The Electra Loft Go! 7D EQ is a good-looking, relatively lightweight aluminum city bike that you’d never know was an e-bike, with an integrated battery, relaxed design and a full kit of cycling accessories, including metal fenders and integrated lights. Available in either step-over or step-through frame designs, it’s one of the cheaper e-bikes from Trek’s electrified commuter and lifestyle sub-brand, featuring a rear-hub drive where the more expensive models use a mid-drive unit. In this case, a 250-watt hub motor easily propels you to the bike’s Class 1 limit of 20 mph, but it isn’t designed to be a speed demon — more a companion for laid-back cruising, in keeping with Electra’s overall casual riding approach.
That the Loft Go! 7D EQ comes from a major brand has some real perks — namely, the ability to pop into a shop, test ride it and if you like what you see, ride away on a fully assembled bike and return for service. But since we’ve been seeing better quality and parts specifications from cheaper direct-to-consumer models lately — from the Velotric Thunder 1 and Ride1Up Turris for example — we gave the Loft Go! a thorough test ride to see if big-brand support justifies the premium price.
A retro-styled e-bike aimed at everyday riders and city commuters, the Loft Go! comes from Trek, so you get big-brand convenience and in-store support, though at a higher price than some similarly equipped competitors.
What we liked
You get it fully assembled at an actual bike store
A key perk of the Electra Loft Go! 7D EQ is that you can go to a shop, test it, and ride it home right away — no assembly required. Electra isn’t a direct-to-consumer brand, so its bikes get shipped to a bike shop (in this case, Trek’s), where they get professionally assembled. This isn’t always a big deal, but it was helpful in this case, as the Electra Loft Go! 7D EQ has disc brakes, fenders and integrated lights — equipment that can be fussy to install correctly.
Its design keeps its electric nature under wraps
The Electra Loft Go! 7D EQ may scream that it’s an e-bike with its name, but the design is very understated — you’d be hard pressed to identify it as an electric bike at first glance. The small hub motor in the rear, the slightly thicker downtube containing the battery, and the charging port are subtle hints that it’s an e-bike, but there’s not much else to give it away. Even the controller is a tiny little unit that won’t attract much attention. This can be a plus in areas where e-bikes are targets of theft.
The sneaky integration of its electronics means you’ll bring the whole bike in for four hours to charge. It’s fairly lightweight for an e-bike at 37.6 pounds for the large model I tested, so it’s not too hard to trek up into an apartment when necessary, but removable downtube batteries can still be almost as subtle and are a lot more convenient.
Some of the cable and wire runs stick out, such as that to the front headlight, but it’s still an upgrade over needing a discrete headlight and taillight that can’t run off the bike’s built-in battery.
Decent comfort for casual riding and exercise
The Electra Loft Go! 7D EQ’s understated design is matched with a calm ride. It doesn’t put you in the aggressive riding position of a road bike, but it’s not quite as relaxed and upright as some cruiser bikes. It rides easily with its 250W of motor power pushing it along at up to 20 mph, and with a seven-speed rear cassette, it has plenty of flexibility for low-end acceleration and a calm cadence even at top speed.
Having access to multiple gears never hurts. Low gears make it easier to accelerate the added weight of the motor and battery and get up to a decent cruising speed even when the bike runs out of juice. With only 250W of motor power, I found myself putting in a lot more of my own effort to maintain 20 mph than on some of the 750W monsters I’ve tested lately. A sunny 13-mile cruise down Chicago’s paved lakeshore trail offered plenty of opportunity to let the Electra Loft Go! 7D EQ’s motor assists me with hills and headwinds, but my legs were undeniably still getting a workout.
What we didn’t like
The supplied components aren’t on par with some cheaper bikes
As nice as it is to pick up a bike that’s fully assembled for me, it’s less exciting to find out it’s built on underwhelming parts. From the lights and control unit to the brakes and drivetrain, the whole ensemble isn’t up to the level that you’ll see on direct-to-consumer models you can get for hundreds less.
The Electra Loft Go! 7D EQ has disc brakes, as do most new bikes these days, but they are the single-piston, mechanical type, while many of the direct-to-consumer models in this price range (and below) offer easier to use, better feeling hydraulic brakes. There’s nothing wrong with mechanical brakes in general, but on our test model the levers felt squishy and the brakes didn’t bite all that well.
Plus, over time, a single-piston brake is also harder to keep adjusted. Hydraulic brakes “adjust” themselves as the pads wear, and for a bike aimed at casual riders who aren’t doing their own major maintenance, they make a lot of sense.
Also, the Loft Go! 7D EQ’s brake levers do not include automatic electronic cutoff of the motor when the brakes are engaged, a convenient feature we like to see on e-bikes. While typically you stop pedaling while applying the brakes, in some situations you just want to apply a bit of braking power going through a corner. Motors can take a second to wind down, and the feeling can be disconcerting — we think motor cutoffs are a smart safety feature on a bike like this.
Though it is nice to have a multispeed drivetrain, the Electra Loft Go! 7D EQ uses the Shimano Tourney derailleur — the bottom of Shimano’s range — and a budget Microshift shifter. These are basic, effective parts you see on a ton of entry-level bikes and should do acceptably for the kind of flat-ground, relaxed riding the bike is meant for, but they are a disappointment at $2,000, and I didn’t find them terribly pleasant to use.
Similarly, the electronics package isn’t up to what the competition offers. Not every e-bike needs to have a huge battery or motor, and it’s nice to see Electra using a torque sensor (which, for better accuracy and responsiveness, reads how much effort you’re putting into the pedals rather than how fast you’re spinning them) to control the motor, but it didn’t feel any more responsive than some of the better cadence sensors I’ve used. The control unit is as basic as they come, offering a few LED lights to indicate battery level and power settings. No speedometer. No odometer. Even the headlight and taillight aren’t stunningly bright.
Expensive compared to direct-to-consumer e-bikes
All these parts might not be such an issue if the Electra Loft Go! 7D EQ weren’t so expensive compared with direct-to-consumer models. At around $2,000, it’s still at the lower end of the e-bike market, and certainly not expensive among other legacy brand models, but considered among today’s direct-to-consumer models, it is competing with some much better equipped e-bikes that give you a lot more for your money.
For urban commuters looking for a lightweight, understated ride, the Velotric Thunder 1 we recently tested offers a more powerful 350W motor and bigger 352.8Wh battery, a similarly stealthy design, a lighter weight, an eight-speed Shimano drivetrain and a dual-piston hydraulic disc brakes — for $200 less — and even adds smarts with a fingerprint sensor to unlock, theft alerts and GPS tracking. And if you don’t need all that, the Ride1Up Turris offers a similar component spec to the Electra, plus a beefier 750-watt motor, superior electronic controls and more versatility courtesy of the knobby tires, for significantly less money. Or you can look at a bike like the Rad Power RadRunner 2, which gives you a lot of cargo capacity in a package that’s enjoyable enough for leisure rides.
What you give up with the direct-to-consumer bikes is shop support. You can, of course, pay a bike shop to assemble one of the direct-to-consumer bikes for you, though they may not have proprietary parts on hand or be prepared to service it over time. It can certainly be worth paying extra for a bike that’s going to be set up for you at a bike shop and serviced afterward by the same people who sold it to you in the first place, often gratis for the first year or so.
That said, at this point, there are even cheaper alternatives available in stores that make more sense, such as the REI Co-Op Cycles Generation e1.1. It offers better brakes, a Bafang motor with better onboard controls, a sensible one-size-fits-all design and an integrated rack for around the same money as the Ride1Up bikes — and you get shop support from REI.
Not the most robust build, and contact points aren’t comfortable for long rides
By the end of my first ride on the newly assembled Electra Loft Go! 7D EQ, I had managed to blow a tire and the rear wheel was visibly out of true. The bike has an overall weight limit of 300 pounds (including the bicycle itself, which comes in at 46 pounds), and at 230 pounds of rider, we weren’t far off from that, but we should have acceptable wiggle room. While the problem was easily fixable and loose spokes aren’t unusual from time to time, we’d expect a wheel on a bike of this price to be built well enough not to need truing after a single ride. That said, if we’d run into a similar glitch with a lower-priced, direct-to-consumer bike we’d likely have had to ship at least the wheel back for a repair; with the Electra, you can conceivably just ride it into a local Trek or REI shop.
While this isn’t a bike designed for touring or utility use, I?also didn’t find the contact points comfortable for long rides. The texture of the hand grips dug into my palms almost painfully toward the end of a 13-mile ride, and the firm, faux-leather saddle might look like a luxury but proved uncomfortable on that ride and on subsequent trips. I was terribly saddle sore at the end of that ride. Meanwhile, a recent 26-mile ride on the $700-cheaper Ride1Up Turris was comfortable beginning to end.
Bottom line
We understand the convenience and support of an in-store purchase has great appeal for new bike purchasers, and it’s undoubtedly more expensive for brands to sell at brick-and-mortar retail — but compared to the competition, the Electra Loft Go! 7D EQ ends up seeming rather basic and we would love to see the big brands be able to compete more on price given how good direct-to-consumer bikes are getting. That said, if you’re looking for a stylish, fully equipped e-bike for relaxed rides around town and you prioritize convenience over price (and don’t want to do you own assembly and maintenance) the Electra looks great, rides well, and has the Trek brand behind it, as well as a broad network of mechanics in most places you’re likely to take it.
