Not long ago we let you know that we’d taken delivery of a £799 Aerobike X-Ride, a stripped back city machine. There’s more than one way to spend eight hundred quid though, and this Sahara from Cyclotricity represents the other end of the spectrum.
This is a fully specced, Dutch-style electric bike with a low step alloy frame, mudguards, a chain case and so on. It’s got a full size 400Wh battery running a front hub motor. You get a bar-mounted display that gives you access to the five different assist levels, as well as giving you ride data, battery level and so on. It’s an LCD display and fairly large and easy to read.

Gearing-wise the Sahara has a Shimano 6-speed derailleur transmission. It’s low-end stuff as you’d expect at this price but Shimano gears work pretty well all the way down to the bottom, so there shouldn’t be any issues. The thumb shifter isn’t an ergonomic masterpiece but it’s easier to use than cheap grip shifts, which tend to be quite sticky and require a good grip to change gear.

The Sahara is available in two sizes. We have the larger 20″ frame and it’s a big old bike, for sure. You shouldn’t have any trouble getting comfortable on one of the two sizes, no matter how tall or short you are. A quick-release seatpost clamp means you can easily adjust between riders, too. The swept riser bars give an upright position and the stem is adjustable for height.

The battery sits in the rear rack and it’s removeable for charging with a key lock. The battery incorporates a rear light; there’s no front light plumbed in to the electrics but you do get a battery light for the dark lanes.

The Sahara has big 47mm city tyres; they’re cheap ones but there’s plenty of tread on them and they look like they’ll be fine for mixed-surface riding. Full plastic mudguards are part of the package too.

This isn’t an expensive bike so there are some fairly basic components in evidence to hit the price point. The rear hub is steel reather than alloy, as is the chainset and the seatpost. The Top Gun suspension fork is pretty basic too; it’ll be interesting to see how it copes with the weight of the hub. Given that the 20″ bike is the size of a small barge and there’s some heavy components bolted to it, the overall weight of 22.4kg actually isn’t that bad.

Other finishing kit is okay though: the saddle is big and fairly comfy and the bar grips match it for colour and are decent too. Stopping the bike is taken care of by ProMax V-brakes; they’re pretty basic but we’ve had them on a bunch of bikes and they tend to work fine.

We’ll be out and about on the Sahara over the next few weeks, and we’ll report back with our findings.