Aventon Sinch 2 Folding EBike – Test and Review

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Updated June 17th, 2024

Manufacturer and Model: Aventon Sinch.2
List Price: $1499

Summary

The Aventon Sinch.2 is a folding ebike that is easy to transport and store and fun to ride. It has larger 20 inch x 4 inch fat tires for good traction and a smoother ride. It uses a 500 watt motor and 48 volt 14 ah battery to power it. It has everything you would expect from an Aventon ebike including color LCD display and torque sensor. This makes it a great folding ebike that is fun to ride and ready for commuting or going on adventures.

Video Review

Aventon Sinch 2 Review and Test

We have reviewed several Aventon bikes now. The Level 2 continues to be my favorite bike to ride when I’m just out riding for fun. We got a chance to try out the Sinch.2 which is their folding commuter and adventure bike. It has a similar motor, torque sensor, and display to the Level and Pace. It has 20 inch by 4 inch road tires that should give it good traction and in theory a more cushy ride. The end result is a very beefy and substantial looking folding bike with fat tires.

1 – 500 watt geared rear hub motor

The Sinch.2 has a 500 watt brushless geared rear hub motor. This is a similar motor to what is found in the Aventon Level and Pace and the bike feels like it has similar power levels. It gives a satisfying amount of assist without being overly aggressive.

2 – 48 volt 14 ah removable battery

The bike has a 48 volt 14 ah battery. It uses a key lock to hold it into the frame. It physically feels like a larger battery than 14 ah hour. The range test results are about where we would expect a 14 ah battery to be.

3 – Folding Frame

The Sinch.2 has a folding frame, folding pedals, and folding handlebars. The handlebar height is also adjustable. The bike can fold down to a 35 inches long by 28 inch wide by 31 inch tall space. It helps to extend the handlebar height a little bit after folding to get it to nest against the front fork better.

The frame latch is very easy to latch and release and offers secure engagement. The frame pivot on my bike is very stiff. it takes some effort to get it folded and unfolded because of this. It’s much stiffer than the pivot on the other folding bikes we have reviewed so far.

The bike weighs 68 lbs with a battery in it. The battery weighs about 15 lbs. The bike without the battery still weighs 53 lbs. It’s not that light or small to lift up into a car or other place. We were able to put 2 similar sized folding bikes into the back of our Explorer with the rear seat up. The other bike was a Heybike Mars 2.0. There was no extra length to spare with the seats up. If you have a smaller vehicle you will probably need to fold your rear seats down to get 2 inside.

4 – Power (8.5/10)

The 500 watt motor provides a good amount of oomph when you pedal or give the bike throttle. It is very well mannered but doesn’t feel like it’s slouching. It gets up and goes when you want it to. The torque sensor also means you can have a very slow and controlled bike too.

Top Speed

I measured the top speed the bike would go using a GPS on a long, flat, smooth section of bike path. I checked with both throttle only and pedal assist. I got the following top speeds.

• Throttle Only – 19.7 mph measured by GPS. 20.3 mph on the display
• Pedal Assist – 19.8 mph measured by GPS. 20.8 mph on the display

You can set the top speed up to 26mph for pedal assist using the Aventon app. It will not let you set it to 28mph like other Aventon bikes. Throttle stays maxed out at 20mph no matter what you set the pedal max speed to.

• Pedal Assist – 24.7 mph measured by GPS. 26.2 mph on the display

Hill climbing

I took the bike to our standard hill climb hill. This is a 1/2 mile hill with some 10% grades. I use a 250 lb rider for the test. I do the test once with throttle only and once with maximum pedal assist. We got the following times for the hill climb.

• Throttle Only – 2 minutes and 4 seconds with an average speed of 15.31 mph
• Pedal Assist – 2 minute and 2 seconds with an average speed of 15.52 mph

This was exactly the same time I got for the Aventon Level 2 with throttle only. Even though the Sinch 2 folds, it’s still got the performance of a non folding ebike.

Acceleration

The bike has a good feel to it on takeoff. It doesn’t feel like it’s sagging or sluggish moving out. It doesn’t jump ahead like a 750 watt Himiway bike does. It’s not sluggish feeling like some other 500 watt motor bikes we have tested. It just feels good and feels like a balanced amount of power.

5 – Range (9.0/10)

I took the bike out on my standard range test ride. This involves a cruise around on some bike paths and roads. There is a decent amount of climbing along the way with a few steep hills. I do the ride as close to 15mph as possible. I use a 250 lb rider. I do the ride 2 times. Once with pedal assist and once with throttle only.

Pedal assist

The Sinch.2 went 35.8 miles using pedal assist with 899 feet of climbing. I used the “Tour” or 2 setting for PAS for this ride. We expected to get a little bit more out of pedal assist. This is about 9 miles less than our Aventon Level 2 went with similar sized motor and battery. The wheels are smaller and more fat on the Sinch.2 which will make it less efficient than the Level.

Throttle Only

I repeated the range test ride using throttle only. This time the bike went 29.2 miles with 612 feet of climbing. This is very similar to the 29.6 miles I got riding the Aventon Level 2.

I really like the torque sensor feel for the Aventons. It gives a very quick motor activation. It does seem to give the motor a lot of power even on low PAS settings. I haven’t ever seen an increase in range with the torque sensor over any cadence sensor bike we’ve ridden.

6 – Ride and Handling (9.0/10)

This bike has a very upright steering tube and low stepover frame. When I ride it, it reminds me of a high powered sit down electric scooter that happens to have pedals. It’s nimble and quick to turn. The 4 inch wide tires provide very good grip.

Comfort

The seat is wide and cushy. The rear bike frame on the Sinch.2 is very very stiff. With the recommended 35 psi in the tires I thought the ride felt very rigid. By the end of the range test rides, I was begging for a suspension seat post on this bike. I think it would make a world of difference in terms of seat comfort.

7 – Braking (8.5/10)

Cable pull mechanical disc brakes are used. They have good power and don’t really leave me wishing for hydraulic brakes. The smaller wheel size makes the brakes feel like they have more authority than a typical set of cable pull brakes on a fat tire bike. They have started to squeal a bit by the end of our testing rides which seems normal for almost every bike we have tested. You just can’t get good cheap disc brakes with good stopping power that are also quiet. It’s a “good cheap and fast, pick any 2 kind of thing.

8 – Controls (9/10)

The Sinch.2 has a typical Aventon color LCD display with their newer control button set on the left handlebar. This system is easy to use and easy to read.

LCD Display

The color LCD display is easy to read. The blue used for the power meter is very faint and should be a different color. The battery meter starts out the same hard to read blue. It does turn red when you get down to the last 20% of battery life.

Control buttons

The bike uses a 5 button controller. The top and bottom buttons are level up and down. Holding down the up and down buttons turn the lights on or go into walk mode. The left and right buttons also function as turn signals. I personally liked the older Aventon button configuration where you got a dedicated power and light button on the left and right buttons. I don’t care for the turn signal functions that much.

Pedal Assist and Throttle

The bike has 5 pedal assist levels. They range from “off” to “turbo”. You get proportionately more assist force with each increase in level. I find that most of the time I use lever 1 or 2 (eco or tour) and rarely use any higher setting. You get a lot of assistance in levels 1 or 2 already. The bike can go any speed with any pedal assist level thanks to the torque sensor.

8 speed pedal driveline

The bike has an 8 speed pedal driveline with push button shifters. It has a gear display under the handlebar. The shifter and derailleur are Aventon branded. They look like low level SRAM to me and have a bit of a clunky feel which is more similar to SRAM than Shimano.

9 – Assembly Ease (9.5/10)

Assembly Time – 0.25 hours

The Sinch.2 comes fully assembled. There is no assembly work to do. All you have to do is unwrap the packaging off of it. The front wheel is already mounted. All the fenders and the rack are already mounted. The headlight is in place. The pedals are already on. It took me about 15 minutes to remove all the packaging materials.

Aventon ships bikes with 100% recyclable packaging materials. I like seeing this. We throw away a small mountain of foam and plastic here from all the items we get to review. Anytime a vendor uses recyclable packaging they get a mention from us.

Extra tools required

No additional tools are needed. They still include a multi-tool to use with the bike.

Adjustments needed

The steering tube on our bike was a little bit off-center. I had to loosen up the stem and straighten it. It wasn’t off by much. It was noticeable when riding it that the handlebar wasn’t aligned to the wheel.

The rear derailleur needed some adjustment to get the bike to shift smoothly through all the gears. It’s been one of the more finicky, difficult to adjust rear derailleurs I have used.

Parktool has a really good guide for adjusting a rear derailleur. Go there before you start messing with yours.

10 – Accessories

Lights

The bike has front and back lights. The front light is bright enough for riding up to 20mph in unlit areas at night. It has enough spread in the light pattern to be effective. The back light also acts as a brake light any time you hit the brake levers. It also can work as turn signals using the left and right buttons on the 5 button controller.

Fenders

Front and rear fenders are included. They are made from heavy feeling plastic. They are both installed when the bike arrives. No assembly of fenders and racks on this bike.

Rack

The included rear rack can hold up to 55 lbs of cargo. It’s got enough crossbars and features that strapping things to it is easy.

10 – Size and Fit

Aventon recommends a rider size between 4’11” and 6’2″. I would say this is about accurate. I had someone ride it who is 6’2″. They thought the seat was a little short for them. We also let someone who is 4’10” stand on the bike. They could easily step over the frame and get onto the seat in its lowest position. They would probably remove the shims in the stem and shorten the bars a little bit if they were going to ride it on a regular basis.

Recommendation – Buy or No Buy?

The Sinch.2 makes a good commuter or ride around bike without its folding function. The folding ability makes it easier to transport and store for people without a large home or garage or vehicle with heavy duty rack. The only downside to the Sinch.2 is just how much it weighs after being folded. It’s just not a lightweight easy to pickup bike no matter how you fold it. I love riding the Sinch.2. I don’t love picking it up to load into anything without help.

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