First ride: Tern NBD | electric bike reviews, buying advice and news

Today Tern has launched the NBD, a bike it describes as “an urban e-bike designed to deliver the simple joy of riding to a much wider range of riders.” It continues a move by Tern into more and more compact city bikes; the recently-unveiled Quick Haul was still more or less a cargo bike, albeit a much smaller machine than the GSD that Tern started its range with, but the NBD isn’t: it’s a low-step city bike that’s not designed around a rider that wants to carry huge amounts of stuff. We’ve had a sample bike ahead of the launch, so stay tuned for our thoughts on the bike.

So, who is it designed for? “To the average rider, the NBD will be an amazingly easy-to-handle, easy-to-ride bike that fits wonderfully into crowded urban settings,” stated Josh Hon, Tern Team Captain. “But what gets us really excited about the NBD are the special features we’ve added for riders that aren’t conventionally ‘average’. For riders that are smaller in size and have a hard time finding a bike that fits, or older riders who might not have ridden a bike in a while, or riders who might have balance or physical issues, or riders who are just intimidated by the sheer size and weight of the average e-bike, the NBD will be refreshingly easy to hop aboard and ride.”

The main goal of the NBD, then, is to design a bike that’s easy to use and ride. Tern has kept to the 20” wheels it uses right across its ebike range, and that gives the bike a low center of gravity. The ultra-low-step frame offers “the lowest, longest step-through opening of any premium e-bike”, according to Tern. At just 39cm the stepover certainly is very low, making the bike really easy to get on and off, especially if you have limited mobility. The low bottom bracket also means that it’s easy to get your feet down when you’re at a standstill, and custom big-platform flat pedals are easy to find with your feet. 

It’s not an especially light ebike at over 23kg, but with the weight low down it’s easy to handle when you’re pushing it about. It’s only if you have to lift it that you’ll really feel the weight. Tern says the NBD will fit riders from 147cm up to 190cm, and it’s primarily designed for the smaller end of that bell curve. Riders who have trouble finding a bike that fits will do well here; we’ve given a few small riders a go and they all found it very easy to get on with. At the other end of the scale, I’m 188cm and had no trouble riding the NBD. There’s plenty of length in the seatpost, and the Andros stem allows you to get a bit of extra length in the reach if you need it. It’s a pretty short riding position if you’re tall, but it’s perfectly workable.

Like all Tern ebikes it’s city-friendly as standard. The NBD has a full chain case, hub gearing, full mudguards, a rack, a nurse’s lock and front and rear lighting as standard. There are two builds: The P8i is the cheaper of the two at £4,000: that build has a 400Wh battery powering a Bosch Active Line Plus motor with 50Nm of torque. At the back there’s an 8-speed Shimano Nexus hub. The more expensive S5i (£4,700) gets Shimano’s ebike-specific 5-speed Nexus hub, with a Gates CDX Carbon belt drive and Bosch’s 63Nm Performance Line motor, with a 500Wh battery. Our sample bike is S5i spec, but with the smaller battery. 

The NBD isn’t a cargo bike but that doesn’t mean you can’t carry anything. The bike is EFBE rated for a 140kg load (including rider), and the Gaia rear rack can take 27kg. It’ll work with a range of child seats, and you can also fit Tern’s Market Basket, or the Bucketload panniers, or both. At the front there’s the same two-hole mount that the rest of the Tern range uses, meaning you can fit the Transporteur or Hauler racks at the front too. So you can easily do your grocery shopping, or take a child to nursery, or just carry some stuff to work. The single-sided kickstand limits how much of a load you’ll want to subject the NBD to; there will be a double-sided stand available as an option. You can’t fit a seatpad, or the larger seat options that Tern offers for the bigger bikes, as the track isn’t rated for them.

One of Tern’s USPs across its whole ebike range is the ability to store the bikes in less space than you’d expect. The handlebars on the NBD fold down, the seatpost is easy to drop and the bike will stand on its end, on four feet on the back of the rack. That means it’s much easier to store indoors if you don’t have a garage or shed to stick it in. It also means the bike is much easier to get into the back of a car; the low height of the 20” wheels helps there too, and you’ll get the NBD in many family cars with the back seats down without having to dismantle anything.

I’ve had a couple of weeks living with the NBD, and like all of Tern’s bikes I’ve found it to be well-thought-through and nicely made. The riding position has worked for everyone I’ve put on the bike, and even riders who aren’t particularly confident have found it to be a very easy bike to ride. Tern has gone with the Intuvia display on the bike instead of the Purion, and I think that’s a good move: you get a nice big display in a more central position, and the remote makes it easy to change assistance modes. The Purion, for all that it’s nice and compact, isn’t the easiest to use. 

The Gates/Nexus transmission should require very little maintenance, and the 263% range at the rear, though not as wide as the 307% from the cheaper 8-speed hub, is plenty for pretty much anything thanks to the powerful Performance Line motor. I never has any issues with lack of power, and nor did anyone that I lent the bike to, even on the steep hills of Bath. Even with the smaller 400Wh battery, and a lot of time in turbo mode on long hills, range wasn’t an issue at all. Tern gives a range estimate that’s about the same for both bikes, with the more powerful motor using more battery. Depending on how you use the bike, it says you can expect between 50km and 110km on one charge; around here, with a heavy rider, you’ll be very much at the bottom end of that estimate, but even then it’s plenty: this isn’t a bike that you’ll be planning to go long-distance touring on. Urban and leisure riding is much more its thing. 

The NBD is nice and comfortable, with an upright riding position and big tyres. The bike has a rigid fork rather than the Suntour suspension fork you’ll find elsewhere in the range, but it doesn’t suffer for it. The bike has a well-padded saddle and a suspension seatpost, though our pre-production seatpost had the wrong spring in and was very spongy. That’s being sorted for the production bikes. It feels like a bike that would benefit from a dropper ‘post in place of the suspension unit: that would allow even easier access to the bike, and it means you can drop the saddle to get your feet down when you stop. It’s something that Cannondale has done with the Adventure Neo to good effect. 

That bike is in many ways a direct competitor, as is the Specialized Como; there are some other really good low-step bikes out there – HNF-Nicolai UD3, Riese & Müller Nevo – at the premium end of the market too. At a minimum of £4,000 this is certainly a premium bike, and if you don’t need some of the Tern’s more specific selling points – the very low step, very low centre of gravity and small footprint when stored, for example – then you can get a lot of bike elsewhere for this kind of money. Cube’s top-of-the-range Kathmandu, for example, gets the most powerful Bosch motor, a huge 750Wh battery, a high-quality Rock Shox fork and the newest display, the Bosch Kiox, for £4,399. So who should be looking at the NBD? Certainly anyone that finds that bikes tend to be too big: this is a really great bike for smaller riders. Anyone that’s looking for minimum maintenance and a high-quality build should certainly put it on the list too. And if you have mobility issues that mean a diamond frame is out of the question, then this is about as low a step as a mid motor bike can have, and it’s really easy and pleasant to ride.

Tern NBD P8i £4,000

Tern NBD S5i £4,700