User Reviews

[AemerC]

I've had my Superpedestrian wheel for long enough now that I think I have a pretty good sense what I like/dislike about it, so I figured I'd post a review:

Pros:

It is quiet. There’s no buzzing or mechanical noise what-so-ever.​

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It has sufficient power to help get me up the 100 m high, 8% grade hill on my way home from work at 15-18 kph, using about as much muscle as it would take to do the same hill at 6 kph or so on a conventional bike.​

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Riding it feels very causal. I can keep up with the other cyclists around me on the bike routes who look like they are going to the Tour De France while I look and feel more like I’m headed to the beach.​

Cons:

The app loses Bluetooth connectivity with the wheel a couple of times a week and the only way to recover is to either restart the phone or shut down the app and then “force stop” it from the Android settings screen before re-launching the app. To be fair, the most recent version of the app (Version 2.10.4) claims to improve bluetooth connectivity and I haven't experienced a failure since I updated to that version last week, but give it time...​

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The gaudy new red, white and blue UI in the most recent version of the app seems to have been inspired by the movie Idiocracy. Hey Superpedestrian! Why not go all-in and add some stars... ‘cause ‘murica?​

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The range isn’t great. A 40 km ride in the “Eco” mode with typical hilly city ups and downs of 20 metres here, 30 metres there (totaling about 300 metres over that 40 km distance) depleted my battery about 3 or 4 km before I got home. If I were still doing the 35 km round-trip commute that I was doing when I first ordered the wheel, I’d probably have to buy a second charger so that I could charge the wheel at both ends of my commute.​

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So in summary, I'd say that I am generally happy with the wheel hardware but I hate the app. The wheel’s range does impact how I use it, but the wheel is quiet, looks sharp and its all-in-one design makes it easy to drop into almost any bike.

Would I still buy one, knowing what I know now? Probably. Would I recommend it to a friend? Probably. But I’d do so with the caveat that the app is jarring and buggy and that, in my experience, the range is only really sufficient for about 30 km of typical hilly city riding, even in the “Eco” mode.

 

[bowzette]

Great review. I really wanted to buy a Wheel for my recumbent trike but my analysis is that there isn't sufficient range for road riding. My minimum requirement was 30 miles with 30 feet per mile of elevation gain averaging 17 mph. But in all fairness the Wheel was designed for short distance inter city riding. Too bad SP doesn't design a system that would accept an external batter as well as the internal one. I assume this could be done but have no technical knowledge.

 

[Embra]

The app loses Bluetooth connectivity with the wheel a couple of times a week and the only way to recover is to either restart the phone or shut down the app and then “force stop” it from the Android settings screen before re-launching the app. To be fair, the most recent version of the app (Version 2.10.4) claims to improve bluetooth connectivity and I haven't experienced a failure since I updated to that version last week, but give it time...​

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Been away from the forums for a while, and catching up on some posts I've missed. Regarding the bluetooth connectivity, I am having this problem on occasion. I've found the quickest remedy is toggling bluetooth off/on on the phone and then reconnecting through the app before making other bluetooth connections.