David Bridges
There’s a problem with most e-bikes, which is that you’ll never find one that does every job perfectly. A city cruiser with no grunt will leave you stranded when you reach an incline while a beefy cargo bike can haul gear, but it’s too big for commuting. Tenways’ AGO-T has tried to square many of these circles by sticking almost too much power onto a Dutch-style step-thru frame.
It’s marketed as a bike for city living, but for cities where you’re not just dealing with flat, well paved roads. It’s got a beefy motor and battery, giving it enough power to tackle the steepest hill with ease, and a decent pannier rack for cargo capacity. But all of that extra power comes with the weight that comes with it, and so while it’s meant to be nimble, it’s also hefty.
The e-bike market is sufficiently homogeneous that I won’t look at a unit unless it’s got some eye-catching features. The AGO-T’s spec-list sold me on a test ride given the sheer volume of stuff bolted onto its frame: A Bafang M420 mid-drive motor with 80 Nm max torque (although you’ll get less of that in day-to-day-use); a Gates carbon belt; and Enviolo’s stepless shifting hub. You also get hydraulic disc brakes, a Selle Royal seat, an integrated front light and an integrated rear light built into the pannier rack.
There’s often something a little medicinal about most bikes with a step-through frame. But a combination of paneling to hide away a lot of its mechanisms and the fancy “Jungle Green” paint job sets the AGO-T apart. In fact, I’d go so far as to say that it’s a rather stylish way to get around town, even if it’s built more for power than maneuverability.
You can expect to pay a pretty penny for those sorts of specs, and the AGO-T is priced £2,699 (around $3,500). That’s a lot of cash for a bike, but not unreasonable given the gear on show, and the fact it’s been packaged so neatly. You can get a cheaper alternative like Gazelle’s Paris C7+ for a grand less, but you’ll notice compromises, like the weaker motor.
The AGO-T has a range of 100km (62 miles) with its motor-assisted top speed limited, as per the law, to 15 miles per hour. Put it this way, I rarely if ever felt like I was going too slow on this thing, and often had to dial down its speed.
The last few e-bikes I’ve tested had basic digital displays offering little more than your speed and how much assist the bike was giving you. By comparison, the AGO-T’s full-color LCD display comes across almost as too much, especially given its enormous size. There’s a lot of negative space in the UI, too, and it looks more like the instrument cluster on a car. Sometimes less is more. And, yes, a TFT LCD isn’t ideal when you’re out in really strong sunlight.
Up top is the time and battery level, while the middle shows speed in miles or kilometers per hour. The lower third indicates the assist level (from 0-5) and then there are two boxes, which cycle through a number of data points: Average speed, maximum speed, trip time, range, the amount of CO2 you haven’t burned and the trees you’ve commensurately saved. I’m not sure I’d ever need those last two data points available to me all the time, and I’m not sure what the basis for that claim is anyway. Especially when those sorts of metrics are far better suited to the app than the primary display.
As for the app, it’s like every other e-bike app in that you probably won’t ever look at it except to satisfy your curiosity. There is a built-in GPS that you can use by mounting your phone to the handlebars or, even better, with the directions pushed to the bike display. Sadly, the quality of the GPS on offer is well below Google or Apple Maps, with many local landmarks not listed. Similarly, the turn-by-turn directions routed to the bike screen consist only of turn signal and distance, which is a far cry from what a good GPS should offer. This is a feature that could be world class and suffers by merely being adequate, if that.
The AGO-T weighs 31kg (68 pounds) and you will feel every gram of that weight when you’re holding it. I do not recommend carrying it up and down stairs unless you’re built like the worst person you see at the gym. If you live in a poorly-served apartment building I don’t think this is the bike for you, but if you can safely store this at ground level, go for it. It’s like owning an SUV which is great when you’re tooling around town, and awful when you can’t fit into a small space in the parking lot.
Its heaviness means it’s a little stodgier when you’re on the road, especially at low speeds where you’ll have to work harder to maintain balance. There’s an accessibility argument often made about e-bikes that they help empower folks who may not be as physically strong. A bike like this might fall at this hurdle given its heft. But in motion, the AGO-T is tuned to be sedate, gliding around the roads rather than zooming down them. This smoothness makes sense, because you’re looking at this to get you from A to B, as well as haul some bags or a kid along with you.
Tenways markets the AGO-T on the basis it can take whatever a city can throw at it. I had no doubts, given the power of that Bafang mid-drive motor, that it would be able to tackle the steep hills in my home city of Norwich. When I test e-bikes or scooters, I try to zip up a hill with an incline of 22.4 degrees, which regularly defeats lesser bikes. But with the AGO-T, I actually had to turn the gears down because it felt too easy and weightless with the assist up to the max. Even after I’d tweaked things, I think this is the first time I’ve ridden up that hill and not broken even the merest hint of a sweat.
This does, however, come at the cost of the range, and the estimates quickly started dropping once I’d started tackling hills. That said, you can easily get 30 miles out of this on a charge, which is more than enough for most days, right?
Tenways also claims the AGO-T can tackle rough terrain on this bike, so I took it over a few dirt tracks. The adjustable front forks and suspension seat meant that the bike evened out some pretty bumpy areas. Obviously, I wouldn’t want to take this off-roading but I was surprised at how well it coped with gravel tracks and dirt pathways riddled with tree branches.
As a city cruiser that can eat hills like they’re cotton candy, the Tenways’ AGO-T is a bit of a fantasy bike. I could easily see myself using this as my primary bike, especially given the variable terrain of my home city. Whether you should buy one becomes less a question of its qualities that your needs in the given moment. Are you in need of a bike that can handle all types of terrain at any gradient that’ll also give you cargo space? Are you strong enough to wrestle with its considerable weight? And, of course, do you have enough cash in the bank to buy it and then make sure there’s safe places to park it? If the answer to all of those is yes, then this is pretty much a slam dunk.
Daniel Mercer
