 The Rad Mini is a sturdy, fat tire folding e-bike from Rad Power Bikes. That's a fairly unique combination. This bike is popular among people who don't have a lot of space to store a bike. It can fit in a boat, an RV, or just a normal-sized car. And the fat tires and geared hub motor mean you can take it on rough and steep terrain. So I like to think of it as an adventurer's bike. Let's check it out. Be Quiet's Silent Wings 3 uses a smooth-running 6-pull motor to remain silent and cool your PC better. Check them out at the link below. The Rad Mini arrives in a small bike box, interestingly not already folded, and it requires a bit of assembly. You have to put on the front wheel, the handlebars, pedals, and the optional front rack. I had a bit of trouble with it, but if you attach these two arms first, you'll be fine. Now that it's assembled, let's try folding it. Each of the folding joints features several points of redundancy to prevent the bike from accidentally folding mid-ride. So if this lever is loosened, you'll be fine. If the whole assembly rotates away, you're still fine. You have to pull this whole contraption up before the bike will be able to fold in half. And it's the same story with the handlebars. To fold, this plastic holder needs to be rotated, this handle needs to be pulled down, and the spring-loaded part needs to be moved. Now that it's folded, you might notice that the gears are exposed. This guard around the derailleur prevents them from being damaged in transit. But it should be noted that there's nothing to prevent the bike from scratching its own paint. So I jury-rigged a solution out of some old bicycle tubes. Handy things, by the way. I keep them in my car next to the duct tape in WD-40. At 60 pounds, the bike is heavier than most folding e-bikes, but that contributes to its sturdy feel, and I was able to carry it comfortably, especially when compared to the 75-pound Rad Wagon. The rear rack can even be extended, but if your bike bags aren't very rigid, they'll rub up against the back wheel, unless you bought the optional fenders. And I like how it looks, but I found no real use for the front rack. It's a weird hybrid between a rack and a basket, with the front open, I guess to accommodate larger items. But I also would have gotten rid of these extra railings on the sides, so I could carry a more diverse range of objects. It's also worth noting that it kind of prevents you from parking inside most bike racks. Well, time to start it up. The key needs to stay inserted for the bike to run. I wish this wasn't the case, since they ended up hitting my foot while I'm riding. Separating the bike key from the rest of my keys solves this problem, but it makes it easy to forget the key in the ignition, which would allow someone to steal the expensive battery. Now, let's talk about the riding experience. The bike has only one derailleur with seven speeds. That's usually fine, but I wish the highest gear was a little higher. There's a backlit LCD display, which shows everything you could ever want, except for estimated remaining range. The wimpy front light runs off the main battery, and the backlight uses double A's. There's no suspension on the Rad Mini. Combined with the smaller diameter tires, bumps will feel harder than usual. The fat tires definitely soak up all the little bumps, but not the big ones. On the subject of soaking, you can take the Rad Mini out in the rain, as long as you don't stay out for too long. But my Rad Mini did not come with fenders. Pretty surprising, since the company is located in Seattle, where it rains all winter long. I folded my bike bags over the top of the rack to keep the water off my back, but the bike has still gotten absolutely filthy. Apparently, there were no pre-existing fenders available for a 20-inch fat tire bicycle. So, Rad Power Bikes had to specially design and manufacture them. As of December 2016, the fenders have finally become available. And they're great. They work just as fenders should. But at $159 USD, they're definitely priced like custom parts. Yikes. The Rad Mini has a 556-watt-hour battery and a powerful 750-watt planetary-geared hub motor. But because of the geared motor, the Rad Mini does not have regenerative braking, though it makes up for this with better acceleration than the Rad Wagon, up to its Governor Limited top speed of 20 miles an hour. However, it takes almost a second for the motor to engage after you twist the throttle. The bike has a throttle and five modes of pedal assist based on the cadence sensor, but the pedal assist is absolutely awful. Or at least it was out of the box. Basically, the problem was that they added speed limits on top of the usual watt limits for all of the five pedal assist modes. This resulted in most of the load being taken by either the rider or the motor, instead of being equally distributed. After I, and some other users, sent Rad Power Bikes some feedback, they reworked their firmware for the motor controller and sent me a new one in the mail. It was a pain in the ass to install, but now the motor controller works just the way it should. And that's great. But what's not great is that my first motor controller on the Rad Wagon was also buggy and needed to be replaced. So it's become a pattern for me. And looking through online forums, I'm not the only one. This is something I feel Rad Power Bikes could address with more stringent pre-release testing and quality control. But let's not dwell on that. What can you expect from the Rad Mini with the updated motor controller that they're shipping now? Good things, it turns out. Due to its superior acceleration and possibly even higher top speed when pedaling, the Rad Mini was able to beat all the other electric vehicles in my Office to Costco benchmark. As for range, the website claims 20 to 40 miles, and the furthest I've ever gotten was 30. Which leads us to price. At 1,500 USD, there is quite a lot of competition from other folding e-bikes, such as the Enzo or the Volt Bike, which both come with fenders included, by the way. But despite that and any negative things that I've said about the Rad Mini, I still really like it. And because of its superior acceleration and top speed, more upright sitting position, wider tires, and reduced size and weight, for most of my adventures, I prefer the Rad Mini over the Rad Wagon. And the foldability means you can take it pretty much anywhere. Just make sure to bring a tarp so you don't get your buddy's Lamborghini dirty. Yeah. Thanks for watching, guys. Give it a like or a dislike. Get subscribed and get belled as well, because that's a new thing you can do. I'm not sure what it is. Check out our link to Amazon to buy stuff. We've also got a merch store where you can buy a t-shirt. You can't buy this jacket. Check out the Rad Wagon video. I talked about that in this video. So if you haven't already, you can check it out. I talked about that in this video, so if you haven't seen that, you're going to be kind of confused. So goodbye.