Whilst I was considering buying an electric bike I found this website enormously helpful, so having just purchased a nearly new Wisper 905 SE I thought it might be useful to give some first impressions. I bought a second-hand 905 just over a month ago, it was nearly new with some improvements made by previous owner.
It would be worth me saying that I’m mid 40s with a sedentary job, so not particularly fit, although I do have 2 children! I purchased the bike with a view to commuting to work, 11 miles away with 2-3 small hills, maximum climb of 35m, an overall climb of 30m from work to home. I often have to carry my laptop home. My aim was to get a little fitter, but not arrive at work too exhausted, and, as my job is looking at low carbon technologies, to practice what I preach by reducing my carbon footprint.
I was hoping to have used it a bit more by now but travelling with work means I’ve only done five trips to work on it so far and some shorter excursions. I’ve had some interesting reactions in the bike sheds so far from “That’s cheating” from an ardent cyclist to “I think this is the future” from someone a little more farsighted.
Overall: I’m very pleased with my purchase, it does exactly what I want, my journey time to work is consistently 40 minutes and I arrive without feeling exhausted or hot and sweaty. My negatives below are really just niggles rather than serious problems.
Appearance: I like its looks very much.
Competition: As I live near 50 Cycles in Loughborough I took an Agattu out for a test run up the highest hill on my journey to work. Although it was probably better at hill climbing, at the end of the day it was out of my price range, and even the smoke damaged bargains were still over my £1k budget, and they were the Step-through frame which I didn’t really want.
Controls: Probably the most disappointing area. The biggest issue is there is no indication of which mode I was in or what to press to get to another mode. On my initial trips out it took a lot of experimenting to work out if the switches toggle or needed holding continuously. There’s no indication of which switches do what. The instruction manual was pretty poor too, in fact it said nothing about the controls. The green “derestriction” button seems to just turn the power down to a very low level, I can’t see any value in being in “restricted” mode given that it limits speed to about 5 mph (wiring error perhaps which seems to plague these bikes?). The pedelec mode is a little primitive, taking as it’s signal the speed of the pedals, rather than the torque applied (unlike the Agattu), and seems a bit slow to realise you’ve started or stopped pedalling. Therefore I tend to always use the bike in derestricted throttle mode as it makes me feel in control. Finally it’s too easy to knock a switch and toggle into a mode you don’t want requiring some experimentation to work out how to return it back to the setting you want.
Display: The speedo is pretty useless (only displays when power is applied, is very granular, is in kmh and is a bit dim). It would’ve been better replaced by a mode indicator. The battery indicator goes from empty to full, but actually seems to just indicate battery voltage. So under load, eg up a hill, the display lights drop but recover when the throttle is released. It still has value but something better that told you what was really left in the battery would be more useful.
Lights: A bit naff and tyre driven dynamo is quite a drag. Previous owner had added extras which is probably necessary for night cycling.
Speed and power: Very good, I find there’s no reason to drop below 15 mph, except for the steepest climbs when speed may drop to 10 mph for a short while. This is the main reason for buying it and it delivers well here.
Unpowered cycling: I wouldn’t want to do a lot of this, the weight and drag are significantly more than a normal bike, but that is to be expected.
Battery: It has sufficient range for my 22 mile commute. However towards the end of this the battery is dropping to 1/3rd on the display when under load and is therefore losing significant power, so I wouldn’t want to go a lot further. I have been charging it for 7 hours overnight (yes, I’m stingy trying to use Economy7 electricity for charging!). However I’m not convinced that’s enough because battery can drop in power quite quickly on consecutive days. I have an adapter that measure wattage so have found that most of the charging is done in the first 2 hours, after that it is a little trickle. An indicator on the battery about it’s state of charge would help.
Gearing: A little low, I may address this with a bigger front sprocket if possible. I never use 1st gear, spend 90% of my time in top gear and often find I’m pedalling uncomfortably fast when going downhill > 20 mph. Now those of you living in hilly terrain may disagree with this so I think the real problem is the lack of range from top to bottom, I notice another reviewer has had to address this.
Brakes: Previous owner had sensibly changed these so no complaints.
Looks: Very smart.
Frame: A nice sturdy frame. Saddle seems close to pedals, so optimising distance from saddle to pedals means having it very high off ground, and I’m only 5’10”.
Support: Not had to call upon this but found the answer to my question about
warrantee validity a bit disappointing, looking for lots of wriggle room, whereas I think warrantee should automatically transfer with no problems. This accelerates depreciation a little.
Score: 8/10