If you just want to know what I think of my first e-bike, the Estarli e28.X, see my First Impressions piece. But this is how I came to acquire it ….
My wife and I spent the 2025 Easter weekend, in April, visiting the old converted farmhouse that a Dutch friend and her brother had inherited from their parents. A delightful place, near Gröningen in the north – which is worth a whole article of its own.
While there – this was Holland after all – we went on a Sunday morning group cycle ride along mostly country gravel lanes and beautifully designed cycle ways, plus some quiet urban streets, using a couple of borrowed e-bikes. Not quite my first ever ride on one but certainly the first of any duration.
We were smitten, and returned to England determined to do what we had contemplated for some time, and get e-bikes of our own. My wife is a veteran (non-e) cyclist, unlike me. She looked at the Which? recommendations and ordered a Trek Verve+ 1 Lowstep with a 500Wh battery, in a rather striking orange-bronze colour (called, I see, Penny Flake).
It arrived by courier about a week later, which was impressive service. It strikes me as rather heavy (25kgs I think) but she loves it. It has a Bosch Active Line 250W, 40Nm mid-drive motor and 8-speed Shimano derailleur gears.
I followed my customary practice – and began research.
After a good deal of reading online, consulting friends, and watching video reviews, I came up with a wish list. I should preface this by saying I have owned bicycles in the past, and in fact at this point still had a Reflex Eclipse Trekking hybrid gathering dust that would be going to the wonderful Re-cycle charity.
It was a decent machine – but I hate derailleur gears. I know they make most of the cycling world go round. I don’t care. They are the Devil’s Spawn: a pinnacle of ill-conceived design calculated to mess you about. I find them really fiddly to maintain and to operate even when they do work properly, which in my experience is almost never and not for long. End rant.
WISHLIST
More to the point, I argued over dinner one night: gears are irrelevant on an e-bike. You have various levels of power assist. Just shift those up or down.
The pushback from others at the table was of course: cadence – how fast your legs are going round. Even with power assist, gears enable you to pedal at the right cadence for you in any given situation.
Fair enough, it is a persuasive argument. Even so, in practice on several different e-bikes I have tried that had gears I tended to select a middle to high one and just use the power assists.
Anyway here was my shortlist of desirable features, with rationale:
- Hub gears if I must have gears: no finicky derailleur. My first proper bicycle about 60 years ago had hub gears (three, as I recall). Modern e-bike designs are amazing.
- Belt drive: simple, long-lasting, no mess. The existence of these was a complete revelation to me and they seem like a no-brainer. I should say that although I have not been much of a pedal cyclist, I did own motorcycles for many years and the cleaning, lubricating and adjusting of a chain is something I would just like to do without.
- Torque sensor. More natural.
- Disc brakes. Just better.
And possibly:
- Suspension handlebar and/or seat struts
I also wanted to keep the weight down, preferably below 20 kgs. And although I could afford to pay to get the right bike, I didn’t really want to fork out more than about £2,000 on one. I’m more-or-less retired, so it was going to be a general purpose and leisure vehicle, not a hardworking daily commuter.
What would also tick boxes would be a British made e-bike, and one with an established presence and dealer support.
I kept finding what looked like great bikes only to discover that they weighed 25 to 30 kgs or more, which seemed crazy.
I was actually wondering if I could get away with a single speed e-bike in the mountainous terrain here in … north Essex … when I discovered the e28.X. Two gears! Built into the rear hub drive! Automatic!
WHY BLIKE?
I still wanted to test ride one however. Estarli breezily say you can just get in touch with one of their dealers and they’ll gladly arrange that for you. I went to a local dealer, who had only one of their folding bikes in stock.
“How would I go about getting a test ride?”
“Well you have to buy the bike, basically.”
At this point a link on the Estarli website led me to the Blike subscription option. I read up on it. This seemed ideal. Pay monthly, cancel whenever, services and insurance included – and if you decide to buy then 60% of the subscription you have paid is taken into account.
So it was that on Friday 9 May I signed the contract with them and paid the initial fee – expecting, in my innocence, that I would have the bike the following week.
I emailed Blike to ask about delivery. No reply, so on Tuesday 13 May I wrote again to ask “What happens now?”
The reply was a dose of reality: “Estarli have told us approx 4 weeks on the e28.X Step – we’re trying to get whatever stock they have currently over sooner.”
Well, more fool me for ordering a bike just as the best weather of the year was getting going and everyone else was having the same idea, I suppose.
I asked about getting an alternative while I waited, but at the time they had only an Analog Motion – single speed, and a terrible reputation, from what I read; or a Volt Burlington – fine bike but very like my wife’s Trek, too heavy and … derailleur gears.
DEMAND AND SUPPLY
I decided to just wait. In the event, a friend very kindly lent me his currently unused Veloe multi lungo with a powerful Bosch Cargoline motor and Enviolo gear hub. Very fancy. Not at all what I was looking for but interesting as a comparison, and I can see that those continuously variable planetary gears are definitely desirable – although in practice it bore out my theory that in this neck of the woods I could mostly leave it in a fairly high gear and just use the pedal assist power levels.
My first draft of this piece catalogued the increasingly ridiculous delays in getting the e28.X delivered, but having calmed down I will spare Estarli the embarrassment. Suffice to say it took more than seven weeks. I had the feeling that I (and Estarli) were in a sense victims of their success and they were simply struggling to keep up with demand, because I could see from reviews online that there was a flow of very pleased customers.
Finally it did arrive, in a box that illustrated why you would think twice about using FedEx to deliver anything. It had clearly been whacked hard on one end, which had burst open with the weight of the contents. There was minor damage to the mudguard and rear light, but fortunately nothing serious.
And one thing I could say right from the outset was that Estarli had produced a brilliant e-bike that was definitely worth the wait.
You can read some more of my initial thoughts about it here.
I would just add a special thanks to Rebecca at Blike who persevered on my behalf throughout the saga.
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