How to choose an electric bike

Decision 1 — What is the bike actually for?

Almost every bad e-bike purchase starts the same way: with a specification sheet rather than with a sentence. Before you compare anything, finish this sentence honestly — "I am buying this bike so that I can ___."

The answer eliminates more of the market than any filter on a retail site. A bike bought to replace a four-mile car trip to the shops has almost nothing in common with a bike bought to ride forest tracks at the weekend, and the two are usually sold on the same page with the same photographs.

The five common jobs

• Commuting. Repeatability is everything. You need range with margin, lights, mudguards, a rack, and a bike that starts every morning without attention. Top speed matters less than the ability to do the same trip 200 times.
• Trail and loose ground. Traction, suspension, braking and ground clearance move to the front. Range matters less because the rides are shorter and slower.
• Cargo and errands. Payload, frame stiffness, a low centre of gravity and brake capacity dominate. Speed is close to irrelevant.
• Leisure riding. Comfort, upright position and tire volume matter more than anything electrical.
• Replacing specific car trips. This is the strictest brief of the five, because the bike has to beat the car on convenience, not just on cost. Parking, locking and load capacity decide it.

Write your sentence down. Every later decision in this guide refers back to it, and any specification that does not serve it is noise.

Decision 2 — How far, really?

Range is the specification people get wrong most often, in both directions. Some buy far more battery than they need and carry the weight for years; more buy too little and stop using the bike.

The fix is arithmetic rather than judgement. Ignore the headline range on the listing entirely and work from stored energy instead. Multiply the battery voltage by its amp-hours to get watt-hours, which is the only capacity figure that compares fairly across brands.

Worked through

Suppose your longest regular ride is a 14-mile round trip to work, which you want to do without charging at the other end. 14 × 25 = 350Wh. Add 20% for cold mornings, headwinds and a battery that will not be new forever, and you need roughly 420Wh.

Against that requirement, all three AMYET bikes have ample headroom: AMYET lists 48V 15Ah on the EB26, which is 720Wh; 48V 20Ah on the V9-G60, which is 960Wh; and 48V 25Ah on the S8, which is 1200Wh. A 14-mile commuter is buying spare capacity in every case, and spare capacity is not wasted — it means shallower discharges, which is how packs last longer.

Now suppose your longest ride is 32 miles. 32 × 25 × 1.2 = 960Wh, and suddenly the 720Wh bike is the wrong bike no matter how much you like its wheels. That is what this arithmetic is for. Our battery and range guide sets out the consumption bands the 25Wh figure comes from, and explains how the headline range numbers are produced.

Decision 3 — What is your terrain?

Gradient decides more of the specification than any other single input. A bike that is more than adequate on flat ground can be genuinely unpleasant on a route with a sustained 10% climb in it, and no amount of battery capacity fixes that.

The reason is that climbing is a power problem, not an energy problem. Going up demands a sustained output for minutes at a time, and a hub motor asked to hold high output at low road speed gets hot. When it gets hot enough, the controller reduces power to protect it. That is the sensation riders describe as the bike "giving up" on a hill.

The numbers that predict climbing

Rated power is what a motor can sustain more or less indefinitely. Peak power is a short-burst figure that is largely irrelevant thirty seconds into a climb. Plan around the rated number.

The figure that would predict climbing best is torque in newton-metres, and most budget brands do not publish it — AMYET included. That absence is worth naming rather than working around.

If your route has real gradient, three things matter beyond the motor: gearing that lets you contribute rather than mash, brakes adequate to the descent, and — on loose or steep ground — a second driven wheel. The hills guide works through all of it, and single vs dual motor covers when the second motor earns its weight. If your terrain is flat, you can safely ignore most of the power specification and spend the money on comfort instead.

Decision 4 — Where will it live?

This is the decision that produces the most regret, and it is almost never on a comparison table. An e-bike is not a bicycle you can hang on a hook. A fat-tire bike with a large battery is a heavy, bulky object that has to be moved, parked and charged every day for years.

Go and measure things before you buy. The doorway. The hallway. The lift, if there is one. The distance from the front door to wherever the bike will actually sit. The boot of your car, if you plan to transport it. Whether your bike rack is rated for the weight, because many boot-mounted racks are not.

Weight is the specification nobody publishes

AMYET does not publish a bare bike weight for any of the three models. The EB26 listing carries a 30 kg figure, but that is a shipping weight including packaging, so the bike itself is lighter than that and by an unstated amount. For context, fat-tire e-bikes with 1000W-class motors and packs of this size generally sit in the region of 70 to 80 lb, and a full-suspension dual-motor bike sits above that. If you have to carry the bike up steps, treat this as a question to put to any brand in writing before ordering.

Wheel size feeds directly into this. A 20-inch bike is meaningfully shorter than a 26-inch one, which is why the G60 and S8 fit spaces the EB26 will not. Our 20 vs 26 inch guide covers what you give up in ride quality to gain that.

One more storage question that is really a safety question: where will it charge? If the answer is an interior hallway of a shared building, skip ahead to certification now, because it may decide your shortlist for you.

Decision 5 — What are the rules where you ride?

Around forty US states have adopted a three-class framework, and it is worth knowing before you buy rather than after.

• Class 1. Pedal assist only, no throttle, assist cuts out at 20 MPH. The class with the widest path access.
• Class 2. Throttle permitted, still capped at 20 MPH.
• Class 3. Pedal assist to 28 MPH, usually no throttle assist above 20, and frequently barred from shared-use paths and some bike lanes.

Most states also apply a nominal motor rating cap, commonly 750W, for a machine to count as an e-bike at all. A bike that assists past 28 MPH sits outside all three classes in those jurisdictions, which can mean it is legally a moped — with registration, licensing, insurance and helmet implications attached.

AMYET lists up to 32 MPH for the G60 and the S8, and up to 28 MPH for the EB26. That makes the EB26 the simplest of the three to place legally, since 28 MPH is exactly the Class 3 ceiling. Bikes in this category usually allow the speed limit to be set in the display menu, and a 1000W rated motor is above the common 750W nominal cap regardless of how the bike is ridden.

The practical advice: find your state's e-bike statute, then check your local park or trail authority separately, because path rules are frequently stricter than road rules. If most of your riding is on shared paths, buy for the class you are allowed to use rather than for the speed you would like to have.

Decision 6 — Safety certification

Two UL standards appear on e-bike listings and they are not interchangeable. Knowing the difference takes a minute and can determine whether you are allowed to keep the bike where you live.

UL 2271 covers the pack. UL 2849 covers the bike.

UL 2271 applies to the battery pack alone. UL 2849 is broader: the pack, the charger, the controller and the motor evaluated as one system. Most serious lithium failures come from a mismatch somewhere in that chain rather than from a cell failing in isolation, which is why the whole-system standard is the stronger claim. A listing that advertises a "UL-certified battery" is describing the narrower one.

This has left the realm of theory. New York City's Local Law 39 is the best-known statutory example, and beyond specific legislation a growing number of landlords, building managers, employers and insurers now ask for UL 2849 before permitting indoor storage or charging. If you live in an apartment building, ask your building manager what they require before you shortlist anything.

Two related questions worth asking of any brand: is the pack removable, so it can be charged away from the bike and replaced as a part rather than a service job; and does the bike ship with a charger matched to that specific pack. Using a mismatched charger is one of the more common causes of trouble, and it is entirely avoidable.

Decision 7 — Total cost, not sticker price

A $689 e-bike does not cost $689. It costs $689 plus consumables plus a battery plus whatever servicing you cannot do yourself, over however many years you keep it. Comparing sticker prices without that context is how people end up with the more expensive bike.

What to add to the sticker

• A replacement pack. The battery is the only component guaranteed to wear out, typically after somewhere in the region of 500 to 800 charge cycles. Across the US market a replacement 48V pack of this size generally runs into the low-to-mid hundreds of dollars. Ask the price, and ask how long the brand commits to stocking it.
• Tires. Four-inch fat tires are not cheap and a heavy bike wears them faster than a light one.
• Brake pads and rotors. Mass and speed both increase pad consumption. Budget for pads at least annually if you ride hills.
• Assembly and first service. AMYET lists the G60 and EB26 as shipping 90% assembled with a toolkit, and recommends professional installation for the S8. A shop build and a check-up after the first fifty miles is money well spent on any bike carrying this much mass.

Warranty term matters less than most buyers assume. All three AMYET bikes carry a one-year warranty with a 30-day return window, which is standard rather than generous for the category. The better question is spares: a bike whose battery, display and brake parts you can still order in year three is worth more than a bike with an extra six months of cover and no parts channel. We set out how we weigh unpublished and unverifiable specifications on our how we review page.

How to read a spec sheet sceptically

Once your seven decisions are made, you are comparing listings — and listings are written by the people selling the bike. A few habits protect you.

Rated versus peak watts

When a brand leads with a peak figure, it is describing the best few seconds of the motor's life. AMYET publishes both figures, which is better practice than most. Compare rated against rated, always.

Any range figure beginning "up to"

Maximum range claims are produced at the lowest assist level, on flat ground, with a light rider, in mild weather, at low speed. They are not dishonest so much as unreachable. Where a brand publishes a band rather than a single number it is being more useful: AMYET lists 30–65 miles for the G60, and states around 30 miles on throttle alone against up to 60 with pedal assist for the EB26, which is unusually candid. Do the watt-hour arithmetic yourself anyway.

Compare-at pricing that never expires

A permanent strike-through price is a marketing device, not a historical fact. Treat the current price as the price. AMYET currently lists the EB26 at $669, the G60 at $689 and the S8 at $1,049.

What is missing

Absences are information. Where a listing does not say "hydraulic", assume mechanical discs — brands that fit hydraulics say so. Where there is no torque figure, climbing cannot be predicted from the sheet. Where there is no bare bike weight, you cannot plan for stairs or a car rack. AMYET does not publish bike weight, motor torque, fork travel or rotor diameter for any of the three bikes.

What to ignore

Frame colour options, the number of assist levels, USB ports, app connectivity and "military-grade" anything. None of these will determine whether you ride the bike in year two.

The buyer checklist

Print this, or keep it open in a tab while you compare. If you cannot answer a line from the listing, that is your question for the brand's support team.

1. The sentence. What is this bike for? Does the specification serve that job?
2. Watt-hours. Volts × amp-hours. Is it at least your longest regular ride × 25, plus 20%?
3. Rated motor power — not peak. And is a torque figure published?
4. Brakes. Does the listing say hydraulic? Is a rotor diameter given?
5. Bare bike weight. Published, or a shipping weight, or absent?
6. Payload rating, remembering it covers rider plus clothing plus rack plus cargo. All three AMYET bikes are listed at 330 lb.
7. Legal class where you ride, including path rules.
8. UL 2849 on the complete bike, especially if you charge indoors.
9. Battery removable, and sold separately as a spare part.
10. Warranty term and parts availability — the second matters more.
11. Assembly. What arrives unassembled, and will you pay a shop?
12. Storage. Have you measured the space, the doorway and the car?

If you want to see the framework applied to specific bikes rather than in the abstract, our best AMYET e-bikes ranking works through the three models against exactly these criteria, and the G60 vs EB26 comparison shows how a twenty-dollar price gap can hide a third of a battery. If you are carrying weight or shopping close to a payload ceiling, read the guide for heavier riders before you commit, and if fat tires are new to you, the fat tire guide covers what four inches of rubber buys and costs.