Congrats - you made a good choice. I bought mine in late winter and put over 2300 miles on it. No regrets.
Interesting about your shoe dragging on pavement/trail. I haven't had that happen once on my 700 and have never heard anyone mention that in the last year in the Ride1up FB group, yet I have seen that mentioned about the Ride1Up Core-5 before.
I didn't see it mentioned in the video, but the thing that first attracted me to Ride1Up is the customization of the power levels where you can customize every assist level to the percentage of power you want so you can really regulate the assist it provides. I was concerned in advance of getting a bike which didn't allow that level of customization because I had heard of various e-bikes being too aggressive with assist, even in the lowest levels. On my Ride1Up 700, I set my levels to 0-7 with 1-7 set to 6%, 14%, 20%, 30%, 40%, 50%, 100%. I do most of my riding in PAS 0 and PAS 1 on the flats because I'm out for exercise, but I step it up on the hills or with stronger headwinds, where I really most appreciate having an e-bike. I only use the highest level to get away from dogs or other emergencies. At that level, it will max out the power meter on the display at 999 watts with a decent charge.
