How we test
This page exists so you can judge our work rather than trust it. It describes exactly what we do, what we do not do, and where the limits of our evidence are.
What our reviews are — and aren't
Every review and guide on this site is research-based. We compare published manufacturer and retailer specifications, check road-legal status against Australian rules, and verify whether a bike can actually be bought here with local warranty support.
We have not ridden these bikes. We have not measured range on a test loop, weighed a frame, timed a charge or braked from 25 km/h with a stopwatch. Plenty of sites imply otherwise; we would rather tell you where our knowledge stops.
How bikes get chosen
A bike gets into a guide when it passes all four of these:
- Australians are looking for it. We start from what people actually search for in this market, not from what pays best.
- You can buy it here. There must be an Australian seller, or a manufacturer who ships here. Where we could not confirm one, the page says so — we leave the bike in with a warning rather than quietly dropping it, because "why can't I find this?" is itself the answer a reader needs.
- Its specifications are published. If we cannot source the battery capacity or the motor rating from the manufacturer or the retailer, we cannot compare it honestly.
- Its legal position is clear. Where a bike is sold in configurations that cross the 250W line, the guide states which configuration it is talking about.
Commission rates play no part in this list, and cannot: as of today we have no commission arrangements at all.
How specs and prices are checked
Prices, battery capacity, motor ratings and weights are taken from the retailer or manufacturer page for that exact model and recorded with the date they were checked. That date appears on every guide and review, separately from the date the page was last edited — because rewriting a paragraph does not re-verify a price.
Where two sources disagree, or where we can no longer reach the source, we mark the figure unverified and show no number at all. Once the primary retailer confirms a current figure, we restore it with a fresh checked date. An unverified figure is more useful to you than a confident wrong one.
The last site-wide specification check was .
How we assess road-legal status
Every bike gets one of three labels — road legal, conditional, or not road legal — based on the motor rating and assist cut-out in the configuration sold in Australia, checked against the 250W continuous / 25 km/h rule and the certification requirements that apply.
Two things we are careful about. First, a bike can be legal in one configuration and illegal in another, and we label the configuration rather than the brand. Second, states differ, and we do not flatten those differences into a single national claim. Our reading of the rules, with sources, is on the Australian e-bike laws page.
The language rules we hold ourselves to
- We never write "we tested", "we rode" or "our measured range" for a bike we have not ridden.
- A manufacturer's range claim is always labelled as a manufacturer claim, never as a finding.
- Superlatives — cheapest, longest range, best-selling — need a stated scope and a date, or they get rewritten.
- Pros and cons must be specific enough that they could not be pasted onto another bike.
- If we do not know something, the page says we do not know it.
Why we don't publish scores yet
Earlier versions of this site carried out-of-ten ratings. We have removed them. A score implies a repeatable scoring method, and a method that has never touched the bike cannot honestly produce one.
If we introduce scores again, this page will publish the criteria and their weightings first, and every score will state what it was based on. Until then you get a written verdict, a clear "best for", and an equally clear "avoid if".
How money works here
eBike Verdict does not sell bikes and has no stock, no showroom and no brand partnerships. We intend to fund the site through affiliate commissions, but as of today no affiliate or commission relationship with any retailer is in place. Retailer links on this site are editorial, not paid placements.
When that changes, three things happen: the affected links carry
rel="sponsored", each page carries a disclosure above the first such link, and
the partner is named on the affiliate disclosure page.
What we recommend will not change, because the selection criteria above do not include revenue.
When pages get updated
We revisit a page when any of these happen:
- A price we have published moves, or a bike goes out of stock or gets discontinued.
- A regulation changes in any state, or a certification requirement comes into force.
- A manufacturer revises the specification of a model we cover.
- A reader tells us something is wrong.
We do not roll the year forward in a title, or bump an "updated" date, unless the content behind it was genuinely re-checked. A false freshness date is a lie that happens to be machine-readable.
Corrections policy
If something here is wrong, we want to fix it, and we will say that we fixed it. Our policy:
- Factual errors about specifications, prices, availability or law are corrected as soon as we can verify the correct information.
- Where a correction changes a recommendation, the page records what changed and when — we do not edit silently.
- Where a claim turns out to be unverifiable rather than wrong, we remove the claim rather than soften it.
- Retailers and manufacturers get the same treatment as readers: evidence, not pressure, changes what we publish.
Send correction requests and supporting evidence to [email protected]. Please include the page URL and the primary source that supports the correction so we can verify it quickly.