KBO Ranger Review 2024 | An Affordable Cargo E-Bike
This cargo ebike is the kbo Ranger and with a name like that we expected it to be able to cover a ton of miles before needing a recharge so did it live up to our expectations Let’s Take a Ride and find [Applause] Out Hey everyone I’m John with electric bike report one quick reminder to please hit that subscribe button and turn on notifications if you’re shopping for an ebike we release new reviews all the time so we’d love to help you find the best fit for you a few big things really
Stood out to us during our testing of the kbo Ranger as a cargo ebike a big payload capacity and a powerful motor are some of the most important features this bike can carry a total of 400 lb including the rider and it has a 750 W
Rear hub motor to move that much weight effectively we’ll talk about the bike’s speed and hill climbing ability shortly but to give you a tease it did a really solid job another standout element of the bike is its removable 48v 840w battery we’ll also take a look at
The Rangers performance in our range test section soon but that kind of battery capacity is on the high end when compared to the other cargo bikes we’ve tested that gives it a really good shot of being able to give Riders a lot of mileage before needing to be
Recharged one final thing that was pretty unique about the ranger is that it didn’t really feel or handle like a cargo bike when compared to similar models from other brands its wheelbase is relatively short at 47 in so that combined with the 20-in X 3in CST big
Boat tires made the bike feel pretty Nimble and generally maneuverable in my experience cargo bikes can feel a little awkward to ride without any additional passengers or gear but the ranger behaved a lot more like a shorter nonc cargo specific ebike so it generally felt a bit more fun to ride before we
Get to all of our test data let’s run through the remaining specs and components starting off with the drivetrain the ranger has a seven-speed Shimano alus drivetrain with a 46 Toth chain ring and a cassette with cogs ranging from 14 up to 28 teeth the brakes are the Aries mechanical disc
System from tekro with 180 mm rotors there’s a motorcycle style Center stand to keep the bike balanced when you’re loading it up there’s a comfortable KB branded saddle that has quite a bit of Squish there are front and rear fenders and there’s a dual LED headlight as well
As a tail light that also functions as a flashing brake light when you squeeze the brake levers the cockpit is clean and simple with a central black and white display there’s a small three button control panel on the left handlebar there’s a half twist throttle on the right next to
The thumb shifter and there are also ergonomic faux leather grips on 7 10 mm handlebars also it’s a small detail but I have to say that I really like that the brakes levers have a trigger operated Bell built in that really came in handy when the bike paths were really
Busy we were also happy to note that the bamboo top board for the cargo rack and the running boards on the sides were included and then kbo also offers some additional accessories to outfit the bike further these include things like a fence attachment for the rack to give
Kiddos something to hold on to and also front and rear cargo baskets to hold all your gear the structural supports for the rack make it a little under 20 in long and it’s about 7 1/2 in wide but then the last thing here the ranger is available in two color options this
One’s just called orange but there’s also another one called cool gray that’s sort of a metallic bluish green so with all that out of the way let’s get into our test Results the ranger ships as a Class 2 ebike that can reach 20 mph with throttle or pedal assist and we brought it up to that speed when testing its brakes we measured the distance it took to stop after applying the brakes and did the same thing two more times so we
Could calculate an average the Rangers average stopping distance then was 21′ 4 in which is a little slow for a cargo bike but pretty good in the grand scheme this bike weighs about 78 lb which is actually fairly light for a cargo bike so we attribute the longer stopping
Distance to the fact that the brakes are mechanical instead of hydraulic this is one of the few cargo ebikes we’ve tested that used a mechanical system and while it does have a little less overall stopping power than a hydraulic system would we were glad to see te tekro Aries
Brakes as we’ve always measured good performance from them in this test I thought the brakes perform pretty well during my rides outside of this test although with some added weight they definitely took longer to bring the bike to a stop they’ll also have to work a
Lot harder if you unlock the bike to its class 3 speeds of up to 28 mph with that in mind you may want to consider upgrading to a hydraulic system if you’re maxing out the load regularly or if you just want to ride fast but if you’re mostly traveling light then you
Should be totally Fine for our speed test let’s let’s go out together and see what happened when I rode the ranger along our local bike paths I recorded my top speeds in each pedal assist setting and also tested the throttle to see how quickly it could reach 20
Mph all right we are here on the kbo ranger for a speed test and I’m keeping things pretty casual here with no help from the motor going kind of right around 9 mph maybe up towards 9 and 1/ half at times but honestly that’s pretty comfortable pretty easy on this bike
Let’s go up to pas1 and see what kind of a difference that makes so of course that motor kicked on right away lets me shift up to fifth gear from third where I was at and looks like we’re going kind of right around 10 1/2 miles hour all right let’s go to
Pas2 there we go I’ll shift up to 7 gear so I I am already in the top gear here uh we are going kind of between 13 and 13 1/2 mph by the bike’s display let’s go up to pas3 having a little bit of trouble with these gloves
Sorry uh okay so I’m starting to ghost pedal here or at least on the verge of it so we’re going right under 6 16 mph well okay now right over all right let’s go up to pas4 so I’d say that you know the motor definitely feels powerful uh it’s not
Super Punchy which is good going around 18 mph in pas4 here and then pas5 kick it up for the max speed all right so we got a little bit over 20 mph there temporarily but we’re kind of hovering right around 19.9 uh for a cruising speed here so
Okay we will call that our spe test on the kbo ranger see you back at the studio all right we are here on the kbo ranger once again to do a throttle acceleration test from 0 to 20 we’ll use the bikes display for that so let’s go in three two one start all
Right nice steady build yeah feels good and 20 so first things first I only tested the bike here in its Class 2 mode which is how the bike shipped to us there are a couple of reasons for that which we’ll get into more later on but the bottom
Line is just safety we feel that 20 mph is plenty for a cargo bike especially if if you’re bringing the kids along with you but with a Cadence Sensor the ranger has pre-programmed speed limits in each of its five assist settings and I kept my pedaling pretty relaxed so we could
Get a clear idea of what those were starting off with only my own Pedal Power I recorded 9.5 mph though honestly that was pretty easy and I could have easily gone faster but I wanted to see how much of a difference the lowest assist setting which is pas1 made and
That turned out to be about 1 M hour up to 10.7 moving up from there the increases in power were really even I hit 13.6 mph in pas2 16.1 in pas3 18.3 in pas4 and 19.9 mph in pas5 those limits show a really well balanc distribution that makes it really
Easy to find the right amount of power for the job and the jump SP between settings felt spot-on this bike felt a bit punchier when moving up through the pedal assist settings than it did when I was using just the throttle but overall the bike seemed to have really steady output and
I think it did a great job in this Test and here we are with our range test where we can really figure out if the ranger lived up to its name we actually performed two different tests where we rode the bike until the battery gave out first in the highest assist setting and again in the lowest the minimum and
Maximum range we measured with this method was 32.9 Mi to 64.2 Mi kbo advertises 60 plus miles which was spot-on with our results and compared to similar cargo bikes we’ve tested the ranger did a great job in pas5 it was sort of middle of the road suggesting that the motor burned through
The battery fairly fast but in pas1 it took took the lead as the longest running cargo bike we’ve tested with a 750 W Motor and a single battery when it comes down to it I think this is just a matter of battery capacity most of those other bikes have had smaller batteries
Around 692 W hours so the 840 W monster here just gave the ranger a big Advantage the motor actually proved to be a bit more efficient than we expected with its high power test as well which is most easily shown by how long the test took we expected our test to last
About an hour and 10 minutes based on the motor and battery specs but we hit an hour and 50 minutes which is a 64% increase the fact that our pas1 test took 6 hours and 41 minutes though that’s pretty impressive and it goes to show that if you don’t mind riding a
Little slower you’ll be able to cover some serious ground if you’re carrying a lot of weight you’ll probably get a little less distance than we did but you’ll still probably do better than a lot of other cargo bikes Out There Our Hill test is a little different this time around I actually performed the test instead of Justin who was out of town at the time but let’s go for another ride and see how the bike did with its throttle and pedal assist system at hellhole
Trail all right we are here on the kbo ranger which is an electric cargo bike I am filling in for Justin this time he’s out of town for a couple days so uh I I am a little bit heavier than Justin but with uh the 750 W Motor on this bike I
Don’t expect to see a whole lot of difference in results uh slowing down a little bit here but you know as a cargo bike definitely would expect it to have the oomph to get up hell hole here we’ll see how well it does down to about 8
Mph and you know the motor does have a bit of a whine to it a little bit on the lower end not not too loud though I’ll let you listen to it here through this next section slowing down again a little bit all right about the same right about 8
Milph and then uh here we are definitely going to make it at this point now I don’t have any cargo on the back and that may change things a little bit as well but uh you know again just with throttle doing pretty good here and we will compare these results to those of
The other cargo ebikes we’ve tested I’ll see you back here again shortly for the pedal test all right so we are back here on the kbo ranger for the pedal test up this hill and let’s see any need to shift down to fifth gear I think is going to be the best for
This challenge uh about 12 1/2 milph up that first steep section not doing too bad I am definitely soft pedaling though just to sort of see what kind of a difference the motor actually makes as opposed to my own effort and you know still about the same sound from the motor here
I’m going to shift up to sixth let you listen to that for this next Section got down to about third gear there but you know got to be honest not a not a bad hill climber here did a good job no trouble whatsoever and I would expect that with some weight on the back that you’d uh also be able to do this
Just fine so we will bounce back to the studio and take a look at the results so again I wouldn’t expect a ton of difference between my results and what Jance would have been but there was likely some difference since I’ve got about 25 lbs on him with the throttle I
Rode to the top of the path in a minute and 35 seconds and kept an average speed of 11.4 mph when I pedal up the hill it took me a minute and 21 seconds and there I had an average of 13.4 mph this is a bit slower than the other
Cargo bikes we’ve tested but at the end of the day we don’t think speed should be a huge Factor more just that the bike could do the job and the ranger did I took it to another spot near our office that’s become kind of a secondary test
Location it’s not quite as crazy as hell hole but it’s not something you’d want to climb without a motor I brought our mechanic Brendan along and he weighs about a buck 50 so together that made the bike’s total payload around 350 lb we rode up on the throttle
Which is where the motor has the hardest time and while it took a little longer to get to the top the ranger just kept going and going Bottom Line this bike can handle some pretty tough Hills even with a heavy load and we definitely give it two thumbs Up I want to take you back out with me one last time to go over the main elements of the Rangers ride quality I’ll meet you back here in a few minutes so we can wrap things up all right we are back here on the kbo
Ranger to give you a sense of what it’s like to ride this is of course kbo’s electric cargo bike and has a pretty upright riding position although I think that’s going to vary a little bit depending on Rider height there’s just a single frame size here but kbo says that
It should fit Riders from 41 up to 6’3 I’m 511 and I have a little bit of a forward lean here just because the bike’s limitations it does have a standard style stem so without adding spacers or swapping that out uh you know you’re going to be fairly Limited in
Your handlebar height and your reach distance although uh with these sort of lowrise handlebars you do have a little bit of a adjustment if you loosen up the stem and rotate that but most of the adjustability here is going to be in the seat post
Height there is a rigid Fork here so no suspension but that uh comes with some uh benefits on cargo bikes it’s a little better climbing efficiency when you come to Hills and then uh just a little bit better handling when you’re carrying weight on the
Back and then uh let Let’s see we have 20in x 3 in CST tires so kind of a nice blend of stability and maneuverability without adding a whole lot of weight there and you do get a little bit of cushion from those you could air them
Down a little bit to give you a bit more squish but uh I would say you know be careful of that if you’re carrying a lot of weight and then this bike uses a 750 W rear hub motor I will demonstrate the uh Cadence sensors responsiveness here so
I’m in pas5 I’m in seventh gear kind of coasting here to let the motor shut off and then I’m going to turn the cranks now so that was about a half to 3/4 of a turn of the cranks for that to engage and then you can see it’s picking up
Pretty good here so all right let’s uh bounce back to the studio and talk a little bit more so overall the ranger was a pretty comfortable bike to ride it accommodates a wide height range of riders and while I didn’t have the best fit at 511 are
Testers in the 5 fo5 range were very happy for those around my height or above the standard style stem kept the handlebars feeling fairly low but the mechanic at your local bike shop can help you add spacers or swap out the stem for something different if you find
Yourself in my shoes I mentioned the bike’s handling at the beginning of the review and while in general it was very good there was one area that I think could use some work on future iterations of the bike I felt the frame Flex quite a bit at times especially when cornering
And with added weight that turned into some instability when moving at slower speeds compared to other bikes out there the ranger has a bit less structural support in its frame and I’d recommend that kbo beef things up a bit to make the frame stiffer one other area that
Could use some tuning up was the motor’s engagement when riding around 20 mph once it got up to speed the motor did this sort of onoff onof thing that made the ride feel a bit jerky it was just doing what it needed to do to keep the
Bike right at that limit but I think a little wiggle room would be beneficial to help smooth out the ride those are some fairly big points of critique but I don’t want to lose sight of the fact that this bike generally functions pretty well things that jump out to me
Might be less of an issue for you and that’s kind of a natural side effect of riding a bunch of different bikes all the time bottom line there’s some room for improvement here but for the most part the ranger is a cool bike with decent ride Quality looking back at everything we talked about the ranger did a solid job in our testing it’s not a perfect bike but I want to focus mainly on overall performance our speed test showed a pretty ideal distribution of speed and power throughout out the five pedal assist settings our range test showed
That the ranger can stay on the road or bike path for a seriously impressive number of miles that also matched kbo’s claims our Hill test showed that the bike can handle steep hills even when carrying two grown adults and our brake test showed that kbo speced an affordable but still quite functional
System we hope that the brand addresses the frame flex and ride F issues we discussed but when looking at the big picture including the Rangers list price of $117.99 it offers solid performance for an entry-level cargo bike if you live quite a ways from the market or the park
Where you take the kids and you’re looking for a healthier mode of Transport without breaking the bank the kbo ranger might be the bike for you thanks for hanging out with me today I hope you found this review helpful and informative if you want more detail
About our tests we’ll leave a link to our written review down in the video description and if you decide you want to make a purchase please use our other link to kbo’s website which helps support our Channel at no additional cost to you please also be sure to hit
That like button and subscribe you can also drop us a line in the comments section but that’s all for today again I am John with electric bike report and this is the kbo [Applause] [Applause] [Applause] Ranger [Applause] W
For current pricing on the KBO Ranger, click the link below:
Electric Cargo Bike KBO Ranger
For a full detailed written review of the KBO Ranger, click the link below:
The KBO Ranger is an affordable electric cargo bike with a total payload capacity of 400 lbs. We tested the bike’s hauling ability as well as its range, brakes, uphill power and more – see all of that and more in this KBO Ranger review!
With an effective 750W rear-hub motor, the Ranger can move quickly and easily even when carrying a load of groceries or a passenger. We were impressed with its ability to climb hills under load – check out our hill test section for more detail.
The Ranger features a 48V, 840 Wh battery with a larger capacity than we commonly see on cargo bikes. This gives it the ability to stay on the road or path longer than most, which means more time between charges.
Compared to similar bikes we’ve tested, the Ranger also felt significantly more nimble; it has a shorter than average wheelbase which combines with 20”x3” CST Big Boat tires for ease of maneuvering. We hardly noticed the cargo rack on the back!
For more information, check out our full KBO Ranger video review or read our written review through the link below.
0:00 KBO Ranger Review
0:41 Overview
4:28 Brake Test
5:56 Speed Test
10:17 Range Test
12:04 Hill Test
16:28 Ride Quality
20:41 KBO Ranger Conclusion
#kbo #cargobike #electricbikereview
