Retrospec Valen Rev 3 Review
Is the Valen Rev 3 fun to pedal? No. Is any moped-style e-bike? No. Do I have a test designed to figure out what the bike does at different PAS levels, and therefor do I feel compelled to go test it all out anyway? Yes!
Let’s start with the good news: if you want a bike with some zip that feels easy and natural to handle, this one delivers. Credit goes to the Ananda motor, the wide 20×4” tires, and the BMX handlebar, which all work together to make the bike feel stable, predictable, and easy to cruise.
Full disclosure, though: bikes like this are at their best on throttle power. There’s a bit of irony here. With a 32” standover height, the bike is better suited to riders with longer legs, but if that describes you, your knees are going to come up pretty high when pedaling. Even for shorter riders, this still isn’t the most enjoyable bike to pedal.
That helps explain why the PAS-based speed breakdown almost feels beside the point. As the chart above shows, the bike does reach different top speeds in each PAS level, but with its cadence sensor and relatively limited gearing from the 38t chainring and 18t freewheel, you run out of useful pedal input pretty quickly. At that point, the motor is doing the heavy lifting and you’re mostly ghost pedaling.
To be clear, I don’t really count that as a flaw. This just is not a category built around pedaling performance, so it comes with the territory.
What I would have liked to see, however, is more control over throttle speed through the PAS settings. As it stands, your speed is dictated almost entirely by how much you press the throttle lever, which can make it harder than it should be to hold a steady pace. That is not unique to the Valen Rev 3, either. I feel this way about a lot of moto-style e-bikes.
Even so, the important takeaway is that this bike has some real zip, and it is genuinely a blast because of it. With 1150W of peak power, it builds speed quickly and has that lively, exhilarating feel this category should. The motor was fairly loud at lower speeds, especially at takeoff, but the noise seemed to fade once the bike got above about 8 mph. Whether that is specific to our test bike or representative of the model as a whole, I can’t say, but it was minor enough not to spoil an otherwise fun and fast ride.
