At just 37 lb (16.8 kg), the Tenways CGO600 Pro is pretty darn lightweight for an electric bike. Of course, you give up a lot of the features and performance many riders have come to expect of chunkier e-bikes, but the tradeoff leaves us with a lightweight ride that is still punchy enough for most commutes.
To see what it’s like to throw a leg over this e-bike and take it for a ride, check out my video review below. Or if you’re the reading type, just keep scrolling to get to my full written review. Or, you know, you can always try both!
Tenways CGO600 Pro video review
Tenways CGO600 Pro tech specs
- Motor: 350 Watt rear hub motor with 45 Nm of torque
- Top speed: 20 mph (32 km/h)
- Range: Claimed up to 53 miles (85 km)
- Battery: 36V 10Ah (360 Wh)
- Weight: 37 lb (16.8 kg)
- Frame: 6061 aluminum alloy
- Tires: CST 700x45C urban tires
- Brakes: Tektro dual-piston hydraulic disc brakes
- Extras: Compact LED display, 4 pedal assist levels, slim fender set, kickstand, internally routed cables, LED lighting, removable battery, Tenways app integration, torque sensor, Gates carbon belt drive, four color options
What you give up and what you get
Right off the bat, it’s quite apparent that the Tenways CGO600 Pro is not like most e-bikes on the market today. As a lightweight, single-speed commuter e-bike, it makes some compromises to offer a different style of ride.
You give up some power, with the bike featuring a mere 350 watts from the rear hub motor.
Despite being smaller, the saving grace here is that the motor and controller come from a company called Mivice, whose factory I recently visited outside of Shanghai. Mivice is known for making higher quality, more precision-built motors and electronics, and so it’s great to see Tenways opting for such a high end motor and controller supplier.
You also give up some battery capacity, with the bike featuring 360 Wh of capacity, or around half of what you’d find in many of the best-selling electric bikes on the market today.
But again, there’s a silver lining. That smaller battery is lighter, which is an advantage over most heavy e-bikes, and it’s also removable, which solves a major turnoff of many lightweight models with batteries semi-permanently sealed off inside the frame.
With a top speed of 20 mph (32 km/h) and no throttle onboard, this is also a Class 1 e-bike. Sure, that is the least popular class of electric bikes in the US, but don’t take that as a sign that you should overlook this model.
Class 1 e-bikes have the lowest sales figures in the US since most people like the ability to ride without pedaling that a throttle offers. If you’re ok with pedaling all the time, you’ll enjoy the torque sensor that Tenways has graced us with. There’s a slight lag but it is much better than nearly any cadence sensor out there in terms of giving good power off the line soon after you step on the pedals.
This is a single speed bike and so that responsiveness is important, especially when you’re trying to get rolling at the bottom of a hill climb. Single speed e-bikes are normally geared for their most comfortable pedaling on the higher end of the speed range, since that’s where most people spend most of their rides. And so you’ll appreciate having the more responsive ‘oomph’ off the line when you’re getting rolling in a higher gear ratio.
The big advantage of a single-speed drivetrain, at least for me, is that it enables Tenways to go with a Gates carbon belt drive system. Instead of a chain that gets rusty and noisy over time, Gates belt drives stay clean and silent for their entire lifespan, which can be several times as long as a chain.
It’s just a more elegant way to power the bike, and I love belt drives for that reason. I live not far from the sea, and so corrosion from the salty air is a big problem. Belt drives solve that for me and remove one more maintenance worry from the bike.
The same could be said of the Tenways CGO600 Pro’s hydraulic disc brakes, which are also a largely zero-maintenance solution. Sure, one day you’ll have to replace the brake pads and even further down the line you’ll potentially have to bleed the lines or replace the fluid – but that’s waaay down the line for most riders. Casual riders could go a year or more before needing to swap pads, and may never have to touch their hydraulic oil reservoir. In the shorter term, these powerful stoppers save you from having to do weekly or biweekly brake cable adjustments that mechanical brakes require, meaning your brakes are essentially always in tune.
How does the ride feel?
To me, the bike’s lightweight feel really adds to the ride. Between the single-speed nature and the lightweight design, there’s just not much to think about while you’re riding. There are no gears to be concerned with, you don’t have to adjust your ride to compensate for how extra-heavy e-bikes will impact you in the turns, etc.
On the other hand, the narrow-ish tires and the lack of suspension do result in a rougher ride when you run into potholes or road debris, but that’s likely something that commuter riders on road-style bikes are also used to. Newcomers to cycling or e-bikes tend to prefer wider tires or true suspension, whereas riders who have been doing this for years, especially those coming from road biking communities, can get by on an inch of air and rubber against the road. Of course this isn’t a typical road bike, but it’s got more of that feel than most e-bikes I ride.
And as a last little note, I might add that I really love this paint color. There are three other colors available (green, grey, and black), but this blue color is just beautiful on the bike! The fact that Tenways built such a smoothly welded frame helps show off the paint colors even better without ugly welds to break up the smooth lines around the tubes in the main frame triangle.
What’s my verdict?
At just US $1,499, the bike feels quite nice. There are some changes that I would have appreciated, such as a rear light in addition to the front wired light, and perhaps the ability to reach Class 3 speeds of 28 mph (45 km/h), but it’s hard to demand too much from a Gates belt drive e-bike at under $1,500.
They even offer it in three sizes, which is two sizes more than most of the budget-minded electric bikes out there.
So I say that if you’re on the hunt for a simple, lightweight electric bike with a belt drive, this would be an excellent option to consider.
Author: Micah Toll
Source: Electrek
