A bike too good to be true?

[Beekeeper]

Rockrider EST 900

Not thinking of buying this but just interested in how a bike at a price point of £1500 can have such quality components..

Rockrider E-ST 900 Electric Mountain Bike Review | eBike Choices

Brose Mid drive motor
Samsung batteries giving 80+miles
Rockshox Judy fork
Shimano Deore drive train
Tektro brakes
Thru axles

Any thoughts?

 

[mark.ai]

It's a hardtail so cheaper, but yep seems a good price

 

[Beekeeper]

It's a hardtail so cheaper, but yep seems a good price

I’ve seen some hardtails with similar components for £1000 more. Interesting how they have managed to keep the price so low.

 

[Zimmerframe]

This time last year I had one of the Decathon e-st500's .. Their first go at emtb. Rear hub motor. It was cheap, but had a lot of downfalls. On average it had a two day life span between fails. So not very reliable

They were developing the e-st900 when I got rid of that and moved to an e8000 bike. If they'd have offered up a pre-production test bike for me to destroy, I'd have accepted it.

This was an internal document from about 10 months ago. So no doubt more than ok to share now.


Decathlon develop everything in house. They also shift enormous number of bikes. I think in Europe they actually sell more than any other brand. So economies of scale work on their side and keeping things in house saves them a lot.

The E-st900 was supposed to be €2000. But other bikes have lowered in price (I've seen Levo hardtails for less) so they've obviously had to adjust the pricing.

Someone on here had one a few weeks ago and seemed happy with it. One other advantage are the cheap parts you can buy, like the battery, wheels and so on.

On the downside, when you actually compare the bike physically with it's more expensive competition, there is a vast difference in quality of the frame, design, attention to detail.

It's not a fair comparison, but changing to the e8000 bike from the hub motored bike felt like a 20 year leap in development. Not just in the motor, but how it rode, how it steered, stability.

The saddle was comfortable though.

 

[R120]

Decathlon shift an enormous amount of bikes, and can offer economy of scale - I think half the village where we have a place in France ride a Decathlon ebike of some variety.

 

[nikkis]

well, in real the company can make also a good profit on this price. the fact that is low priced means that simply they won't make huge profits unlike other companies

 

[Gary]

Decathlon frames really aren't...

such quality components..

I own a Decathlon Btwin rockrider hardtail and am speaking from experience before anyone thinks I'm just being a snob here.
Frame construction (although still structurally sound) is incredibly basic/cheap.
and as explained sheer number of units they punt out (at low profit margin) is how they do it.

Would not bang TBH

 

[Zimmerframe]

Just read the same guys review of the e-st500 and from what he's written I don't think he's actually ridden one, so possibly the same of the e-st900. For the e-st500 he praises the torque sensing bottom bracket which applies proportional power .. its doesn't .. it picks up pedal movement just as the left pedal is about 15 degrees over the top (which is a pain if you want to hill start, as you want the power as the right pedal comes over for most people). And it's in no way torque sensing .. if you're in the highest power level and on a steep hill when you set off and it does kick in it back flips (it's very rear weight biast). It also continues to power for a period of time until it's NOT picked up another pedal movement and then realises you've stopped. So whist it's cheap, and effective, it can be quite terrifying !

I'm sure the e-st900 doesn't suffer from any of these problems, but I don't think with either bike they have low profit margins. They're a direct to consumer brand and they don't just sell bikes, the whole infrastructure and logistics is all there already for everything else, so their costs are tiny in comparison to other brands. You only have to compare the bikes to other brands and it's pretty immediate that their R&D, testing, design and construction are hugely lower budget to any of the main stream brands.

For me, with a tiny bit more knowledge, the e-st500 was a €300 bike with a €30 motor. The e-st900 is more like a €500 bike with a €200 motor - so ultimately much better value at the end of the day.

All that said .. it's a cheap bike and if I wanted something to just plod about on, it wouldn't be such a bad option.