My First Gravel eBike! Fiido C21 Review
Chris here and welcome to my first e-bike that is a gravel e-bike now I’ve tested a lot of e-bikes a lot of fat wheel ones City bikes Urban bikes foldable bikes but not one of these this is a gravel bike here so designed for where I am now gravel roads so this model here is called the Fiido c21 we’ve got 700c wheels and they are from CST with a tread pattern that is apparently optimized for gravel off-road trails or some loose rocks and stones and things shouldn’t be a problem for these tires you wouldn’t want
to be riding with road tires in these kind of conditions but this is going to give us quite a bit of grip now the bike you’ll notice the frame of it I like the look of it I really do think it looks quite kind of retro especially with the side walls of these tires being that clearer color here the bike’s weight is not bad at all so with the c21 which is not the step through Style Bar here this is just 18 kilos and compared to some of the other e-bikes that I’ve been reviewing that
have weighed up to a phenomenal 37 kilos this thing still feels really lightweight in comparison so I do like the frame and look at this bike to me it’s an e-bike
big time I’m lucky if I’m going to get half of that kind of mileage but they do have an expansion battery pack that you can put right here where we do have a bottle holder mount in fact they’ve got a battery that looks almost like a bottle that you plug into where the charging port is and that’s going to double your range then so if you go on big rides and you want to get really good range out of this bike then that’s probably what you want to invest in and get that expandable battery pack
there so here with our rear hub motor we’re looking at a 36 volt rehab motor 250 Watts 40 Newton meters of torque and the brakes where we’ve got 160 millimeter brakes here from techtro their hydraulic brakes and they feel good now they did take about 25 kilometers to bed in originally when I was first braking on these brakes I thought wow you know these do not feel good they seem to have an oily residue that’s over the discs themselves probably to stop them from corroding a bit of that seem to have gotten onto the pads
there so that had to be burnt off that layer first before the braking performance really did start to improve and now I am more than satisfied with how the brakes are on the c21 so the front hub does not have a quick release neither does the rear so you have to bring along the appropriate tools for that but we do have here a plug so you can least unscrew that plug that out it makes it a bit easier to remove the rear hub with the rear hub motor the bike has a nine speed setup here
with our wrecker set the direlli is an rsltw00 never heard of this or seen it before on any of the e-bikes I’ve reviewed up until now but it does seem to work well the shifts are good no problems with them at all the pedals here are from wellgo now they’re an ABS style plastic with rubber at the top you can see I’ve got a bit of wear on them already I don’t find they give me a big amount of grip there with just some standard shoes on so you probably want to go with clip-ins if
you’re serious about riding around on your gravel Trails they’re okay they do the job and at least they are a well-known brand well go I see a lot of their pedals pretty much everywhere the c21 does cater to Rider weights of up to 120 kilos the seat post here does have a quick release that’s the only quick release you’re going to find is our seat post and the seat itself it’s a synthetic material I’ve used on it it does not have a lot of padding it’s reasonably narrow but it does suit this type of bike
and I don’t have any issues with it at all I find it to be comfortable enough for accessories feeder does include this rear tail light now it’s charged via a type c Port it’s reasonably bright and great that they do include this they do also include in the Box some mud guards now clearly I’ve not installed those because I don’t really need them in the dry climate where I live feed you are learning they have included lock grips with the bike here and they’re nice they’re good they do not spin around it or they provide
plenty of grip there for my hands so we’ve got our selector here with up and down the pedal assist levels you can use that or you can use the screen here there’s a mode button they include this Bell loud enough and the tick Pro brake levers well because it’s hydraulic they do have a very good feel to them they do not feel spongy at all the gear selector is good no complaints for me at all so this is to go down our gears with your thumb and then this is our trigger here to go up
the gears the shifts have been clean the alignment out of the box has been perfect and video has this new screen set up which is really good this is our pedal assist levels to cycle through the mode on and off and the screen it might be small but it’s very clear even in direct sunlight you can see this right now pedal assist level so that goes right up to five of course there’s a little beep and there’s even a Bluetooth mode with it and applications you can connect up and get all the info from your
rides and everything else on that app and here is our speed and our battery meter at the top so it’s all clear very bright here and even a color display now the bike’s got this very powerful front headlight it’s got two focal lenses in there those LEDs are very powerful they light the path up ahead of me so it’s great for nighttime riding there’s also a built-in buzzer here too if you press the M button which is located on the left hand side you’ve got the electric buzzer there which is quite loud in fact it’s
louder than the Bell so I probably wouldn’t even bother installing this Bell here okay so a different route this time I normally stick to my typical one but here it’s a gravel bike and I’m going to head up to the mountain that’s there in the distance now there’s a gravel Trail around it gravel Trail leading up to it and taking a e gravel bike here it just seemed to be the best option for me to do this now I absolutely love the frame on this bike the fact that it doesn’t really look like an e-bike
until you see this part of the frame here when you see the button and where the power in is so we’ve got the torque sensor 250 watt motor there is a car coming there you go let them go past and a bike that I like the style of it it looks almost retro now I haven’t got the mud guards installed as I mentioned before they’re optional I don’t really need them with this climate so first I’ll test it out here with these climbs now I’m in speed mode 2 here so pillar assist level mode two
and I find on my two for climbs like this which is approximately 15 degrees a little light very good now Fido has a claim on their website that this is a silent motor you won’t hear it at all now when I start out I’ll just slow down here a little bit let’s see if you can hear it you can just but it is very quiet I won’t go as far to say silent that’s just their marketing of course but it is one of the quietest and I love the torque sensor with the power delivery very
smooth and the more you give it the more it will give you in return so you can go right up to level five which I I really don’t actually need and it feels more powerful than 250 Watts getting into steeper climbs now and it really is easy it’s just eating up these roads so this is the way I’m going I’m going um the Trail it’s called and this is where there is a small little church and some gravel trails to get right up the top of the mountain and here’s our little church at the top
so this I think dates back to the 17th century this church is a lot newer than that but there is this Stone here with like a little small cave inside it which apparently a very famous monk parepedi you still live inside there so there’s a bit of history or behind it so these are the hiking trails here that you can take but I would not recommend this in August and peak of Summer it can get up to 40 degrees super hot so at the moment here in June it’s going to be all right so this
is the climb here that I’m going to take up we’ll see how the feeder is going to perform here so I have it in the pedal assist level number three at the moment which is probably going to be all right it’s a little bit of a curb here just lift the front up not an issue got to be careful with that front tire on the loose gravel of course so the CST tires on this bike are for gravel for this kind of conditions here let’s take it up this bit on a problem and again just
pop that front wheel up just a little and that’s handling these kind of climbs really well even on the pedal assist level three here I don’t feel like I need to put it in a pedal assist level number five that’s not necessary so we’re rocketing up this again it doesn’t feel like 250 Watts it’s rehab motor it feels more like 350 to me maybe even a little more so here we are made it up to the top and you can see that there is the castle and denya and towards where are we no this way
is the marina and Las rotas where I often film my e-bike review so it’s quite a bit of a climb up here I’ve lost two bars with the bike with its battery so it’s really tuned through that battery with such a climb up here current temperature is about 32 degrees the sun’s been beating down to me so yeah I am sweating quite a bit behind me if you ever come to denya you want to do a little bit of sightseeing but not in August as mentioned or July up there is what is called the quebe
dagua which is the water cave this is where there’s a fresh water supply and the ninth Legion Roman legion back then they inscribed on the cave wall it’s got a mish well security over the front of it but they pretty much stated that they were here I don’t know when that was probably almost 2 000 years ago looking after the water supply for the town back so there’s a lot of history around in this area if you’re interested in that sort of thing now it’s getting reasonably bumpy along this path that I’m riding torque sensors
doing a fantastic job here powering me up ammonium pedal assist level two handling this quite well I am by the way in the lower gear now it’s a bit bumpy along here for the current tire pressure I have downhill it’s very quick I noticed I got to get on the brakes a little bit and as I mentioned I’ve got to be careful that front tire because if you get on the loose areas of gravel they’re pretty dangerous your front wheel can just go out from underneath you but I try to stick to the areas choose
my line here where it’s more compacted but it can be difficult in some areas so on the knife gear now riding downhill this feels like I’m on a road bike it is very quick very smooth and even with these tires rolling resistance is not bad so I’m already doing about 52 kilometers per hour here it’s going to be very careful with your speed here it’s a quick bike in these kind of conditions riding it on the road and then the range of the c21 so this is the Achilles heel of this bike it has a
very small battery located in the frame here non-user removable so the factory will be able to remove it there’s a plate at the bottom so you can undo some screws you’ll be able to slide the whole thing out but it’s not designed for us to be replacing this battery so you can’t just simply swap it out and the range is absolutely abysmal so the first ride I managed to get over 30 kilometers and that was mostly just around town that was it and this ride currently I am struggling and I’m looking like I’m only going
to give out 25 kilometers if that so it’s not good at all now they claim 80 kilometers their range that is highly over exaggerated there is absolutely no way anyone’s going to be able to get that unless you’re in some sort of test Olympic circuit with no wind 50 kilo Rider and just riding around in circles and pedal assist level one over 25 kilometers per hour when it doesn’t use the battery at all so the range if you’re going to go on Long rides I think you really do need to buy that extended battery pack
which goes right here in the frame plugs in it’s going to double your range you do need that unless you’re only going to be riding maybe 20 30 kilometers now I’m pretty sure there’ll be people in the comments that later say hey I own this bike I managed to get 40 kilometers well well done you’re probably not riding in the same kind of conditions I am here I’m just letting you know that it’s not going to be anywhere as good as you think it is so apart from that the rest of the bike is very
good now what I love about it is the frame as I said in the start there when we looked at the design doesn’t really look like an e-bike at all to me it’s very streamlined and I like the kind of retro look with those side walls the other good thing is there is really no rattle apart from I hear a a kind of bouncing noise from the kickstand that’s the only thing if you remove that kickstand then this bike is going to make no rattles no noise at all so very good the torque sensor with
their special algorithm uh with I believe and angle sensor in there it’s got a accelerometer or something you can take the the climbs you are does really help out it seems to be working very well I’ve got no complaints with that the brake performance from techtro from these brakes really good but as I said they took about 25 kilometers to bed in I was a little concerned with their performance in the beginning but once they burnt off that oil layer whatever was on the brake pads from out of the box here they are good so
really everything checks out it’s just that very very disappointing range the distance you can get out of this on a single charge that’s the only thing on an otherwise really good bike so I’d love to see feedu release a c21 pro model with a much larger battery capacity
