Bonnell 775 MX Vs. Surron Light Bee X
Hey everyone, it’s Nate from National Powersports and in today’s video I want to compare the Banell to the uh Siron LightBX. And when I first got my Banell, I was um well, I had so much fun on the thing. Um, of course, I put it on the highest power setting and rode it as hard as I could and I was a little surprised at how quickly the battery wore out. Uh, so I was like, boy, is this a is this a viable option? Um, if you’re comparing a light B versus a Benel and you want to buy one versus the other, battery life is going to be an important issue. So, my first impression on the Banell that the battery life was a lot less than the light be. Um, what I discovered was how you ride the bike and what modes you use are very important, but we’ll get into that in a little bit. So, I have a close to three mile track that is specifically built and designed for like light bees. Um, it’s a ton of fun. It’s about 3 mi long. It’s got about 600 ft of gain. There are some steep, punchy sections. There’s soft sand. There’s some rocks. There’s a little bit of everything, but it’s just a fun uh trail through the woods. So, it gives me a perfect comparison to do a test because I can just do laps. The first thing I wanted to do was do a reference lap on the light B to see how much battery it took. And the initial lap took 10% of the battery. And then I hopped on the Benell. I wanted to see how the settings on the Benell would affect the battery life because the more I rode it, the more I realized is these had a greater effect on the battery life than I initially had thought. So the most of the time I ride the Banell, I ride it in race mode. And in race mode, you’re not restricted to top speed. The top speed’s 37 or 38 miles an hour. But in street mode, it’s limited to about 20. So I almost never ride in street mode unless I really want to conserve battery life. So for the test, I used race mode and I played around with the levels. Level one being the lowest power setting. Um, and then level two and level three being the highest power setting. These settings are adjustable. You can go into the Banell app and you can play around with ramp up speed and overall like you can play a lot with these. I’ve left them pretty close to stock and I’ve left the uh sort of limp mode at 10% of battery. These are the lap times and corresponding battery drain for the different levels on the Benell and a reference run on the Suron. So, after I did these uh lap lap time comparisons, um I decided to put the effort in to do a full battery rundown again on the track, same track. And um I was really surprised at the results. So, for the battery test, I wanted to see on each of these bikes how long would it go before it went into limp mode. limp mode on both vehicles starts to take effect at around 10%. So, the first battery full rundown test I did was on the Benell and on my track I used Strava to measure it. Now, Strava is not super accurate as far as this goes. Um, but you’ll see the comparison between the two. It looks very similar. I was really surprised at the result. So, I took the Banell out first and I rode it and I managed to make it 17.03 miles with 3,741 ft of gain with a ride time of 1 hour and 12 minutes. I had started at 100% and uh stopped when I went into limp mode at about 8%. And that’s what I got. Then I hopped on to my lightbe and I was kind of dreading it a little bit because I figured I would probably have to go 25 or 30 miles, two or three hours, whatever the case was. Anecdotally, my feeling was the lightbe lasted a lot longer. Uh, but I was surprised. Took the Sauron out, did it the same track, and ended up at 16.47 miles with 3,671 ft of gain. and 1 hour and 11 minutes of ride time, which is really, really similar to the Banell, but it’s less. One thing that surprised me and changed the emphasis of this video was that I was doing single laps and stopping at the end of each lap to see how much battery I had used. But I also noticed that my reference time on the Suriron um was not the fastest time. The Banell’s times were pretty consistently faster. Now, this is really unscientific uh and very subjective because I’m riding I’m riding a track. I’m riding it alone and I’m riding it at a certain effort level. So, I kept the effort level the same on all the tests, but obviously there’s going to be some some differences in how you ride. Um, but the Banell was consistently faster than the LightB because they ride very differently. The Suron or LightB um has a wide enough seat that you can pinch and hold uh the bike with your legs more like a motocross bike. when you ride the Benell, you don’t really have that option um because it’s a bicycle and it just it’s not how you ride the bike. So, I think there’s a little more fatigue on your legs riding the Banell if you’re riding like equivalent to the Lightbe, but there’s such different bikes. uh the size of the wheels on the Banell. Having a uh mullet setup or MX setup with 27 and a half rear wheel and a 29in front wheel, having those mountain bike wheels really makes it roll over and through terrain smoother than on the lightb. And that’s interesting. It’s not what I expected because on my lightbe I have the ext suspension which is like a hund times better than the stock suspension. But the stock suspension on the Banell, the Sunour uh mountain bike suspension is just phenomenal. And the bike actually feels smoother and faster in rough terrain than my LightB does. The the Lightbe feels uh choppy and the front wheel feels a little bit harsh in comparison, but it’s a 19-in front wheel versus a uh you know 29in mountain bike wheel, so makes a big difference. So, I’ve answered the question for myself. Is is the Benella a viable alternative to uh like a light B or a um E-Ride? And I think the answer is yes. If you’re a mountain biker and uh you like the stance and you like how it feels, it’s every bit as fast. It doesn’t have as much top speed, but that’s the only place it’s lacking. The Banell’s top speed’s about 37 38 and the light bead’s top speed is about 47. Top speed, Suriron’s got it all over the Banell, but that’s about it. The Banel’s lighter. I think it handles better. I actually think it’s more fun, but I’m a mountain biker, so that’s completely subjective. But as an alternative to a lightbe, I think it’s viable, and I think it’s a lot of fun. Well, I still think the Banell would be a viable alternative if you could only have one of these bikes. I really do think they’re different. I think that the Benell is incredibly fun. If you’re a mountain biker, if you’ve ridden a downhill mountain bike with a dual crown fork and that is something that you just love to do, the Banell is going to tick all of the right boxes for you. But if you’re looking for a uh easy to ride, quiet motorcycle alternative, um you know, maybe maybe going with a light B or a uh E-IDE would be a better option. The best option in my opinion is both. Um if you can do both, they do different things and they are both incredibly fun. We have the Benell’s in stock at National Powersports Distributors. Our website is nationalpowersports.net net. And um well, we don’t have any more Suron lightbees in stock because Siron is not importing them anymore, but we do have the full line of E-Ide Pro in stock ready to go. And uh we’re always happy to talk with you about electric motorcycles because we love them and we ride them ourselves here. So feel free to reach out and uh drop some comments below. [Music]
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