Help! Himo z20, Fido d4s/d2s or second hand Woosh Rambletta? Budget Folding E-bike advice wanted please!!

[dreadhead333]

Hey everyone,

So I've spent the last few days looking throughout this forum and got some great insights.

Just a quick background, I'm looking to buy my first e-bike. It needs to be folding as I'm currently living in a ground floor studio flat and won't be moving for at least another year and a half.

I've had a look online and researched and really my budget isn't that great, I'd say the maximum I could afford/would spend would be £800. With this in mind, I looked at the Himo z20, Fiido d4s/d2s. These bikes are great but I'm very concerned about the legitimacy of the sites selling them, aftercare, warranty, repairs, etc. Sites in question are, bangood, geek buying, markshop, and a few others.

This is made even worse with Brexit and so many bikes not being available through official suppliers due to Brexit. I've had some chats with the Fiido official customer services on Instagram and they didn't have an update as to when they'll be able to ship to the UK or when their Bath warehouse will open. Just that they will post an update when they do. The best they could offer was to buy the bike through an amazon seller at an increased price.

As an alternative, I saw on this site that Woosh has a second hand advert from customers with one Rambletta bike on there at the moment for £600. Anyone have any thoughts on this or any reputable sides where I can buy a decent bike for this price or am I being unreasonable and need to save up for more months to pay out more budget wise towards a bike.

Any help would be great!

Thanks in advance.

 

[cyclebuddy]

A lot of people here highly recommend Woosh particularly for their support, and like the Rambletta. If it suits you, it's likely worth buying (it wouldn't be listed on their site if that particular bike were a dog). As for Fiido, Banggood is an authorised Fiido reseller, but they can't ship product as their arrangement was to ship from Fiido's Polish warehouse - which they now can't do (I tried to order a D11 last December - it was plagued with shipping issues and eventually the order was cancelled). I'd guess it's similar for the Himo. Markshop are taking Fiido pre-orders... they can't ship within the UK either until Fiido's stock is physically in the UK, and when it is, you should be able to order a Fiido bike direct from Fiido at Fiido's normal UK price rather than Markshops inflated one.

My feeling is consider the second-hand Rambletta, or wait for Fiido stock to arrive in Bath. Markshop are suggesting that could be within two weeks or so. There may be arrangements in hand for Himo (and other Chinese brands) to bulk ship stock directly into the UK for UK sales and distribution (it'll be inevitable if they intend to sell any bikes here), but I'm unaware of any plans there.

 

[vfr400]

If you want to keep a bike indoors, you can make an ordinary bike very flat and unobtrusive by fitting folding pedals that you can get on Ebay , and, assuming a standard 1 1/8 Ahead type clamping stem, fit quick release screws to the clamp, so that you can turn the handlebars in line with the wheel. You can see the two orange lever screws on my bike in this photo. They also came from Ebay. It takes about 3 seconds to flatten the bars, which is not only convenient when you want to park your bike in a gangway at the shops, but also works as a theft deterrent:

 

[cyclebuddy]

If I can get this on their store that would be fab and potentially problem solved as the price is a lot cheaper. I'll wait and see if that's actually the case.

As anticipated, it looks like Fiido's UK stock has landed at last. You can now order direct from Fiido's own website. The D4S is £504.99, but they're adding 20% VAT on at the checkout, which makes it 604.80. But that's still a LOT cheaper than the inflated price Markshop were showing.

 

[Deleted member 33385]

Last year Xiaomi were churning out cheap, lightweight folding ebikes with very interesting specs for the Chinese market, but if their ebikes are controlled by the same awful Xiaomi app which controls everything else Xiaomi, no thanks! You can Xiaomi the exit! The ebike will brick itself after a mandatory firmware update, won't work after it's told you that it needs the mandatory firmware update in order to function, after which your new ebike is a brick, is why... At least, that's what happens with their IP security cameras. I hate apps. And Xiaomi.

 

[cyclebuddy]

That seems very uncharitable. I've got a Xiaomi phone and the linked wrist band - the phone and app work brilliantly! At 1/6th the price of even a cheap iPhone with its' poxy 1600mAh battery, the Mi's 5,000mAh battery means it doesn't keep crapping out using GPS on a cycle ride like the iPhone users keep reporting here!

 

[Deleted member 33385]

That seems very uncharitable. I've got a Xiaomi phone and the linked wrist band - the phone and app work brilliantly! At 1/6th the price of even a cheap iPhone with its' poxy 1600mAh battery, the Mi's 5,000mAh battery means it doesn't keep crapping out using GPS on a cycle ride like the iPhone users keep reporting here!

The hardware of Xiaomi phones is very good, but their updates can't compete with those of OnePlus - I had the latest Android version sent to my OnePlus 5 a few months ago, which is amazing for such an old phone - and it runs sweet too, with automatic call recording built into the OS, of both sides of the conversation as mp3/aac files, plus all the other features. The hardware isn't as good as Xiaomi's market segment equivalents, but OnePlus software support is brilliant. I can see why OnePlus have such rabid fans. Plus the bootloader is unlocked, unlike Xiaomi - when Android is no longer supported by OnePlus on my phone, I'll throw LineageOS on it.

 

[dreadhead333]

A lot of people here highly recommend Woosh particularly for their support, and like the Rambletta. If it suits you, it's likely worth buying (it wouldn't be listed on their site if that particular bike were a dog). As for Fiido, Banggood is an authorised Fiido reseller, but they can't ship product as their arrangement was to ship from Fiido's Polish warehouse - which they now can't do (I tried to order a D11 last December - it was plagued with shipping issues and eventually the order was cancelled). I'd guess it's similar for the Himo. Markshop are taking Fiido pre-orders... they can't ship within the UK either until Fiido's stock is physically in the UK, and when it is, you should be able to order a Fiido bike direct from Fiido at Fiido's normal UK price rather than Markshops inflated one.

My feeling is consider the second-hand Rambletta, or wait for Fiido stock to arrive in Bath. Markshop are suggesting that could be within two weeks or so. There may be arrangements in hand for Himo (and other Chinese brands) to bulk ship stock directly into the UK for UK sales and distribution (it'll be inevitable if they intend to sell any bikes here), but I'm unaware of any plans there.

Hey, so I dropped fiido's instagram page a line on this and they updated me saying that UK shipping will be available soon. When I messaged them before they said they didn't know so I'd assume this would be in the next couple of weeks or say, maybe a month. If I can get this on their store that would be fab and potentially problem solved as the price is a lot cheaper. I'll wait and see if that's actually the case.

 

[shed]

For a bit of info my neighbours have just bought themselves a couple of Himo Z20's (they got them via Amazon in case of any issues). They are very pleased with them and find them comfortable, especially as the 20" wheels and fairly wide chunky tyres help minimise the bumps in the roads. Their main concern is the weight ((20/21kg) as they are too heavy for the wife to manhandle when folded which could limit some of their intended uses.

I had a quick look over them yesterday and they look a decent spec for the money (10ah battery, mech discs, neat internal battery housing, easy folding) and look quite stylish and well made. I suspect,however, that they may not be strictly legal as pedal assist only operates in Eco mode (and assist only up to 15kph) and then you have to use the twist grip throttle to utilise mid and high assist (and no need to turn the pedals).

A YouTube review i came across suggests that the battery only lasts 25km using throttle only (which doesn't seem great for a 10ah battery on a 36v system) and the assist even on high topped out at only 20 kph, but it looked as if it was quite hilly so that might have been a factor. My neighbours have only done a couple of flattish 8km rides but said that they only lost 1 of the 5 bars each time so hopefully for their sake that review was inaccurate, otherwise I fear they'll be disappointed with the range.