As some of the best consumer techs from the last decade, I didn’t know I needed an e-bike until I was on one, breezing down the bike lane contemplating my newfound freedom.
Before buying a Nintendo Switch, I would have never guessed how much a candy-colored gaming console that I could pop out of a dock and into my backpack for a long flight would fill me with joy. An e-bike, particularly this e-bike, the VanMoof X3, feels like that.
I live in Portland, Oregon, land of ample bike lanes and naked bike rides. When I first moved here, I biked everywhere, but that habit slowly dissolved over the years. First, I bought a car for weekend camping trips, which gradually became weekday errand running.
A few years later, I got diagnosed with a chronic illness and suddenly found myself much less confident in what my body could do and where it could comfortably take me. Over time, my bike would only see a handful of rides a season on beautiful days, when I’d always sigh and think I wish I biked more — it makes me feel good!
The X3 is an effortless enough ride that I can still zoom to work if it’s 95+ degrees out. It’s fast enough that I can get out of a surprise rainstorm quickly if need be. If I don’t want to be sweaty at the start of the day, I can lean on sweet, sweet electricity to whisk me away, rolling up to my office without breaking a sweat.
And it can’t go unstated that going fast on a bike — the whole time, with as much or little effort as you feel like putting in — is fun. If you haven’t had a chance to try an e-bike, know that the sensation of effortlessly zipping around, electricity near-imperceptibly humming beneath you, is difficult to describe and best experienced first-hand.
VanMoof’s handsome pair of high-tech bikes, the X3 and its larger cousin, the S3, are far from the only options on the market, so some of their pluses would hold for any electric bike. But that doesn’t make the VanMoof interchangeable either. The VanMoof X3 has a distinct look, feel and feature set that will perfectly suit a certain kind of rider (myself included), but other e-bike shoppers will still want to play the field. We’ll get into that — here goes!
