Review: Brompton Electric P Line - same hub motor system as Electric ML6, but lighter overall, with an app… cycling BromptonBicycle
Cyclescheme is an employee benefit that saves you 26–40% on a bike and accessories. You pay nothing upfront and the payments are taken tax efficiently from your salary by your employer. Now a quick recap on the actual, largely unchanged drive system itself.
It pairs a reasonably small front hub motor with an easy-lift on/off 312Wh battery pack, whose neat bag housing means you can easily sling it over your shoulder and carry the folded Brompton separately. It would have been nice if Brompton had come up with a lighter hub motor to go with the lightweight P Line - by our reckoning the motor system adds around 2.75kg to the bike. That's reasonably light but not in the same league as theor Swytch Brompton-specific conversion kits. The superb quality Cytronex, for example, adds markedly less than 2kg to the folded bike once its small battery has been removed for carrying. The P Line Electric is Brompton's lightest e-bike and on our scales weighs 13.3kg with the battery removed. We think this 'carrying weight' is the most important, as folding and carrying the Brompton for multi-modal travel is such a big draw for many people. 13.3kg is a good couple of kilograms lighter than the six-speed electric we tested . The weight saving comes from many features of the non-electric P-Line carried over to the electric. First and foremost is a titanium rear triangle . This is followed by a brand new 4-speed derailleur which gives a useful 163% gear range - similar to the 3-speed hub gear range of 178%. A lower gear and bigger overall gear range would have been nicer, but the crucial thing is the weight saving of the derailleur over hub gear models whilst preserving that hill climbing ability. Other weight saving features carried over to the Electric version include the new rear wheel design, superlight grips, superlight headset, lightweight Tubolito inner tubes and lightweight chain.Roller Rackfor locking in two positions - fully folded and halfway down so you can swing the rear triangle under and push the bike along using the saddle as a handle; a nice new practical touch.. These are slicks that feel fast but also get good reports for the effectiveness of their puncture resistant layer.Road test Those 16-inch wheels mean the Brompton ride is often described as 'twitchy' or 'squirrely' but once you are used to riding one on a daily basis these concerns melt away to a large degree and it's really only very large potholes or big kerbs you need to be wary of. Within the gamut of what's possible with 16-inch wheels, the test rider found it a stable and fun ride. In terms of motor performance, it's pretty similar to the experience on the heavier 2019 Brompton Electric we tried. It delivers decent power and certainly makes most hills very easy, and the torque-sensing power delivery is pretty smooth and pretty responsive to your pedal efforts. Range from the 312Wh battery was a similar 30-miles-ish. For a premium priced e-bike it could be a little smoother with a bit more punch up really steep hills. There are equally small but punchier motors out there. Gocycle's proprietary front hub system was namedThe test rider has ridden the old ML6 electric version quite extensively and the Electric P Line, whilst basically the same system, felt a little smoother and didn't suffer from any of the occasional power cutouts the ML6 did. Whether extra smoothness is simply down to it being a lighter bike with quicker changing gears or whether the software itself is a newer, silkier version, it's hard to say, but there is definitely a small but noticeable improvement. The real bonus over the older Brompton Electrics though is the app. The test rider isn't a big fan of these in general, often preferring a thumb control to alter settings rather than a fiddlier smartphone screen. Whilst a thumb control would still be the ideal on the Brompton, the app at least means the rider doesn't have to lean all the way over the bars to press the power buttons on the top of the battery pack. In addition, it's nice and easy to setup and pair via bluetooth, whilst the main 'dashboard' screen itself has the all-important three power levels in nice big numbers at the bottom of the screen, making changing the power assist much easier than it used to be.
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