superbeagle
New Member
Just want to post my experience with the Aventon Level, its a newer bike and there isn't a ton out there so I want to just share my experience with it. I wanted a Ride1up 700 but because everything is sold out everywhere it just wasn't happening, and the Aventon Level being my second choice I found it at my local store in Madison, WI. I considered myself lucky and went in and test drove it, it was good so I bought it. I won't go over all of the technical specs, that's already out there but some things I noticed from a first impression standpoint. Bike is bigger than I expected from the photos but it is still a beautiful bike. The range estimates I found fairly accurate, obviously those estimates are under ideal conditions so be aware of things like hills or heavy headwind, rider weight and the like affecting your range. Just mentally subtract a couple miles if you are hitting hills or are heavy or its really windy, etc. The speed I got up to was 29.9 mph in PA5 max, which is plenty. I generally never left PA4, which was perfect because I was going fast and having fun but it still had enough resistance left in the pedals to get a great workout. The motor was louder than I expected but not too bad. It only mattered to me for "stealth" because I bike with my earbuds in anyway, but I liked the hidden-ish battery because I didn't want to be super obvious about my ebike. Overall in a month I put on a little over 200 miles and had a really great time. I pretty much only took it on trails, both asphalt and dirt, and mostly flat. There were two negatives I was going to talk about in this review until a few days ago when I had a major issue which I'll talk about at the end. The 2 negatives, if your bike is working great is number one, the bike is incredibly weak on hills/acceleration. I had a cheap electric longboard before this that pulled me up hills faster than this. In fact even on what I would consider mild to moderate hills, the bike basically slows to a walking speed. I was really shocked by that. I'm not sure if its because the battery is made more for longer ranges on flat ground or what, but the hill climbing was a joke. If you are planning on riding flat, it wont matter to you but if you ride in a hilly area, you will be upset. Also, expectedly the hills destroy the battery charge. Literally could ride up a short hill and lose 2 or 3 bars out of 10. Secondly, the battery gauge I found was too inaccurate to be helpful. It would routinely swing up to 5 bars up and down. Going from 7/10 to 2/10 and then back to 7/10 within a half mile is ridiculous. Being 10 miles out in the country on a trail and seeing your battery gauge all of a sudden drop to 10% is not cool. So what I did was to just use the odometer. I knew that on PA4 I could go at least 26 miles so I just turned around wherever I was at 13 miles each time, which worked fine. I only mention it so you can start doing that from the get go and not have a heart attack like I almost did watching the battery gauge just slip to 10% all of a sudden! The other thing worth mentioning is that you need to keep your battery keys handy. 2 different times I loaded up my bike, drove a half hour to the trail I wanted to ride, bike in the back, battery on my passenger seat only to realize when I got to the trail I forgot my battery key. The way this is designed you cannot put the battery in the bike without the key. I don't understand why but I learned the hard way that the battery key did not leave my vehicle under any circumstances. So just a friendly reminder if you didn't know that. Really a headache when you are looking forward to riding and realize you just wasted an hours worth of gas and time. The other thing I'd say is keep the allen key set they sell with the bike handy as several of the bolts liked to come loose every couple rides so I got in the habit of tightening stuff down before rides, not a huge deal, took me a minute tops. But know that and save yourself a headache or get some loctite.
Now that was going to be my review BUT interesting development in the last week. I was riding and heard a weird noise coming from my rear tire. On closer inspection I saw there was 2 spokes broken. Not a huge deal, I called up the store I bought it from and got it fixed the next day. I picked it up and took it for a ride right away and another spoke broke immediately. I turned around and headed back to my car, another one popped before I got there. I called up the mechanic I just picked it up from an hour before and told him what happened. He told me that this has been happening to all of these bikes. He said the spokes are breaking on so many of these that they are resorting to cannibalizing the showroom models for spokes. Total brittle junk. He said I should talk to the manager about it so I called the manager and he said about 60% of the Aventon Levels they've sold this year have been coming back with broken spokes or other problems. He said we could order me a new tire but it will just keep happening and wasting everyone's time. I asked if I could return the bike and he said yes, even though he didn't have to, great guy. When I took it back in the next day he said that my situation was the last straw, he said he refuses to sell any more of these bikes to his customers, they are just complete junk and its hurting the reputation of his shop. I'm not sure how that works if they are under contract or how that all works but I'm glad they are doing the right thing. Until Aventon addresses this issue they really shouldn't be selling these bikes.
So after saying all of this, I want to be fair to say according to him 40% of the bikes sold had not yet reported problems so you might get lucky. My experience is only my own, I know there are people out there with this bike who are perfectly happy with it, so keep that in mind, this is just one person's experience. No company sells any bike that is perfect 100% of the time. And until the spokes started breaking, despite the bikes issues, I was enjoying my bike a lot. I will definitely be buying another ebike come spring, but it wont be an Aventon unfortunately. But now that I've experienced an ebike I don't see how I could go back to a regular bike. The other thing I should probably say is that if you are a lighter person you may be less likely to have spoke issues, which seems logical to me. I'm a big guy. However the store owner told me even small riders were bringing in Aventon Levels with broken spokes, still, if you are lighter that has to make a difference I'd imagine. So make a wise choice, make sure if you buy it from somewhere you talk to them about the warranty and if it covers spoke replacements because you will be doing that a lot potentially. And put the bike through its paces before the 30 day return window closes otherwise you may be stuck with a bike that is totally unrideable. A real bummer, I was loving this bike to be honest but the truth is its just poor quality for the money. My next bike I will be looking to spend a little bit more for something that I can depend on.
Now that was going to be my review BUT interesting development in the last week. I was riding and heard a weird noise coming from my rear tire. On closer inspection I saw there was 2 spokes broken. Not a huge deal, I called up the store I bought it from and got it fixed the next day. I picked it up and took it for a ride right away and another spoke broke immediately. I turned around and headed back to my car, another one popped before I got there. I called up the mechanic I just picked it up from an hour before and told him what happened. He told me that this has been happening to all of these bikes. He said the spokes are breaking on so many of these that they are resorting to cannibalizing the showroom models for spokes. Total brittle junk. He said I should talk to the manager about it so I called the manager and he said about 60% of the Aventon Levels they've sold this year have been coming back with broken spokes or other problems. He said we could order me a new tire but it will just keep happening and wasting everyone's time. I asked if I could return the bike and he said yes, even though he didn't have to, great guy. When I took it back in the next day he said that my situation was the last straw, he said he refuses to sell any more of these bikes to his customers, they are just complete junk and its hurting the reputation of his shop. I'm not sure how that works if they are under contract or how that all works but I'm glad they are doing the right thing. Until Aventon addresses this issue they really shouldn't be selling these bikes.
So after saying all of this, I want to be fair to say according to him 40% of the bikes sold had not yet reported problems so you might get lucky. My experience is only my own, I know there are people out there with this bike who are perfectly happy with it, so keep that in mind, this is just one person's experience. No company sells any bike that is perfect 100% of the time. And until the spokes started breaking, despite the bikes issues, I was enjoying my bike a lot. I will definitely be buying another ebike come spring, but it wont be an Aventon unfortunately. But now that I've experienced an ebike I don't see how I could go back to a regular bike. The other thing I should probably say is that if you are a lighter person you may be less likely to have spoke issues, which seems logical to me. I'm a big guy. However the store owner told me even small riders were bringing in Aventon Levels with broken spokes, still, if you are lighter that has to make a difference I'd imagine. So make a wise choice, make sure if you buy it from somewhere you talk to them about the warranty and if it covers spoke replacements because you will be doing that a lot potentially. And put the bike through its paces before the 30 day return window closes otherwise you may be stuck with a bike that is totally unrideable. A real bummer, I was loving this bike to be honest but the truth is its just poor quality for the money. My next bike I will be looking to spend a little bit more for something that I can depend on.
Last edited:
