I was a bit worried at first about getting this bike, and that was due to the fact that my daughter doesn't yet know how to ride a bike. She's had a small kid's bike before with training wheels, and we tried to teach her to ride, but it just wasn't working for several reasons. My daughter is now 7 and she can ride a scooter and she even rides horses, but not a bike.
In comes this Hover-1 electric bike. I thought, maybe if she doesn't have to worry about pedaling she might learn to balance on a bike, which seems to usually be the biggest issue. So we went for it.
Initial assembly was easy enough, just attach the front wheel and handlebars, adjust the handlebar and seat seat height and you're pretty much done. The only complaint I have here is that the cables come attached to the bike and handlebars and there's not a lot of slack. I pretty much had to stretch as hard as I could to get the handlebar stem into the bike frame. The other issue with the cables is that if you adjust the handlebar height too high, they become so tight that you can't turn the wheel fully to one side. They really should have made the cables just an inch or two longer and this problem would have been avoided. As it is, the handlebar height is limited by the cable length and not the stem/frame size.
Final step Is to just let it fully charge before using it per the instructions, which only took about 3 hours.
Now it was time to see how my daughter does on it, and she was definitely excited to try it out.
It didn't start out that great though, because it wouldn't start! Turns out, you have to manually get the e-bike moving before the electric motor will start up. Unfortunately, this isn't mentioned anywhere in the manuals that I could find. In fact, the guide just states, "To start riding, engage the throttle gently." I tried to engage it as gently as possible and all the way and every way in between and it doesn't work. Luckily I looked at some other reviews and saw other people run into this same issue and had figured out the solution.
This process of starting can get a little annoying as it has to be done each and every time you come to a stop. After stopping and starting over and over my daughter started complaining about her ankles hurting because she kept banging them on the foot pegs when she was pushing herself to get moving.
With that said, let's get back to actually riding the bike, by a kid who doesn't know how to ride a bike. First few tries to get going were a little bit wobbly. The fact that she didn't have to pedal though meant she could keep her feet out close to the ground to correct herself if she lost her balance. This was working exactly as I imagined it, except even better. After quite literally just a few tries in a matter of minutes, she started to ride for slightly longer stretches without having to put her feet down. The problem now was that we were on the sidewalk in front of our house, and she hadn't quite figured out the steering part yet and kept going off the side and stopping.
So we obviously needed a better spot to practice, and there just happens to be a field in our neighborhood across the street from us. Problem is that it's a grassy field, and there's the question of how well this bike would ride on it. The field is used as a soccer field a lot so it's kept well trimmed and the ground is fairly solid, so we decided to give it a try. And it worked! The bike rode just fine and was able to propel itself across the grassy field. With the ground being more forgiving my daughter had a lot more confidence, and it wasn't even 5 minutes before she was riding around in circles and steering without stumbling or losing her balance.
Now that was all on the low speed setting, which limits it to around 4 mph. A safe speed where I could keep up with her just by walking fast. This made it easier for her to learn to ride too because she could just press the throttle all the way and not worry about holding it partially. After about another 30 minutes of practice, she was ready to try the high speed setting.
The faster speed scared her a little at first, but only for about a minute before she started getting used to it. Now the harder part was learning to stop properly. At first she was having problems remembering to let go of the throttle before coming to a stop, but it didn't take long for her to get that figured out either.
After maybe 45 minutes of practice riding around on the field, she went back to the streets, or I should say sidewalks! She was riding this e-bike with no problems at all. At this point, I think she's almost ready to try out a pedal bike! I feel like all she needs is about another week of riding this e-bike around to truly get comfortable with all the aspects of riding a bike, minus the pedaling of course. But just think how much easier it's going to be when that's the only new thing to learn!
Of course this bike isn't just a teaching tool, and even after she finally starts riding a pedal bike herself, this e-bike will still get plenty of use. Oftentimes we find ourselves wanting to go for a walk, or riding our own bikes, whether around our neighborhood or when we go camping at parks. But then the 7 year old is always somehow, 'too tired'. Now she has this e-bike to ride around with us without needing to 'exert' herself! Plus she's having a ton of fun on it and absolutely loves riding it around.
Last thing to really talk about is the battery charge. It says it can last up to 7.5 miles. It's hard to test that with a 7 year old, but I have no reason to doubt that range. My daughter was riding for hours on the initial charge and the battery level only dropped down to 50%. She even kept pointing out how much battery charge was still left.
In summary, this e-bike is not only great for what it is, fun and easy to ride, but also a great teaching tool to help your kid learn how to ride a bike. It says it's for kids 5 years old and up. For reference, my daughter is just a few weeks from turning 8 and is 4'3" tall. The bike looks a little small, but it's proportionally almost like an adult on a moped. The only negatives are the cable length and starting method. I can see a reason to force a manual start, but they should at least mention how it works. Those aren't huge negatives, so it deserves more than 4 stars, but since I can't do 4.5 I'll round it up to 5. So if you have a child that needs not just their 1st E-bike, but just 1st bike, this is the one to get. You might just be surprised at how easy they learn to start riding like my wife and I were, as we were watching our daughter figure it out on her own. All without us having to 'catch' her or be alongside her to 'hold' her straight, not even once.