Prodeco Technologies Phantom X2 Electric Folding Bicycle (36V, 500W)

I cannot even begin to praise this bike !! luv it use it it"s amazing>> I commute 11 mile to and from work. every day, Some issues with stuff But nothing is perfect, But it gets me to work and back on a daily basis. It's a beast!! very grass roots hardy. good price and exceeds my expectation>> looking to buy another one for my wife. customer service the first time was great,, second time well less than desirable, I broke my kickstand but the good part of this I found a better one here on Amazon. Need a second battery they are pricey but worth it. LUV This Bike!!!

Before I purchased this I researched lots of different bikes and was pretty set on purchasing the A2B Metro. The $3099 price tag was a lot to swallow, but I wanted a nice bike that had some great features.I later found the Phantom X here on Amazon and decided to settle. Am I missing out on some features that the A2B has? Yes. Are those features worth the extra $1800? Definitely not.I wanted a bike with a strong motor (preferably 500W) and was capable of going 20 miles. It needed to have a throttle (no assist only) so that I could just throttle the whole way to work and not get sweaty. And I wanted the fastest bike I could find.The Phantom fits the bill reasonably well. I use my Phantom X daily to get to work which is about 5 miles each way. The removable battery is a must as I don't feel like hauling the 60 lb bike inside my work to charge it (A2B metro battery is NOT removable!).Here's what I like:-I can go 22 MPH with NO pedaling. Not too bad, right?-With pedaling, I can easily get between 24-26 MPH.-Takes me only 15 minutes to get to work..that's only 3 minutes longer than it took in my car!-Folding makes it easy to fit in the back of my Golf if I absolutely need to.-Battery can take 2000+ charge cycles before replacement. And replacement batteries are only $300! This means that I could charge it every work day of the year and still have the battery last 8 years before it needs to be replaced!What I don't really like:-Thumb throttle. It sucks. It makes my thumb tired! I wish it were a twist throttle to make it easier on my hand.-Brakes rub! I've "properly" adjusted the disc brakes, but they still rub! They feel cheap and do not work as well as I had hoped. Regardless, I feel confident that they will stop the bike. And since I'm not racing on this thing...they are functional.-Only 7 gears. I wish I could get a few more gears as I usually can't go much faster than 26 MPH mostly because I'm already pedaling as fast as I can.-Battery indicators are confusing at best. The manual explains them a little better but I still have little confidence that they are displaying the actual charge level. I charge mine every day so that I don't get caught without battery power.-Impossible to find tubes for this bike. You need long 48mm length valves for these triple walled rims. Normal tubes do not clear the rim, making filling impossible.To sum it up, this bike is a great purchase for me as I am saving hundreds every year on car insurance, registration fees, and car maintenance alone! Not to mention the monthly payment on the car. I have a little over a hundred miles on the bike and it seems to be working well.This bike has its imperfections, but I still like it. It does the job well, but Prodeco still needs to refine the design.EDIT (9.26.12):I've now had 2 flats on the bike. The front is a breeze, but the rear is a bear! There is no way one could change a tube on the rear tire on the side of the road. For this, I'm removing one star. You need some serious tools to remove the rear axle nuts and get the rim out to change the tire. After changing the tube, I can't get the tire to sit flush in the recess anymore. It wobbles and makes the brakes rub even more. I've changed many tubes over the years and have never had such difficulty changing a tube. I'm now at 400 miles.

3/14/2013 - One component people complained about in other reviews is the shocks. There are shocks on the front (which are good), but nothing on the rear, where most of the weight is. When the tires are a little flat, you don't feel the bumps. But when the tires are properly inflated, the shocks seem insufficient. So I just upgraded the seatpost to the XLC Suspension Seatpost, 27.2 x 350mm, Black (bought on amazon for 25 dollars), which has a built in shock absorber. Reviewers also liked the thudbuster for ~150, but I am trying out the XLC one first for 25. In my first ride, it seemed to help a lot.2/27/2013 I've got around 600 miles now. Most of the grinding sounds that happened when I bought the bike have disappeared. I am still unsatisfied with the brakes (2012 what I have, which has 7 gears has Pro Max bargain basement brakes. the 2013 has name brand avid BB7 brakes). I give it credit though for making it practical to commute 23 miles (round trip) to/from work. I can do it now in about 45 minutes. By car it takes me 30 minutes. So I am not giving up too much time. The bike is almost impossible to use without electricity. I can get it to limp along in 1st gear (the granny gear). It is so heavy and the tires are very sticky. Perhaps I might replace the tires? With electricity though it goes 20 mph no problem.12/27/2012 I've bike 7 times now to work. For the first 6, I took the battery off and charged it at my desk. I tried today to do the 23 miles without the recharge. The weather was cold so maybe that affected the battery. I had to really lay off the motor and pedal hard on the way home. The last half mile, which is uphill, the battery was going on and off. So in cold weather, the range was about 23 miles. Of course on the way in I was fighting 25 mph winds. Maybe on a warmer, calmer day, the range would be longer? Prodeco advertises 28-38 as the range. Another reviewer said 25. In cold weather with strong winds (with me pedaling hard on the way home) it was only 23 miles. I am going to go back to charging in my office. I like having the extra power that you get with a full battery.12/8 biked to work again today. The speed of this is about equivalent to a fast person on a road bike. It includes a bell, which is useful since you are going faster than most on the trail. With my bad knee, there is no way I could make it to my office in 50 minutes on a normal bike (a fast biker on a road bike could). But this allows me to do it. One reviewer said it takes 1/2 a kWh to charge. Electricity is about 11 cents a kWh in Virginia, so it only costs 5 cents to give me enough power to go to work. Pretty cool.* The gears are also set so that if you are going full power with the motor, then pedaling with the top gear (7) gives you very little extra power unless you are accelerating from a stop or going up a hill. It would be nice if there was a more powerful gear in there. Maybe this is part of the requirement to keep the speed not over 20 mph? I wonder if that could be swapped out for one with a more powerful gear.* One reason I went for the X2 over the X is the newer battery. It seem to charge in about 4 1/2 hours, so you spend less time charging with this than with the X, which is supposed to take 8 hours12/6 biked 11.5 miles to work today (23 round trip). Mostly didn't pedal on the way in. I pedaled on the way home so it was a little faster and used less battery. I figure at around 300 trips this pays for itself in gas. I live by a trail and my office is just off the trail 10 miles down so it is a nice way to commute. Trip took around 50 minutes. In car it is around 25-30 minutes. But this is a much nicer way to go. I may need to buy cycling gloves (since this is December) and maybe one of those full face masks since I am going a lot faster - the wind freezes your face.* Kickstand lets bike fall over unless the ground is perfectly flat. The bike is very top heavy with the battery and the kickstand lets it fall right over. On only my 3rd ride, it fell over and bent the metal piece that holds up the battery. I bent it back, but it is now bent a little bit.12/5/2012 I just got the bike yesterday. I set it up last night, it took about 2 hours - but a lot of that was me reading through the manual. The manual says over and over about how important it is to tighten the bolts. I thought I had, but on my first ride (going really slowly) the handle bar got completely out of alignment with the front wheel when I took my first turn. I was going super slow so no harm no foul. I then really tightened the bolts. This is more a reflection of the fact that I am not a skilled bike mechanic than anything negative about the bike.My first impression is that it is very heavy. I understand that all ebikes are very heavy, but it was still somewhat of a shock.I just took it up and down the block a few times to test it out. There is a little bit of a clicking / grinding sound. Maybe the breaks are not right? I have never had disc breaks before. I tried loosening them to where the breaks didn't work and then tightened them little by little until they properly engaged. I will probably take the bike to a pro to get it straightened out.The engine is great. Due to my insecurity of having set it up (as a non-bike mechanic), I was hesitant to really gun the engine. Let me clarify that it wasn't the engine making the noise. There is something in the wheel turning that is rubbing. Maybe the breaks? Maybe the kickstand? The kickstand seems like one side is a millimeter from the wheel and the other side has a ton of space (like the kickstand isn't centered properly). I see now that 2 of the 3 other people who wrote reviews also noted an issue with the kickstand. I may email prodeco and ask them about the kickstand. I will write about response in update.It is my intent to try and ride this thing to work everyday.

So, I have been very happy with this product, it folds easily. A feature I never thought I would use. I live in a very hilly area and it's been really good with that. Although, I would pay extra for a full 1000 watt motor just because to get my house is quite the inline. I come up from Sea Level to about 2,000 feet in altitude. The bike does it, but just. Hills tend to shorten the distance the battery can do. My friends have all been impressed with it. I do recommend having a professional bike shop assemble the bike since it's not fully assembled. hard to go wrong with it and happy it's an american made product.