Review of Sinclair's A-Bike (Summary: it's a scam)

Page may contain affiliate links. Please see terms for details.

shink3488

New Member
So, here's my experience of the A-Bike.

Summary: on paper, it's a fantastic portable bike, but in practice it has a fatally flawed design. It's going to break after a few months, and then you're going to be stuck with a useless bike. In practice, it's a scam.

Longer version (the "scam" description is at the end):

I've been a longtime user of folding bikes.

I lived in several big cities, so my patterns of usage changed. Most of the time though, I use a portable bike a a complement to the public transport. For this reason, I need it to be very light and compact, and capable of doing relatively short distances.

So far, my experiences with folding bikes have been:

- A 26" folding mountain bike (can't remember the brand/model); at this time I used to rely entirely on bike commuting, and not on public transport.
- A Dahon Ciao P3, with electring engine added; same conditions as before
- A Xootr scooter, which is obviously not a bike. From this point on, I was in a bigger city, mixing private and public transport
- A Strida 5.2
- An A-Bike 8" ("City" model)
- A piece of crap 16" folding bike, which I use now

On paper, the A-Bike 8" would be perfect for me, and I guess, for everybody which uses mostly public transport, and then does relatively short distances:

- it's very very compact, and it folder in a relatively short time
- it's very very very light, literally the lightest "usable" bike you can buy (with the exception of the A-Bike 6")

It has an obvious downside - the 8" wheels. This is why I meantion "usable" bike: pedaling on this bike is quite hard, and I can imagine that the 6" inches version is way too hard to make any cycling at all.

It's very important to understand the usage. Given that with this specific usage one does short distances, it's tolerable to have some downsides.

The downsides inherent in such a compact bike are:

- bumpy feeling: you can't get away with it, because the wheels are so small
- hard pedaling: same reason as before
- lack of comfort: if you're average height, you won't be able to extend your legs

Then there are the not inheret downsides.
It all boiles down to a single problem: this bike, from an engineering perspective, is nothing short of a piece of sh*t.

It is truly terrible. The ideas behind the bike are clever; the objective of making a compact and practically folding bike are accomplished. The problem is that it is, in a way, the opposite of a Strida: Stridas are premium bikes, engineered to be durable and resilient, while A-Bikes are cheaply produced, made to break in a few months.

Let me repeat: A-Bikes WILL break in a few months.

Before the main engineering problem, I'll describe the secondary problems:

- the breaks are terrible; they get unresponsive pretty quickly, and even when adjusted, they keep feeling unresponsive and "hard". This by itself, is already a very big engineering problem
- the bike as a whole is creaky and chep; it feels like you're standing on a loosely connected jumble of plastic parts.
- the encasing of the chain/chainrings is hard to open; it has at least a dozen different screws, and you need three or more different type of tools to open it
- the many screws of the encasing are going to rust with the time. Good luck with that
- the encasing is also going to be filled with dirt, and again, it's going to be a hard work to clean it

====================================================
= THE SCAM!
====================================================

Now, the interesting part. Why it's a scam?

The problem of the reviews that you can find on the web is that they're made by people who test the bike for a few hours, then write the article. This obviously misses one important point, that is, how a bike will perform in the long run.

The "A to B" website raises a point on their review: "The result of all this technology is a whacking 6.8:1 gear reduction, and a single 41-inch gear [...] The wheels, layshaft and bottom bracket use ball bearings throughout,but the bearings are a fairly loose push-fit in plastic housings which twist under load. Time will tell whether this light, simple system survives.".

The answer that I can now give is: it WON'T survive. After a few months of usage, my A-Bike started "skipping", until the point where pedalling yields no wheels rotation.

So there's the story.

- I write an email to the A-Bike support. Nobody replies.
- After a week I call them. There is a woman on the phone. She is dry and bothered, clearly uninstered in solving the problem. She tells me to open the encasing, and take a picture.
- I find it's hard to do that, so I take a video of the problem and send it.
- I get no reply. After I couple of weeks I call. The woman on the phone says she hasn't been opening the email for some time, so she will open it and give me a response. She's obviously lying; the email is also for sales purposes, so no way noboy doesn't open it frequenly.
- I receive a confirmation via email, saying a technican would review the case and reply.
- Nobody replied since then.

At this point the problem is: the A-Bike has a fatal flow, and even if they had a responsible support department, one should keep replacing the part every few months.
But also, they essentially don't offer any support, so once the bike breaks, you're on your own. Or, if you're very very insistent, you will have to spend weeks to get it fixed. Cyclically!
 

classic33

Leg End Member
Anybody who "commutes" on an A-Bike doesn't go very far. Admitting you do so should be punishable.
Don't think it was ever actually designed with long commutes in mind, nor on anything over than smooth roads.
 
OP
OP
shink3488

shink3488

New Member
I never spoke about "long commutes" in the review; actually, I've specified multiple times "short distances".

As for "smooth roads", any real life commute, even if small, it's likely to have some bumps. Even if not, it's perfectly reasonable to expect to cross from the road to the pavement, for example, in cases where the cycleway is on the pavement.
 
OP
OP
shink3488

shink3488

New Member
[QUOTE 2811002, member: 45"]Hello and welcome to the forum.

Can I ask why your very first post is a rant against Sinclair?[/quote]

Because they make an extremely poor product, and they have a very unprofessional, essentially non-existent, support.
Putting the two things together, I define the product, as a whole, as a scam.

Around the web, there is no real-world review about this bike. If I had come across information that I instead had to experience, I wouldn't have certainly made such purchase.

So to wrap up, I think it's important for people to know what they're going to get into, if they decide to purchase this bike.
 
....and a dozen other folders?

I have 2 Stridas. Two Bromptons, two Birdys an Airnimal and two Gekko folding recumbents

None is perfect, but then all folders are by definition a compromise and all these arguments could be applied to each one
 
OP
OP
shink3488

shink3488

New Member
....and a dozen other folders?

I have 2 Stridas. Two Bromptons, two Birdys an Airnimal and two Gekko folding recumbents

None is perfect, but then all folders are by definition a compromise and all these arguments could be applied to each one

I've never mentioned "perfection" in the review.

The standout problem, of the A-Bike is that it's flawed in its designed. I had several bikes and none of them was so flawed in the design that was expected to crumble in a few months.
To put in your very same words, the major flaw is an argument that can *not* be applied to each folder.

And again, the second most important factor is that major brands, or "visible" brands, or physical shops, offer the chance of repair. With the A-Bike, you're essentially screwed.

I had a Strida, it had a defect, I paid, got the replacement. With A-Bike, it had a defect, I got the middle finger.
 

fossyant

Ride It Like You Stole It!
Location
South Manchester
Popcorn time.

Sinclair only made good kids computers. The rest is a joke.
 

classic33

Leg End Member
I never spoke about "long commutes" in the review; actually, I've specified multiple times "short distances".

As for "smooth roads", any real life commute, even if small, it's likely to have some bumps. Even if not, it's perfectly reasonable to expect to cross from the road to the pavement, for example, in cases where the cycleway is on the pavement.
You never mentioned any length of commute, long or short!
A "long" commute on an A-Bike would be at most a mile, having had the chance to try one.
There have been a couple of reviews, that I've seen where out of those on test the A-Bike has come out/off worse. I believe Focus magazine did one a while back. I think the summing up was the most telling when they said it would be great for getting around large buildings, where storage space may be limited.
They even handed the bikes to staff to use for a week.
There was a thread on here about the suitabilty of the same bike in the Shipley area. The hills were the part of his commute & causing problems.
Here I'm responding to the reply to my own post only.
 

glasgowcyclist

Charming but somewhat feckless
Location
Scotland
2812574 said:
My Sinclair scientific calculator was excellent and ahead of its time, hence the fact that reverse Polish notation has become the standard.

Ooh, that takes me back, I had one of those. If I remember rightly, it's case also acted as a stand for it.

sinclair.jpg

At that time I was the only person in my class to have a calculator and when my physics teacher asked if he could borrow a calculator to check something, I gave him mine. He couldn't get his head round the RPN so I had to have him dictate the problem to me while I entered the figures and produced the answer.
(I still preferred my slide rule.)
GC
 
I once shared a table with Clive Sinclair at a bash.

He is a very nice chap, especially as he bought me a pint!
 

MontyVeda

a short-tempered ill-controlled small-minded troll
it's a wonder he's not bankrupted himself with his various attempts at revolutionary transport... I expect he has his fingers in some more lucrative pies than his own 'inventions'.
 
Top Bottom