Just wanted to do a quick post on my ebike journey so far, in the hopes that it will help others that are looking into them, as the threads here really helped me to decide.
I bought a M2S Ultra HT (https://shop.m2sbikes.com/collections/all-terrain-ultra-series/products/all-terrain-ultra-ht). Ordered Saturday night, delivered Wednesday. Maybe 30 minutes to setup. Like it so far, but have only taken it our around the neighborhood so far. Hoping to hunt with it this weekend.
Decision thoughts:
My use case is primarily hunting somewhat hilly private land in KY and a farm in Ohio, along maybe doing some easy single track for fun occasionally. I have ridden road bikes and MTB in the past and sometimes commuted to work via bike in the olden days before WFH became an option. So, not new to bikes in general. I have been looking at an EMTB for hunting for a couple years, but had a hard time with dropping the money and trying to decide which bike to get. Some health issues brought the need for some mobility help to the forefront, so went ahead with getting an ebike.
I sorta feel the "Hunting" ebikes are a bit over priced for what you get, though they do understand the use case well. I also took a really hard look at traditional bike companies EMTB offerings. And while I think a Trek or Specialized is probably a higher quality in general, I don't think they would have fit my use case as well as the M2S I ended up with. Since I am only hunting private land, I don't need to worry about the laws around which class of ebike is allowed on which trails, and the traditional emtb do not have a throttle option, or the kind of peddle assist power I would need to pull a cargo trailer with a deer up the hills where I hunt. The also generally do not have the really fat fires like the 4.5" my hike has.
Mid drive motor was a must have, and again, since I don't need to worry about ebike class, a 1000w made sense.
Range is also not a big issue for me, as I doubt I will be doing more then a couple miles at most for hunting, though it may become an issue if I start riding a bit more of the local single track.
The M2S I bought is roughly the same as the Bakcou mule, though it cost a couple thousand less. I will say that Bakcou has a much, much better set of instructional videos vs M2S. M2S support via email has been good so far, and they publish a phone number as well.
I will update this over the course of this season, and if anyone has questions, post or pm, and I will try my best to answer.
I bought a M2S Ultra HT (https://shop.m2sbikes.com/collections/all-terrain-ultra-series/products/all-terrain-ultra-ht). Ordered Saturday night, delivered Wednesday. Maybe 30 minutes to setup. Like it so far, but have only taken it our around the neighborhood so far. Hoping to hunt with it this weekend.
Decision thoughts:
My use case is primarily hunting somewhat hilly private land in KY and a farm in Ohio, along maybe doing some easy single track for fun occasionally. I have ridden road bikes and MTB in the past and sometimes commuted to work via bike in the olden days before WFH became an option. So, not new to bikes in general. I have been looking at an EMTB for hunting for a couple years, but had a hard time with dropping the money and trying to decide which bike to get. Some health issues brought the need for some mobility help to the forefront, so went ahead with getting an ebike.
I sorta feel the "Hunting" ebikes are a bit over priced for what you get, though they do understand the use case well. I also took a really hard look at traditional bike companies EMTB offerings. And while I think a Trek or Specialized is probably a higher quality in general, I don't think they would have fit my use case as well as the M2S I ended up with. Since I am only hunting private land, I don't need to worry about the laws around which class of ebike is allowed on which trails, and the traditional emtb do not have a throttle option, or the kind of peddle assist power I would need to pull a cargo trailer with a deer up the hills where I hunt. The also generally do not have the really fat fires like the 4.5" my hike has.
Mid drive motor was a must have, and again, since I don't need to worry about ebike class, a 1000w made sense.
Range is also not a big issue for me, as I doubt I will be doing more then a couple miles at most for hunting, though it may become an issue if I start riding a bit more of the local single track.
The M2S I bought is roughly the same as the Bakcou mule, though it cost a couple thousand less. I will say that Bakcou has a much, much better set of instructional videos vs M2S. M2S support via email has been good so far, and they publish a phone number as well.
I will update this over the course of this season, and if anyone has questions, post or pm, and I will try my best to answer.