Review: Aventon Aventure.2 Ebike

It’s hard to buy a go-anywhere ebike. Day to day, you may have different cargo and hauling needs, or switch from city streets to weekend trails. Given their expense, many of us have to decide between bikes that are fun toys and ones that are actually useful tools. (Ed. note: Hence, the classic n+1 rule, where you always need another bike.)

The Aventon Aventure.2 (the second generation Aventon Aventure) fat-tire ebike is among the best I’ve used for both. The big tires can roll over even the roughest surfaces, the integrated lights make sure you’re seen, and it’s slim and svelte enough that you can actually lock it up in most places without a giant chain.

I’ve been going on Aventures all summer. From rides around a local park’s trails to barbecues, minus a bit of brake rub, there hasn’t been a direct-to-consumer ebike that I’ve been more satisfied with in years.

Fat-tire ebikes are probably not most folks’ first choice for a daily driver, for obvious reasons when you see one: They’re big and heavy and can seem like a lot for a first-time e-rider to handle. The bigger nobby tires are made to help folks ride on looser surfaces like sand, snow, gravel, or dirt, but they also make this one of the largest bikes you can buy.

As a 6'2", 200-plus-pound man, I’m not dainty, but the gorgeous green review unit was more than a little intimidating when it arrived for me to assemble. It’s not as scary as it looks from the size of the box. Simply pop on the front tire, screw in the handlebars and some pedals, and you’re basically good to go. At 77 pounds, it's heavy, but not “this will crush me and kill me” heavy.

If I weren’t reviewing this thing, I would have immediately taken it to a bike shop to have experts assemble it. It’s just too risky to put things like this together yourself at home if you don’t know what you’re doing. Mess up the brake alignment on a bike this big and heavy, and that’s a real recipe for personal and potentially community disaster when you crash into someone at the park.

Disclosures aside, this thing felt extremely stable and safe to ride. It can seem at first like a fat-tire bike might be less wieldy than an e-road bike, mountain bike, or even the smaller-wheeled cargo ebikes from brands like Tern, but that’s actually not my experience. On the Aventure, the larger tire diameter and 4-inch thickness made it utterly stable and easy to ride over all terrain, unlike the sometimes-sketchy situations I have gotten myself into with bikes with less power and smaller wheels.

I found myself able to even take my hands off the handles to grab stuff from my panniers or to adjust my phone mount on my bike while riding, something I would be extremely scared to do if the bike didn’t feel utterly stable.

The stability makes it easier and more comfortable to ride this bike in places I might otherwise be scared to take an ebike for fear of a flat tire, getting stuck, or just generally having a bad or sketchy time on the terrain. With the Aventure, I routinely would rip over to the local trails at the park on my lunch break for some fun time between my usual commuter trips to the grocery store or local soccer games.

Photograph: Aventon

It’s a bit like hopping on a superlight motorcycle. Press the button on the side of the battery, turn on the bike with the control panel located on the handlebars, and the color screen comes to life to tell you your battery percentage, speed, and assistance level. I typically ran the bike in the highest or lowest assistance levels, depending on how much battery I had left.

The 750-watt motor on the rear hub of the Aventure pairs with the 45-V, 15-aH amp battery to provide plenty of juice for all but the steepest hills. I found it more than capable of reaching the 20-mph assistance speed with either the throttle control (left side of the handlebars) or pedal torque sensors. The Aventure.2 ships as a Class 2 ebike, meaning it will only go to 20 out of the box with assistance, but you can unlock the 28-mph legal pedal-assisted limit for a Class 3 ebike in a settings menu, which I did nearly immediately, because more power rules. (It's worth noting here that in my home state of Oregon, Class 3 ebikes are only legal in spaces that accommodate cars.) The bike responded well to normal pedaling, without weird jerks or other annoying transitions of power from analog to digital.

While power delivery was awesome, I wish that I had some help when adjusting the brakes on this bike out of the box. I got the hydraulic disc brakes to function as stopping tools very well, but couldn’t quite get a bit of rub out of the front brake, and a bit of squeak out of the rear. I’m sure any experienced bike mechanic could remedy this, but I just got them the best I could where I felt they were safe.

Photograph: Aventon

Even with me building it, the quality of the components felt high. The 8-speed Shimano gearset included shifted super well and never had any issues with grinding quickly down gears to slow to a stop or quickly up them to accelerate from one. That said, I tended to use the throttle to get going, then start pedaling to help me maintain speed once I’d gotten there, which helps prevent unwanted gear wear.

It’s impressive how much the big tires and front suspension make you feel very stable on all surfaces and speeds. You can even pop over or off a sidewalk if you need to in a pinch with few adverse affects except that you need to make sure your cargo is secure. Speaking of cargo, the rear rack on the Aventure is rated for over 50 pounds (the total bike is rated to over 400), which means this is a great bike for hauling groceries and even smaller little ones in a carrier. The integrated mudguards keep everything clean and tidy while riding with stuff back there.

The lights are another great built-in feature, with a front and rear light activated by holding the plus button on the controls for a few seconds. They’re pretty bright, and I like that there is an extra brake light on one side of the rear that comes on when you’re actually stopping.

That’s a good segue into the overall reason I have enjoyed my time with the Aventure.2 so much: It takes things you might worry about on a normal bike and makes them a no-brainer. Whether hauling lots of gear or just heading out for a speedy rip around some trails, it felt more than capable of hanging in there. Sure, it won’t perform as well as a road ebike or a purpose-built e-mountain bike head-to-head, but you can still have more than a little fun over any terrain, even if your friends have those things and speed a little bit in front of you.

I slapped on some REI panniers and took the bike (and beers, and a giant Bluetooth speaker) along with me to various parks, restaurants, and events all throughout Portland’s awesome Bike Month and it always got me home safe and sound, with battery to spare. If I were in the market for a commuter e-bike that I might want to take some more rugged places on occasion, I would absolutely start here.

Updated on September 6, 2023: A previous version of this review stated the Aventure.2 has cadence sensors in the pedal assembly. The article has been corrected to reflect the fact that the bike has torque sensors.