This CHEAP 2 Person E-Bike Is ONLY $699? | TST R002 Review (Fall 2025 Update)
Earlier this year, we checked out the TSTR2 and it was a pretty good ebike, especially for the money. It was under 1,000 bucks, about $7 or $800 depending on where you got it from, and I always thought it was a great value. You got a pretty big battery in the middle, a 15 A battery, 1500 watt hub motor in the rear, and you also got a rear seat for a passenger. Well, TST has been hard at work this year making their new updated version of the R2. And this bright orange bike is it right here. One of the changes that they made was color, but we’ll get more into the changes in a little bit, but first, let’s go over this thing and see what the specs are. So, the most obvious change to the TST R2 for the end of 2025 is this paint right here. You can see we have this bright orange color. They also have white and black. And before you could only get black, so that is one of the changes that they made. Other than that, the frame looks pretty much the same except for this rear seat back here. Here you see the R2 that I tested out had a pretty big back area for cargo or for a passenger, but they have updated this. This whole section back here bolts on and it does come with a seat included or you can take it off and make it into a storage area. But it still is nice to see that there is a second seat back here for a passenger. That was one of the things that I really liked about the original R2. And this is the seat on the R2. It’s pretty squishy and comfortable. It is a little bit rubberized on here, so it kind of grips onto your pants really well. And then there is a little bit of texture here at the top of the seat. Here’s our rear shock on here. I remember I wasn’t too impressed with the rear shock on the R2, but it is nice to have rear suspension on a bike. Down there, you can see our 1500 W rear hub motor. And then they also give us these foot pegs. They don’t fold away or anything, but they do attach to the frame. You got to bolt them on there. You got your seven Shimano gears down there and a Shimano derailure. You also have these nice compass tires on there that have a wire bead and they are uh 2x to the power of three. I guess you got a built-in tail light with turn signals and it is a brake light that flashes when you hit the brake lever. One thing I noticed right away when I was assembling this, these colors are mismatched. You can see this is a darker orange and this is a much much lighter orange on here. Not a really big deal. You don’t really notice it, but it is just one of those little quality finish things. Also got our 48vt 15 amp hour removable battery on here. Pretty common to moped style ebikes. Got our front shock here. Again, nothing to really write home about. And then we do have our built-in headlight. No horn on this bike. Get a better look at that tread of our Compass tires on here. Same ones on the front that are on the rear, 20×4 in. Then down there, we’ve got our Cororide hydraulic brakes. And then we’ve got our hydraulic brake levers up here. They did also include some fenders for us on this bike. And here’s a look at the handlebars on the R2. Here on the left, you have your thumb throttle. You have your menu control there. You got your brake lever. And then you got some nice rubber grips. And in the middle, you’ve got your screen here, which is the same one that was on the original R2. And you actually unlock this bike the same way. I’ll put a clip of how I unlock the old R2 cuz it is a little bit more complicated than your average bike. If you want to unlock the top speed on this bike, first thing you got to do is make sure your bike’s off. Then you have to hold down the left brake lever, hit the plus, minus, and power button, and hold it down until the bike starts up. And you’ll see up here, this bar is flashing at the top. Then you’re going to want to hit the plus and minus button at the same time. Then you hit the headlight button until you get to P3, and it’s going to be set at zero out of the box. You’re going to want to set that to one. You can see we go up through the pedal assist numbers like that. The screen flashes when your turn signals are on. And then down at the bottom, it gives you your odometer and your trip. And then over here on the right hand side, you get your seven-speed Shimano shifter, which we’ve seen a billion times before, and some more nice rubber grips right there. They also give you some keys right there for the battery. This is what I look like standing next to the R2. I’m 5’9, 150 lbs, and I have a 31in inseam. This is how I look sitting on the R2. I can flat foot this thing comfortably. It is great for somebody of my size. And if you are a smaller rider, you’ll probably be able to fit on this, too. You got your foot pegs back here for the rear passenger. I guess you could even ride around with them uh with your legs up on them like this. But then you got your pedals right here. Uh this isn’t going to be the best pedal bike just because it’s kind of a smaller frame. Anyways, and one thing that you’ll notice in the test ride footage on here is that I kind of sit pretty far back on this thing, and it’s very easy to almost do a accidental wheelie on this, which is not something you typically see on a hub motor bike. You can see I just twist the throttle and it wants to lift that front wheel up really uh just it’s it’s really really quick to kind of lift that front wheel up. I don’t even have to try. On a lot of bikes, I have to like, you know, rip the handlebars back in order to get the front wheel off the ground. This just does it on its own. The build quality does feel a step above the original RW2 R2. I remember I kind of knocked it for that originally. Brake levers also feel really good and sturdy. I remember I had an issue on the original R2 with them kind of sinking down to the handlebar. So on this feels really, really good. And so the R2 I’ve always liked because it wasn’t the best ebike in the world. Like it was a nice ebike. It was fast. It was probably one of the more powerful bikes you could get for the money. and it was one of the cheapest twoperson bikes that you could get, especially back when I first filmed the original video on this bike. But the R2 was always a good value and as something that’s just basic transportation to get around for like 7 800 bucks. I think that you can’t beat it. I think there is a lot to like with the new R2, especially in these new colors and everything. I think it just looks awesome. It looks really good and I think it is a good value bike for the money. But what do you say we get this thing out on a test drive and see how it does out in the real world and even a little bit of off-roading. Let’s get out there. All right, guys. So, we’re out here back on the TSTR02. This is their updated version for the end of 2025. I checked out the early 2025 one uh back in the spring and it was a really good bike. I I liked it. I just remember it not being like the best feeling bike. the the build quality wasn’t the best on that initial one, but I can tell you from the first few miles on this thing um that this one feels way better. It feels much better built and I remember the other one being kind of torquy and pretty peppy, but this one feels even more so. Uh it just feels a little bit like there’s a little bit of extra boost on here, hitting that big bump. Suspension uh was updated with this and also the geometry they say. So, I’m not sure if that means the frame was updated or what that means. Kind of vague, but that’s the only updates that I’ve really seen from what I understand on this bike. The motor feels pretty much the same. The uh the battery is a 48vt 15 amp hour battery and they do offer a plus version on this where you can uh get a 25 amp hour battery for a ton of range. So, that’s awesome. We’re hitting 28 on the GPS speedometer here and we’re going downhill, so we might get up a little bit faster, but the speedometer stops at uh 28. I showed you guys how to unlock this thing earlier, hitting 30, going downhill here. So, no slowpoke. This is a relatively, you know, quick and peppy bike. But this updated one seems pretty cool so far. I’ve been really happy with it. And besides the colors, too. The colors are another thing that they updated. Back when I checked out the original one, they only had black, but now they have this orange color and they also have a white color available. So, they did change out that seat on the original R2. They changed the frame a little bit. But this one, uh, you still get that rear seat, which is nice to see on here, but I’m actually like, this thing feels almost exactly the same. It just feels a little bit more peppy. I’m not sure if they updated the controller or what, but it does feel a little bit more peppy. It feels like you could easily get like over 30 mph if you could unlock this thing further. But this is a really really good feeling ebike. I was a bit underwhelmed with the original R2. It was a good bike, but it wasn’t really anything crazy or anything groundbreaking. And this isn’t necessarily anything crazy or groundbreaking either, but it is a really good feeling bike so far. And that’s this bike’s position in the market is it’s an affordable bike, an affordable entry-level bike that looks really cool, has a good amount of power. And whether it’s your first ebike or your 10th, like I think you’re going to be happy with this. It’s going to be good, reliable transportation, you have really good hydraulic brakes on here. You know, you’ve got the uh the nice mag wheels on here, too. You’ve got a decent size battery for plenty of range. So, really uh TST does a good job with just making these value bikes like this. So, overall, just my first impressions in the first couple miles here, feels like a really good value bike. Now, let’s hit this bump right here. Oh, I stood up for that one. I already knew. I wasn’t really impressed with the R2 suspension back in the spring when I tested the first one, and this one feels pretty much the same. I don’t really know what they mean when they say they updated the suspension. You can’t even adjust the suspension really, so I don’t know what they did exactly, what they changed. Going off-road on the R2, you can hear my voice. I’m getting shaken around a little bit. Um, this obviously is does have pedals and everything too, so we can help this up the hill if it needs it. Oh man. Yeah, this is not a off-road focused bike. Let’s try from a dead stop. Oh, I started wheelieing there, man. I almost uh almost looped on a hill. Yeah, this thing isn’t going to go up. Let’s see if I can kind of transfer my weight forward. Yeah, I don’t know what it is about this bike. I remember uh the the other R2 that I had that wanted to do wheelies, too. When you just take off from from a dead stop, like I’ll stop here, and I’m not even sitting that far back on the seat, but like it you can see it still wants to do a wheelie. It’s it’s actually pretty a little bit unsettling. But, uh yeah, you got to be careful on this bike. It’s weird that they didn’t fix that. Like they said they updated the geometry and everything, but they didn’t fix the fact that it uh it kind of wants to rotate on you like that. So, interesting choice. Layout and everything looks pretty much exactly the same. I remember these grips, these Cororeide brakes, uh the same uh menu button switch thing here, the same left hand thumb throttle on this, same screen, same everything really. No horn on this bike, too. That’s another thing that the R2 had. the original one, it didn’t have horn either, which is kind of weird cuz I know these uh these headlights have horns built into them. So, it’s weird that Oh god, that was a big bump. Plenty of power off road. This I’m I’m very impressed with the power of this of this bike. You know, there’s a lot of ebike style uh or uh e- moped style bikes like this that uh they don’t really deliver on the power, but this one actually kind Oh, there’s a deer over there. Nice. This one isn’t uh it’s not bad as far as power goes for a hub motor bike, especially a 48vt bike. You know, this thing gets it feels peppy. It wants to go. I’m really impressed with the power on this. I I like it a lot. You know, you can’t go wrong with some 20×4 in fat tires. But look at this paint in the sun here, man. Yeah, this paint is nice. I like how the R2 uh 2.0. I don’t know. I I like how it looks. This bright orange paint is super super attention grabbing and bright. Um, the one gripe that I had about this frame was the fact that this doesn’t match with the frame. You can see you kind of bolt these in here and this doesn’t match with the rest of the frame. That is a little bit of a lighter orange. Kind of a little bit of a nick nitpick, but uh, you know, it is what it is. Just a little bit of a quality issue thing, but you know, this is a really affordable bike. And you also have the seat pad back here. They changed the frame. This came installed already on here when I bought the bike or when I uh received the bike rather. Um so this already came installed. You can definitely fit two people on here, but you got to be careful cuz this thing does want to wheelie. Your weight is right over that rear wheel here and this thing has so much torque that uh you know it kind of wants to rotate on you and uh throw you off the back almost. It’s not unsafe, but it’s definitely something you got to take into consideration. All right, so back out here on the trails where this thing belongs. It’s a okay off-road bike, but I’d rather I’d much rather be riding it out here on the pavement and stuff like this. We’ll do a stop here from about 28. Hitting some bumps there. Yeah, these core rides feel pretty good. I didn’t even like totally lock up the brakes or anything, but they they are really good feeling hydraulic brakes. I I was really impressed with these when I tested them on a couple other bikes. They they feel awesome. They definitely punch above their weight class for this price of bike. Usually on bikes like this, I’ve seen bikes that cost a little bit more than this, and they only have cable brakes, too. So, it’s really nice to see some good quality hydraulic brakes on this thing. And just cruising along here on the road, this thing feels really good. This This is definitely where this bike feels at home at. It’s very smooth over this flat pave bit. Uh the suspension, like we tested out back there, it’s not the greatest. It’s not the softest, but it’s good enough for being on the road. It’s better than not having any suspension at all. The different pedal assist modes. Let’s see. Let’s go down and pedal assist one throttle only. It looks like it limits us at about 11, no 10 m an hour. 9 or 10 mph here. And if we pedal, you know, we can input a little bit. It definitely just gives us This is a cadence sensor on here, I believe. It definitely just gives us all the power at once. Yeah. Know, it’s kind of easing us up in pedal assist 2 here to about 15. I’m going downhill. So, and pedal assist three. I’m in gear 7 and I’m kind of I’m definitely helping it a little bit. The pedaling on this isn’t the most comfortable. It’s a pretty thick seat and this is actually a really like grippy seat, you could say. Like it’s definitely I could feel my my legs kind of sticking to it. But, um yeah, I mean pedaling this thing around in pedal assist 3. Uh if you want to get away with pedaling this then you can. And I wouldn’t recommend buying these as like an exercise bike because you’re really not they’re not the best for getting power down. Pedal assist 4 here looks like it gets us up to about 18 m an hour cuts our power back maybe even 16. And pedal assist 5 is going to be our top speed here. And really after 18 mph you’re not really going to be inputting much as far as pedaling goes on this. Yeah. The turn signals on this, they’re only in the rear also. and they are kind of awkward to use because you kind of have to take your thumb off of the throttle and then uh tap the the uh the turn signal button on there. So, a little bit awkward to use. Not the the best design, but I guess it’s better than nothing. And honestly, I don’t really use turn signals on bikes too much anyways. I’m not out in the city uh riding around too much on these things. So, it’s always nice to have extra little features like that on bikes, though. We’ve gone about six or seven miles now. battery bar is at three out of five. So, I remember getting pretty good battery life out of this for this being a 15 amp hour battery. It’s sort of uh like middle of the road type of range. You know, if you want longer range, you’re going to want to get like a 20 to 25 amp hour battery on one of these bikes. But, like I said, they do have the plus model that has the uh the 25 amp hour battery. So, if you want to spend So, if you want a little bit of extra range, you want to charge the bike less, then you can go ahead and pick that one up. Back on the trail here, going up the curb. Yeah, that rear suspension is stiff, man. I don’t know if it’s just how this the geometry of that rear suspension is, but it is a little bit stiff, man. These Coride brakes feel good, though. I’m glad that they uh that they put these Corride brakes on here again, cuz these are really, really good. So much better than cable brakes, for sure. Right now they are retailing the R2 at 849 bucks. I think they are given a coupon code though. So I will get you any links that I can in the description. But I think for around that price uh 849 shipped with whatever coupon code they can get you. I think that that is a pretty good value for this bike. I remember the R2 was a good value bike. You know, it was one of the cheapest bikes that could take two people. And I think that this is still one of the cheapest bikes that can hang on to two people and still get around because it has so much power. You know, you could legitimately carry a passenger on this thing and have plenty of room for both of you guys. So, that that was one of my favorite things about the old uh double uh R R2. But yeah, I think that this bike is a pretty good value for the money as far as specs and everything that you get. The suspension definitely could be a little bit better, but I think as far as power, range, and just looks too, especially now that they have these new colors. Back uh in the spring when I tested the first one out, they only had black, but now they have a bunch of different colors. They have white and orange and black. So, it’s just nice to see them updating this line. I know that a lot of people have bought this bike. This is a really popular ebike. They do a ton of marketing. I always see their ads uh around. So, if you go through any major city, you’re probably going to run into a couple of these. So, this is a very, very popular bike, and I really haven’t heard anything bad about TST. I’ve had good experiences working with them. We got some air right there on that bump, but they they are they do seem to be a good company and everything. Um, I I was happy with my RO2, that’s for sure. Display on here is the same display that I’ve seen on a few different bikes. I don’t know if you guys can see it. I can see it perfectly fine in the bright sunlight and everything. It’s a nice bright display. Um, it works works well. It does the job that it needs to. You know, it tells you your basic information. Uh, the speedometer is accurate. The odometer is accurate and everything. So, uh, I’ve been pretty happy with this screen. Um, it’s not the best, but it’s also not the worst. The thumb throttle on the R2 is pretty nice. You know, it gives you a little boost of power in the beginning. You know, they really market this bike as like a powerful little ebike. And don’t get me wrong, it’s not like a mid drive dirt bike, but it definitely is for a hub motor uh a powerful little bike. And it’s it’s relatively lightweight, too. So, I really like that about this. Final thoughts on the TST R02, the new one for the end of 2025. Uh, we’ve gone about 15 mi, got about two battery bars left right now. So, decent range. We’ll probably have 16 17 mi on this thing by the time we get home. Overall, it does feel like a good upgrade from the last generation of this. You know, the fact that this is a twoerson ebike, they put that that extension on the frame back there so you can have a rear seat or you can even use that for some cargo back there. I love that about this bike and I love that about the first generation one, too. The grips are really comfortable. They TST kind of does the little details really well for an entrylevel ebike like this. You know, it’s got some things that you wouldn’t expect from an entry-le eBike, like these nice core hydraulic brakes, some really nice grips on here. Things that I’m not the biggest fan of is the suspension on here. like it’s kind of just the most basic kind of cheapest suspension that you can get, which is better than having a hard tail bike, but it’s definitely no off-roader. So, just keep that in mind. On this smooth stuff, though, it’s totally fine. It’s I I have absolutely no problem with it at all on here. Also, it’s obviously not going to be the best pedal bike like we talked about earlier. You know, the the seat is kind of wide. And the seat comfort, by the way, is very good on this. I I was very happy with with this on my ride. I feel uh I feel very comfortable. My butt doesn’t hurt or anything. Thumb throttle is really nice on here and the screen is clear and easy to read. Battery life is pretty good, especially for a 15 amp hour battery. Overall, I think if you’re looking for a budget entry-le eBike, this should be on your short list. That is the new and updated TSTR2. I’ve been very happy with it so far. I like it a lot. And if you want to pick one of these up, go ahead and use that link in the description. It’s going to get you the best uh the best deal on this bike. And if you do pick one of these up, let me know what you think about it in the comments below. With all that being said, guys, thank you so much for watching. Hope you enjoy your ebikes out there. Stay safe and I’ll see you guys in the next video. Take care.
Get $100 off the updated R002 with code “AMPED”: https://dub.sh/TST-R002-AMPED
Written review of the TST R002: https://ampedcycle.net/tst-r002-affordable-fast-electric-bike/
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Looking for an affordable ride for two? We put the TST R002 to the test in this review, covering everything you need to know about this budget-friendly e-bike. Is it the perfect choice for your next adventure? Let’s find out!
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Mokwheel Obsidian ST:
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Lectric XPress 750:
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