy bike. I could easily see myself using this as my main bike, especially given the variable terrain of my hometown. Whether or not you should buy one becomes less of a question of the qualities you need at the moment. Do you need a bike that can handle all types of terrain on any gradient and will give you cargo space? Are you strong enough to fight its massive weight? And of course, do you have enough cash in the bank to buy it and then make sure there are safe places to store it? If the answer to all of these is yes, it’s pretty much a slam dunk.
