AIMA Santa Monica Review: SoCal Style Meets Serious Power
All right, guys. This is the AMA Santa Monica. A really nice looking step through cruiser bike that for the first time in any review, I’ve been able to tell you guys, you cannot go buy this online. That’s because they have no online sales, which is a first for me and maybe for some of you guys as well. But I think if you stick around and watch how well thought out this was done, the execution, and at the end of the day, this might just be worth your time to drive to your local dealer. They have over 400 nationwide to check one out for yourself. [Music] All right, so let’s just talk about the basics, kind of go over the the just general facts about this bike. Now, this is priced at $23.95. And I’ll say that with a bit of a caveat because they only partner with local dealers. There is no online sales. I would say that number could always fluctuate, maybe even a couple hundred less, a couple hundred more. I really genuinely don’t know how dealers will individually price them, but the MSRP on this is $23.95. Now, on top of that, this bike is UL2849 certified, meaning the electrical system on the ebike makes meets those safety standards by UL, and it’s IPX4 water resistant rated. Now, what IPX4 means is that it can handle rain. You can ride out in wet weather and it’s not going to impact the bike in any kind of negative way, but it can’t have anything crazy like water submersions. And I don’t think anybody plans on putting this in their pool, but just so you know, that is the water rating. Now, in terms of weight, they say the bike weighs 64 lb with the battery. So, I threw this up on the scale the way you see it, including this rear rack, and I don’t know if they include that in their rating because when I weighed it with fenders and a rack on it, it came out to right at 70 lb. And that’s including the 8.7 lb battery. So, if I took the battery out in this configuration, it’d be right around 61 62 lbs. Now, in terms of frame colors and sizing, it comes in a regular or a large. And the regular fits riders 51 to 6’2. And this large here fits riders 5’5 to 63. Now, I am 5’11, so I’m kind of in the middleish of the large frame size, and it felt me just fine. The bike fit me very comfortably. I was really pleased with how this bike just fit, the overall feel, and a lot of that can be attributed to things like the adjustable seat post, the adjustable stem, and the swatback cruiser bars. It’s just a very comfortable ride. Um, and a really just relaxed riding position all in all that fit me really nicely. Now, in terms of colors, this is the blue color option. I do like the fact that they have minimal branding. It’s not big plastered along the down tube there like a lot of brands like to do. They keep it subtle and they also added these tan accents on the grips and the saddle with the tan sidewalls on the tires here. And I just think it gives the overall bike a really nice almost like beach boardwalk look. It’s a good-look bike. Now, if you don’t like blue, they also have a black that has the same accents or a white. So, you get white, black, or blue. I like this blue a lot. I’m a big fan of black and tan accents. But, at the end of the day, all three colors are tastefully done and they look really nice. Now, when it comes to the geometry numbers, at least for this large frame, we’ll go over some of these. The wheelbase from rear hub to front hub or vice versa, is about 47.3 in. The standover height, so the lowest point you can step over there just above the uh chain ring, that’s going to be about 16 1/2 in. The reach up top is 16.6 6 in. But I say that also with a caveat that you have that adjustable stem and as you adjust it to your reach and your comfort level, that reach could come back a little bit and be a little shorter or it could go out further and be a little bit longer. But the way it sits in the median position is about 16 1/2 in. Now in the seat post here, you have an alloy seat post with quick release lever and that gives you about 6 1/2 in of adjustability. And the max payload on this bike is 400 lb. And that includes, of course, the rider and any gear you have, things like that. Now, on top of that, the wheel and tire combination is a doublewalled alloy wheel, and its size is a 27.5. So, a pretty standard bike wheel size, and it’s wrapped in a 275x 2.6 in wide Chowyang commuter tire. Now, a couple nice things to say about these tires is they do have good commuter like um traction, but it’s not raised studs for off-road. That’s not really what this bike is designed for, but it’s very, very quiet. That’s one of my favorite things about this bike, and you’ll see when we go on a ride. It’s just constantly whisper quiet. The wind in your ears is way louder than anything you hear from this bike. And that includes the drivetrain, the motor, the tires. It just glides. I really, if you can’t tell, I kind of really enjoy this bike and I think it’ll be taking some spots on our best list because it was really, really well done. Now, on top of that, the Chowyang tires, they say to run between 25 PSI and 50 PSI. I always keep mine on the lower end unless I’m just really trying to maximize range or efficiency. Um because having that little bit of air down cushion always helps with a little bit more comfort. It gives your tires some squish that would eat up road vibrations and chatter that would normally just travel up um into your body and felt. And by airing down just a bit, you do get a lot more comfort out of that. So unless you’re trying to max out range, I always recommend people just air down just a little bit. It’s going to go a long way in comfort. Now, on top of that, these tires also have a nice tan sidewall, like we talked about, kind of matching the accents of the rest of the bike. They have shraider valves on them, and they have nice reflective strips around both wheels or both tires on both sides. So, if you’re riding in the evenings or around traffic and a car hits your side profile with their headlights, they’re going to see those round reflectors going by. Just extra visibility. Now, on top of that, you have even more commuter per visibility. You have an adjustable headlight up front. really nice bright headlight that’s rated at 100 lux or in some cases I read 600 lumen but either way very bright adjustable angle so you can kind of dial it in to where you want and then as a kind of a bonus feature it also has a daytime running aspect to it which you can use if you want that daytime running light on your bike just for extra visibility when you’re riding during the day now when your lights are on you also have really nice frame integrated tail lights that are part of this chain stay where the where the chain stay meets the seat stay and they’re built into the frame They’re a nice tail light. They glow um when the headlight is on. And they do have a braking highlight feature. So, when you use your brakes, they will break highlight um and let people know behind you that you’re breaking the bike. Now, on top of that, these also have built-in turn signals, which are activated from the cockpit. Simply flip the switch left or right, and you’ll get the illumination on the back end, whichever way you switch the turn signal. But one thing they added on here that I like is they added little audible cues. So, you get that little audible beep. Not very loud, not very annoying, but it’s enough to let you know, hey, your turn signals are still on. So, if you flip them on, head down the road, you don’t get home 20 minutes later, and realize you still have a turn signal on because it’s been beeping the whole time just to kind of give you that subtle reminder, which in my opinion, little things like that go a long way and just the overall practicality of the bike. Now, as far as accessories go, this bike came to us with fenders on the back. They are plastic fenders, which I’m personally a fan of. I think they can take more of a beating. They can bend, they can take impacts, and they’re not going to just bend in place. They’re going to just kind of absorb that and pop back. Um, also, these came with this Mik rear rack. Now, this is MIK compatible, meaning the mix system, it has kind of its own ecosystem of accessible um or accessories that you can attach from seats to bags to gear to baskets. There’s all sorts of things you can lock on here. And they create a really nice secure platform to secure things to your rack without relying on you finding crafty ways to use bungee straps. They lock in on the rack. They stay in place and you don’t have to worry about them once they’re there. Now, this rack is rated for 55 lbs. And of course, that goes into that overall max payload of 400 lb. On top of that, besides the rack, the fenders, the lights, all those everyday perks, we also have a couple mounting points here on the down tube where you could add a water bottle cage or a bike lock accessory, things like that. So, it’s really ready to go right out of the gate and some options for you to customize it to take it even further. All right, so let’s talk about the power system on here that includes both the motor and the battery. I’m going to start with the motor because this was a really uniquely done and well done motor. So, at first glance, it’s just a standard rear hub motor. Nothing special about it. But if you look at the branding on it, you’ll see it’s got AMA’s branding, but it also has Buffangs. Now, this was a collaboration between AMA as a company who got with Buffang and said, “Hey, let’s create a motor for this bike.” and they did so and they came up with this and they call it the Route 66. Now, this motor itself, besides having its own little name, I didn’t really take much into an account when I read about that on the website. I thought everybody talks good about their motors. We’ll see how it rides. And the reality is this is a really, really well done motor. This motor is I I’m going to say silent. I’m sure if you got really close to it, you could hear something, but you don’t hear anything when you’re riding. But beyond being silent, it’s got a torque sensor, so you’re going to get your natural power uh pedal assistance, but this torque sensor is very smooth. The motor’s very quiet. And when you couple that with its power rating, which is a 750 watt nominal rating that can peak at around 12,200 watts, it’s also got 74 new m of torque. This motor on this ebike, this thing can fly up hills. It’s powerful, it’s quick, it’s peppy when you want it, or it’s as relaxed as you want it to be. It’s one of those bikes where the power is there, but it’s not going to force the power on you. It’s just there when you want it. If you go light on the pedals, you’ll have a nice fluid, smooth ride. If you go hard on those pedals, you’re going to go really, really fast really quick. It’s just a nicely done motor that gives gives you all the power and lets you figure out what you want to do with it, but it’s definitely there. So, if you live in a hilly area or you live in an area where you put a bunch of gear on and you got some extra hills and you need that extra power, you’re kind of concerned about a 500 watt motor or a 750 watt motor that doesn’t feel very powerful. This is the 750 W motor that really can punch above its weight class. It performs, in my opinion, phenomenally well, and I ride a lot of ebikes. Again, this is why I’ll probably end up putting this bike on one of our best list because it just really did perform fantastic. And that motor is a strong selling point to me. Now, this motor, this bike in general is a class 2 as it ships to you. So, that means you can get up to 20 miles an hour on pedal assist or throttle, but they did something I really appreciate here. So, besides just having your standard one through five pedal assist modes, they allow you to have almost any mode you want on this bike. Meaning, you can go to um kind of a class one setting where you have pedal assist to 20 mph, no throttle. You can go to a class 3 setting, like a true class 3, where you get pedal assist to 28 with the throttles capped at 20. They have a what I call a California compliant class 3, which is where pedal assist goes to 28 and there’s no throttle at all. Or you can do even their unrestricted mode, which will just not cap the throttle or the pedal assist, and you can take it to whatever you can get it to. Now, I will say, don’t get all wildly excited on me because I never got over 28, 29 miles an hour. It really does stick to that max speed. But I like the fact that they said, “We don’t know where you live. We don’t know where you’re going to go with the bike. We don’t know how you’re going to ride the bike. You might be on private land. You might be on um public land that’s allowed to ride dirt bike speeds, or you might just be in a town that has no throttle laws in place. Regardless, you have every single option available on here. You just pick the profile that you want. And this bike’s got it built in. They didn’t try to restrict you with any of imposed guidelines because they don’t know where it’s going. They said, “Hey, the bike’s got everything you need. Just adjust it to whatever your local laws or your local riding situation is.” And I genuinely appreciate that instead of trying to box the consumer into any kind of speed profile. Again, nicely well thoughtout execution. Now, the battery on here is a 48vt battery. It integrates into this down tube. It comes with a set of keys so you can lock it on the bike and you can take it off for like off the bike charging or storage in the winter time. You’ve got options to remove that and secure it which is nice as well. Now in terms of the numbers for the battery again 48 volts with 15 amp hours giving us about 720 W hours and it has LG cells um from a company well LG so it’s a nice reputable brand of cells. Now, in addition to this, this motor combo of battery motors says it can get up to 60 miles. Now, AMA does a good job of breaking down on their website. You can click a tab that says understanding range or mileage, something to that effect, and it will kind of explain to you that basically in almost any situation, you’re going to get somewhere between 20 and 60 miles on this bike. But there’s lots of factors, right? So, how much I weigh as a rider, how much inclines I handle on my route, how much gear I have with me, how aggressive I am with the throttle or the pedal assist, all those things are going to play into factor because at the end of the day, it’s battery consumption. So, there’s not going to be a fluid, even amount of power draw all the time. It’s going to vary based on your situation. Now, with all that said, that’s not me setting up a bad range number because I took this out or we took this out on two range tests. The first one we did in max PAS, so the pedal assist level five, basically giving it all the power. Went as far as we could and we got 32 miles on maximum pedal assistance. Now, that’s pretty solid in general because that’s kind of going all out speedwise. But then we took it back, gave it a night of rest, a full recharge, and we went out on pedal assist level one, so the minimum assistance, and we still got 56 mi. So, bumping right up to that 60 mile expectation. And with all the variables that affect range, that feels like a really fair, not only estimate on their end, but just ultimate end goal on my end. I got really nice mileage out of this that almost perfectly met their range expectation. So, at the end of the day, really solid setup. Now, as far as warranty goes, this frame has a lifetime warranty, and then the rest of the components like motor and battery have a 2-year warranty. Um, aside from that, I did do some digging online in reviews, and I found something somewhat negative, maybe just more of a cautionary tale about the battery, and we’ll get into that in just a second in the mechanics take, but at the end of the day, um, I didn’t have that issue. So, again, I’ll just save that for the mechanics take in just a few minutes. But all in all, the power, motor, battery combo on this bike, top-notch. It did really, really good, and I was really pleased with it. All right, guys. Let’s talk about the components on the AMA Santa Monica. Now, it’s a pretty standard setup. Nothing crazy out of the ordinary that we don’t usually see. So, I’ll go through the basics here. The drivetrain is an 8-speed Shimano drivetrain. So, we have a Shimano Altus 8-speed rear derailer, a Shimano Hyperglide um 11 to 34 rear cassette, and that’s mated to a 52 to chain ring up front. Now, that chain ring has a dual-sided chain guard to kind of prevent your pant leg from getting messy while you’re riding the bike. And then the crank arms themselves are 170 mm. and they came with, at least my bike came with, flat plastic or composite pedals that have some traction studs and reflectors on them. Now, when it comes to braking, they did step up a little bit here in the braking department. We got hydraulic disc brakes, which is not all that uncommon, but rather than going with a 180 mm rotor, they went with a larger diameter 203 mm rotor. Now, what that does is it allows for cooling to be improved on the braking process and ultimately that’s just going to give more time in between servicing. So, it’s going to have longer pad life on your brake pads, um better heat management on the rotor, and ultimately just give you more efficient braking. Now, on top of that, the drivetrain, the brakes, let’s move up to the saddle and the cockpit area. All right, so this is Ama’s branded saddle. aside from just the nice tan um leather look that it has. It has a nice 10 in by 11 in um platform here. So, it’s a nice big saddle, but if you see that the nose end is pretty narrow pretty quickly, it still allows you to pedal without rubbing the insides of your thighs raw while you’re doing so. Now, aside from having a lot of cushion as well, we have two spring supports on the bottom side and a hand like grab position so you can lift up the bike if you need to from a position instead of trying to grab from a rack or a frame part. You have another spot right here to grab it. Um, which for some people’s back could be a nice thing where they don’t want to bend over and pick it up. They have it right here at their standup height. Now, this has adjustability here in the seat post through the quick release lever. You simply just undo it, pull it up, put it to where you want, and tighten it back in place, and it’s good to go. Now, moving up front, we have suspension on this bike. And this suspension is from SR Sunour. It’s a coil spring fork with 75 mm of travel. It has a lockout feature where if I flip this switch right here, it will prevent it from um you know manipulating the suspension. And if I unlock it, that allows the suspension to kind of come back in place and work. Now, this has a through axle up front, so that’s a nice solid connection point for that wheel to fork. We have uh chrome stansions on here, 32 mm. If we move up into more of where the riding is or some people call the cockpit on an ebike, we have all of our cable management coming off of the controls like our pedal assist buttons, our brake levers, which by the way, our brakes do have e- cutff sensors, meaning that if you’re using throttle or pedal assist, and you apply any kind of braking pressure, that’s going to send an electrical signal to the motor to cut power, which is just a nice safety feature. If you’re going fast and you have an unexpected moment where you have to break, you’re not going to be fighting or having to remember to turn off any power. You just hit the brakes, everything shuts down and allows you to come to a safe stop. But soon as you let go of those, the power can come right back on. It’s just there for in the- moment safety, which is a nice feature. Now, the bar here itself is a kind of Dutch City Cruiser style. It’s more upright, swept up, swept back, letting you sit upright when you ride the bike. Um, on both ends, we have the uh tan leather grips. We have the Tekro brake levers on both sides. We have our controls for our turn signals and headlights. Here we have a button for the headlight. And then we have a toggle switch for the turn signal. And then we have our horn button as well. It’s an electrical horn. Also over here we have our Shimano 8-speed shift trigger shifters under the bar with a little window to tell you what gear you’re in. Um on this side we have our push throttle that you can push with your finger or thumb while you’re riding the bike. And then our pedal assistance and display button management is through these up, down, and power buttons right here on the um pedal assist buttons. Now, the thickest part of this handlebar is 31.8 mm, and that’s where the display and the stem attach. And the stem itself is adjustable from 10° all the way to 80°. And like I said earlier, that will kind of let you dial in a fit that works for you based on your arm length, your comfort level, all sorts of factors that you find will just help you fit better. You can move this adjustable stem around and just dial in a good fit for you. Now, on top of that, we have the Buffang display in the center. Now, there is no app for this. So, let’s take a close look at the Buffang display and see what you can control in the display itself. All right, guys. So, this is the home screen on the Buffang display that goes on the Santa Monica. As you can see, it’s a pretty simple layout as far as the screen. It’s a nice big colorful display, easy to read, nice big speed numbers in the center. We do have one single power button right here that you can use here or here to turn on the bike on the pedal assist control pad. And you can’t really see it on camera, but I might be able to pull it out. Well, maybe not. There’s a weatherproof cover, weatherproof cover here that covers a USB typeA slot, so you can charge your devices while they’re on a phone mount on the bike. Um, so let’s go into some of just the displays and basics that we have on the screen here. So, in the top right, we have our time of day, which is currently incorrect. It’s not 11:00 p.m., but you do have your time of day when you set that correctly. Top left we have the mode that it’s in. And right now it says throttle enabled and class two. So that means this bike will go to throttle and pedal assist to 20 m an hour. And I’ll show you in just a second how to change between class 1, 2, 3, and the unrestricted mode. So moving down, we have our speed in the center in miles hour, but of course we can change that units to kilometers if we want to. And I’ll show you how to do that in just a second. The bottom left here, we have the trip meter, which is currently at 138 miles. The right side is going to be the wattage, but it’s real time. So, as you’re pedaling the bike, if you’re pedaling lightly, you might see somewhere around 100, 150 watts. Pedaling harder, you might see, you know, something over 700 watts, just depending on how hard you’re pedaling. That will dynamically just change as you go. Now, in the center, that zero is going to be our pedal assist level we’re on. But, as I kind of move through the toggles here, you can see that number will change. There’s five levels of pedal assist. Down below it is the battery remaining percentage. So, it’s got a visual bar and a number. So, right now, 68% remaining. And if I tap the power button, not hold it, but just tap it, it’ll cycle through some other data. So, I tap it once, we get the odometer. Again, we get the max speed, which is about 36 miles an hour. Average speed, 14, and our range. That would be if we were currently riding. I can turn it on there. So, that’s going to show 26 mi in PAS2 with 68% left. But this does rapidly change based on your riding habits for that ride. So when I was riding yesterday and doing max speed and all these other things throughout the week, that was probably lowering that overall efficiency because I was just kind of pushing its limits, seeing what it could and could not do. But in theory, as you change this, that changes and it should match roughly how you’ve been treating the bike. So I’ll tap it again. We get our cadence, which is the pedal rotation per minute, and we get our time in minutes we’ve spent on the bike. So almost 600 minutes on the bike right now. And then now we’re back to the trip meter. So let’s talk about some other basics. On the pad over here on the left, we have our up and down pedal assist buttons and our power button. But if I hold the up, I’ll get the headlight on and off. If I hold the down, I can get the walk assistance where the bike will crawl at about a 2 to 3 mph pace to allow you to walk with it instead of you pulling it or pushing it. Now, if I hold both up and down, we get into advanced menus. Now, the first thing is going to say HMI settings, and we’ll click that one first. And this one gives us quite a few options. So, we have service tips. You can click this, and you can ask to turn on or off the service reminders. Right now, they’re on on. We’ll go to auto off. This is where you can adjust how long it takes the bike to power down once you walk away if you forgot to turn it off. So, right now, it’s set at 5 minutes. It’ll power down, but I could go all the way up to 10 minutes or I could have it off altogether and it would just stay on essentially until the battery died, I assume, or until I got back on it and then turned it off. So, we’ll leave that at 5 minutes. That’s a good time to keep, I think. Here you can reset the trip meter. Here you can adjust the brightness, but we are on a 100% right now. So, it doesn’t get any brighter than this, but I’ve had no trouble ever seeing this. And in brighter days with more direct sunlight, it looks even brighter. Maybe that’s just because of the display technology, but it’s very bright in natural light. So, I will click again. Here, you can set a password for the bike where you can choose a password that when someone turns the bike on, they don’t get into the display at all until they enter a four-digit passcode that you have set. Here, we can change that clock setting. Um, time of day. So, I don’t even know what time it is right now. Somewhere around 10:00 a.m. We’ll just say it’s 10:15. And that sets the clock. Now, we’ll go back here to the other menus. So, advanced settings. This is where you change class modes. So, this is where you will get a code from the company. You’ll have to enter it and then we will um be able to adjust class settings. So, I will go into that. And now we have class modes. So, as you can see, essentially five modes. Class one will be pedal assistance only to 20 mph. Class two will be pedal assistance and throttle to 20 mph. Class 3 will be the pedal assistance to 28 mph and throttle limited to 20 mph. So, a genuine class 3. AM mode is what I like to call a California compliant class 3. This will give you pedal assistance up to 28 mph, but no throttle at all. And so, depending on where you live, if they have some sort of local ordinance about having a throttle on your ebike, right here, you can change it to be compliant. Or if you’re on your private land and riding on areas that don’t have any restrictions, you could go to unlimited mode and have no restrictions on the throttle or pedal assist. Again, I just like the fact that they gave you all the options and said you figure it out based on where you live. Don’t let us restrict you. And I do appreciate that. So, let’s put it back to class 2. Just keep it where it was. Here, you can reset the password. And then here, we’ll go back. Information settings. This is going to give you information about the battery, the controller, um the display. Here, you can get error codes. Um, we don’t have any right now. Warning codes, we don’t have any right now. Um, if you want to get like a serial number or firmware number, you can go and get it in these areas right here. Um, so we’ll back out and go to language. Here you can change the language of the bike. Quite a few options as you can see. So, we will go down to back and then theme. This just allows you to pick a color, couple different color profiles and layouts of the screen. The one it’s on now I like the most, but I’ll show you what it changes to. Let’s just say we’ll do sporty. um because this is the last uh thing to show you in the display. And it says, “Are you sure you want to do that?” It’s going to restart. We’ll say yes. And as you can see, the bike will restart. And you’ll see it’ll pop up with that passcode and in a new color. So here we will just do the basic passcode of 0000. And you can see we have a whole new layout on the home screen. Batteries up here instead of below. Um, and as you tap the power button, you still get your screen data screens that will kind of scroll through and show you that. But really, that’s everything in the advanced settings and the basic settings of the bike. So, you’ve got lots of options and you’ve got all the controls for speed that you would need and the ability to switch between any class no matter where you are. Again, I just really like that feature. But all in all, nice display, easy to see, has USB charging, and I didn’t have any issues with it whatsoever. Just kind of goes with the theme. It’s been pretty pretty comfortable the whole way that I’ve been riding it. All right, guys. We’re out here on the AMA Santa Monica, and you’ve probably heard me mention it already this far in the review, but this is just a bike that surprised me. Um, at first glance, I thought it felt very offtheshelf, very, very typical looking of most ebikes that you see, especially in the direct to consumer market, the online eBike stores. And I expected the same type of results with the same type of look. Um, but it’s just surprised me in many ways. First things is it’s very, very comfortable. Now, that’s not shocking for a lot of ebikes, especially in this cruiser category, because they’re naturally upright and relaxed. But this one just feels really dialed in. I don’t know if it’s frame geometry. I don’t know if it’s angle I have of the stem. Maybe it’s just specific to me, but it feels really, really nice and feels really, really smooth and easy to ride, which is a good sign. Now, I’ve got it in class two mode, which you can see on the display, it says throttle enabled up top, and then it says class two below that, which, as you can see, if I hit the throttle, will take us up to 20 mph. Quite quick, by the way. It’s got nice punchy speed. So, it hits about 20.8 20.9 and just kind of hovers there as the max speed, which is good. Um, but let’s change it to class 3 and I’ll show you some other modes that are in here as well. So, I don’t know if you can see it, but we’ll do the advanced settings. Put in this code, and that will allow us to go to class 3 mode, but then you also see AM mode and unlimited. So, let’s do class 3 first. So, we’ll go back and we’ll exit. And now we’ll see it says throttle disabled class 3. So that feels like to me like a California class 3 compliant because um I believe in California they don’t do the throttle now over 20 mph. So let’s see. Let’s see what we get. So we have right. So we have no throttle at all even under 20 mph. And then when I hit the pedals let’s see if we get up to 28. It’s very very quick bike man. It’s fun. All right. So, pretty easily able to hit 28 miles an hour. But let’s also go to that other mode, AM mode, and then check the unlimited mode or unrestricted mode. But let me get past these pedestrians first. I don’t want to go flying past them at 25 milesPH. on your left. All right. So, let me get a little bit ahead here and we will change it to AM mode. So, I’ll hold up and down Go to advanced settings. Enter the code. Class mode. Now we’re in AM mode. So now it says throttle enabled and AM mode. So let’s see what we get. we get across this intersection here so we’re not having to stop immediately at the stop sign. And first I’ll try the throttle and then I will try pedal assist and see what they take us to. And then we’ll try that last mode unlimited and see what we get there. All right. So let’s just do throttle right now. We’re in pedal assist 5. We’re on throttle only. And so far throttle is carrying us to well looks like 20. Let’s try the pedals. Okay, so that’s definitely picking back up with pedals and 28 miles an hour. So let’s go to one more last mode they have here. So, it feels like AM mode is your true class 3. You got throttle to 20 and pedal assist to 28. And so, let’s go hold that one more time. Band settings again. Class mode unlimited. So, this should in theory be as much as the bike can give you overall. All right. So, throttle enabled, unlimited limit. So, let’s see what that does. First, let’s just do throttle. And we’re already at about 20 mph. We’re definitely on throttle going above 20. We’re at 25, 27. I’m going a little bit downhill here. So, it looks like about 27 28 miles an hour. Looks like you’re going to get full throttle usage to 28 mph in the unlimited mode. Now, you know, you guys are all responsible adults. They’ll let you figure out your local laws and whether or not you can do that. But it is cool to know that despite the restrictions a lot of bikes come with hardcoded, this says, “Hey, we’re going to let you have all the features. You set it to whatever your local laws, you know, apply to you, which is pretty cool.” So, let’s turn around and go back to the hill and see how this does on a hill climb. One thing I will say for it being like a cruiser style, just a relaxed bike that’s meant for city usage, casual riding, recreational riding, maybe commuting around town, it’s got some get up and go. It’s pretty punchy. It’s pretty quick. It’s a very quiet. I’ve not heard the motor at all. The torque sensor feels really good. Feels natural. And you can check that. I know it’s not really easy to hear or feel at home obviously, but I don’t know if you can see it on the display, but it says watts real time while I’m riding. And if I go light on the pedals, you see those watts start going down. But we’re still holding 12 mph, 150 watts there, 12 mph, 11 mph. But if I start pushing harder, slightly, even a little bit, just a little bit more pressure. Now it says 220 watts, and we’re going up to, you know, closer to 13. Little bit harder. 275, 300 watts. Now we’re at 14. So, as you can see, if I relax my pressure in my legs, it relaxes the power. And if I kind of increase that pressure, it starts increasing the speed and power. So, nice torque sensor. Hopefully, that gives a little bit of a a visual representation of what that torque sensor feels like. But, feels nice. That’s been the big surprise on this bike. It’s just it’s unsuspectingly it’s unsuspectingly comfortable. It’s unsuspectingly fast. Um but it doesn’t have to be. You can ride it as tame as you want. You just have that power on tap if you want it, which I think a lot of people will appreciate. It’s one thing to choose not to go a certain speed. It’s a whole another thing for a bike to tell you you can’t go a certain speed. So, I think some people will appreciate that. Now, when we go into this neighborhood here, there’s a small, not small, about a quarter mile climb, and it’s about anywhere from 5 to It’s anywhere from about 5 to 8% in grade, maybe 9% in some spots. Not huge, but some of the ebikes that we I take all of them up this hill. Some of them, you know, lose a little speed going up it and others don’t. Just depends on the bike. But let’s not do unlimited mode because we know that’s going to scream up it. Let’s do something more everyday. So, I’m going to go back to just say like a class standard class 3. All right. Okay. So, now we’ll just go to AM mode. Feel like it’s just a standard class 3. All right. So, now we are in pedal assist 5 and I’m just going to hit the throttle going up this hill. So, again, I don’t really hear the motor at all. Even being quiet, I just hear the wind and the hub, little bit of tires, but really there’s no noise. It’s just a pretty really really quiet bike. But as you can see, this throttle is set to go to 20 mph and it just holds right at 20 mph. A little dip there into 196 197. Now, if I do a little bit of pedaling pressure, I’m talking a little bit. I’m not doing much. I’m not pedaling super hard. I’m not getting out of breath. We’re holding now 23 miles an hour. And I’m riding really casually. I’m not I’m not putting a lot of effort into this. Now, if I put some effort into it, let’s see what it does. Now, I’m pushing kind of hard, but we’re increasing speed going uphill. So, plenty of power for this little nonsuspecting cruiser style ebike that generally, you know, based on looks, you would think these have a very tame personality, but this is kind of like an undercover tough guy. So, also coming out of the neighborhood stop sign here, we do have turn signals, which right here on my left side, I just flip that to the left. It is an audible beep to let me know it’s on, which is nice because some don’t do that and you forget they’re on. Let this car come. All right, let’s go downhill. I’ll turn off the turn signal now. The beep goes away. All right, so we’re going about 23 24 miles an hour and I’m just going to do an unexpected stop. There’s nobody behind me right now. 3 2 1. So nice, nice braking. It wasn’t super short. Um wasn’t super long. It felt like pretty standard ebike braking. I do like that they use 203 mm rotors. Um, they’re going to help with cooling and brake pad longevity, but the braking seems on par. The bike just feels really dialed in and surprisingly well done. So, let’s go back and talk about this from more of like a an ownership standpoint and the things that aren’t so clearly obvious when you’re looking at the website and trying to make a decision on what what you should or should not buy. Um, but again, the beauty of these is you can’t buy them online. You, you know, you go to one of their local partners and you’re able to ride this and kind of feel these things that I’m talking about and that’ll help you determine whether this is or is not for you, which is kind of cool. So, let’s go back and put it up on the stand and we’ll talk about that. All right, guys. Let’s talk about this less from a review standpoint and more from a potential ownership standpoint. What are the things that the reviewers aren’t going to say out there, the product pages aren’t going to say on the website that when you buy the bike and you get it home, do you realize you wish you would have known about? I’ll kind of go over some things maybe you didn’t notice that are good and some things that just I found through the course of my review that might be beneficial to you or at least just to be aware of so you don’t feel blindsided if you do make this purchase. So, first things first, the kind of elephant in the room here is that the bike’s just really well done. I don’t have a lot of bad things to say about it, but I do have some things to caution you about. As far as the good though, I like the fact that they have one, two, three, four, five, six mounting points on these fenders. So, not only are they composite, they can kind of take a beating, but they’re really nicely secured. They never rattled on me going on gravel roads. I never heard anything out of them. They’re just nice, solid in place, lightweight, don’t make any noise, and secured really well to the rest of the bike. I like the fact that there’s frame integrated tail lights, brake lights, and turn signals. What that means for you is no wires going along the the frame and clipping on a light somewhere that you’re going to ultimately maybe knock off or have to deal with the the wires coming off of them. Everything is frame integrated, built into the frame. It’s clean, it’s nice looking, and it’s out of the way and kind of does not give you any headaches along the way. On top of that, we have a through axle support on the front fork here that makes it easier to remove and replace the tire. Plus, it’s a more solid connection point for that forkto-he um relationship. Now, on top of that, one thing I will go into as far as the things you should be aware of. So, first things first, there is a small film protectant here on the chain stay to protect that chain slap. Um, it’s not full coverage, but it does cover the majority of the area. You may want to consider just extending that film just a little bit so you have some more coverage there. Now, the one thing I will caution you about that I kind of teased earlier in the battery section that I think is just fair to point out. Part of the reviews when I do these is I go over all the user reviews I can find on the internet. So, I look for people and I look for consistent themes that people are not happy with in a bike. And on this bike, the only consistent theme I found was about the battery. And it wasn’t about performance. It wasn’t about its ability or range. It was about kind of a quirk. And that quirk is is if you leave this bike on the charger beyond 100%. Anything after about 10 to 15 minutes, it’ll put the battery into a sleep mode. Now, that may be a part of the battery management system to protect it, but people said they had to physically remove the battery and hit a button to wake it back up and put it back in the bike. Now, personally, I did not have that problem, not even once. So, I read that this was something that was being addressed a while back, and maybe they’ve addressed it, which is why I didn’t deal with it. But I just want to put it out there. It seems fair to put it out there. I found those negative reviews about it. Um, but again, I never had that problem and I think that problem may be fixed, but it’s only fair to share with you guys. Aside from that, the other positive thing I found that it was very consistent was that AMA as a brand is very attentive and responsive to customer service. Now, if you have been shopping for ebikes, especially in the direct to consumer, meaning you go online, you make a purchase, they send the bike to your house. if you have a problem. Many brands struggle with the reputation about the customer service, especially online in user reviews. You can’t really control user reviews. And if there’s a theme of bad customer service, you can kind of find that in reviews. And so, when there’s a theme of good customer service, it’s definitely worth giving a nod to them and you and letting you know that at least they have a good reputation of getting back quickly and taking care of their customers. I know for some people that goes a long way, and that’ll be a nice piece of mind. And so, that’s a good feature this has. And then finally, there’s just not a lot bad to say about it. I kind of gave you the two things that I found. And other than that, the good news about this bike, not ordering it online to your house, is you have to go get it at a local dealer. And that way, you’ll be able to see this in person, check it out yourself, sit on it, ride it, make sure it fits, feels good for you. And at the end of the day, I think you’re going to be happy with the Santa Monica. All right, guys. There you have it. The AMA Santa Monica. Like I said in the intro, the first ebike I’ve ever presented to you where I can’t say click the link below and go buy one because, well, you can’t. You can go click the link below and check out all the details yourself, but you’ll need to get with one of their 400 service providers to find a dealer near you, which there are several near me and all in the general region that I’m in and 400 across the US. You’ll probably find something that works for you. Now, on top of that, I really, really liked this bike. And in fact, everybody in the office who rode it really liked it as well. Now, go back through all my videos for the last year. You don’t hear me say that too often. That’s because it doesn’t happen too often. A lot of bikes are good and they’re kind of standard off-the-shelf typical bikes that compete with each other on a pretty same plane level. But this one, something about it, everybody just liked the way it rode, the motor, the power, the no noise, the comfort. It’s just a really welldone, easy to ride, good-looking cruiser. And if that’s something you’re looking for, you should definitely check this out. Now, is it perfect? No. But like I always say, no ebike is perfect. I don’t love the fact that you have to contact customer service to unlock it to the class 3 speeds. I think I’d rather just see some sort of liability disclaimer checkbox in the display that would let me say, “Okay, I agree. I’m going to adhere to my local laws.” I don’t like asking a customer service agent to unlock it for me. But with that small gripe aside, again, the only negative reviews I could find about this bike that were consistent were people saying the battery would go into sleep mode when it’s charging past fully charged and you had to take it out to kind of wake it back up. But I, like I said, I didn’t have that problem and that may be because it’s already fixed because the brand has already acknowledged that they are fixing that. So, with that said, I really enjoyed this bike and I do think this will be on our best list for 2025 because it was one of the best cruisers that we saw in 2025. Now, if you have questions about the Amos Santa Monica that you’d like answered that I did not cover, drop a comment down below. I’ll be sure to get you that information. And until the next review, I’ll see you out on the trail.
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🔗 Read the full written review: https://electricbikereview.com/aima/aima-santa-monica-review/
The AIMA Santa Monica is one of the most impressive cruiser e-bikes we’ve tested in 2025. With beach-cruiser styling, a smooth and powerful Route 66 motor (AIMA x Bafang), 74Nm of torque, a responsive torque sensor, and riding modes up to 28 MPH, this bike delivers far more performance than its laid-back looks suggest.
In this review, we break down ride feel, power, real-world range testing (56 miles in PAS 1 and 32 miles in PAS 5), comfort, components, and why AIMA’s “test ride before you buy” retail model actually works. The Santa Monica also includes daily-use features like a MIK rack, fenders, bright lighting with brake lights and turn signals, UL 2849 safety certification, and water-resistance ratings up to IPX6/IPX7.
If you want a cruiser e-bike that blends style, smooth power, comfort, and real capability, the AIMA Santa Monica is one of the best options of 2025.
#ebikes #electricbikes #AIMA #cruiserbikes
00:00 – Intro
00:48 – Overview
08:08 – Motor & Battery
14:18 – Components
18:53 – Display
25:54 – Ride Quality
38:10 – Mechanic’s Take
42:06 – Conclusion
