Review: Santa Cruz Skitch

last year, a spokesperson from Santa Cruz Bikes, the overwhelmingly cool (and kind of pricey) mountain bike company from coastal California, emailed me to say that the company had a bike that he thought I would love.

That bike was the Skitch. I have never responded so fast to an email in my life. It is the perfect bike (for me). My tester is the version with flat handlebars. (You can also get it with drop handlebars, like a real road bike.) It has an extremely lightweight carbon fiber frame that houses an equally lightweight 450-watt Fazua 60 motor, with a 430-watt-hour battery. That battery is not super powerful, but with a range of up to 60 miles it just gives me a little bit of punch to make it up steep hills.

It is a high-end bike for people who love biking but don’t take themselves too seriously. I’m so happy that companies like Santa Cruz make great electric bikes. When you’re riding a bike made by people who like bikes, it’s a reminder that biking is pure joy, and not just a chilly, carless slog from one destination to the next. With that said, I love this bike with all my heart, but I have to admit that you could probably get nearly the same functionality with the Specialized Turbo Vado SL (9/10, WIRED Recommends) for several grand less. Since the Specialized has been out for longer, you might find one used for even cheaper.

Photograph: Will Matsuda

You don’t see the Fazua system very often. I asked Garen Becker, Santa Cruz’s brand manager, why the company picked the system. It's notable for its light weight, small size, and battery efficiency. “Also, Fazua's been great to deal with,” Becker said in an email. “We've got thousands of miles and nearly a million feet of climbing on the system across various bikes, and we've been able to work alongside Fazua to improve their power delivery and analytics app, which is cool.”

The best part about the Fazua system is that it’s so unobtrusive. I did use a phone mount to look at the Fazua app, which to be honest is merely OK. But you don’t have to use it at all. There’s a toggle on the left handlebar grip that you use to flick the bike on or flick through different assistance levels. Near the right handlebar grip, it has teeny-tiny buttons so you can easily click up and down through a very fancy electronic SRAM transmission to shift.

Photograph: Will Matsuda

It’s a class-3 ebike, which means it can assist up to 28 miles per hour. As a biker, I find nothing to be more hilarious than riding the tail of a Dodge Challenger who pulled out in front of me at a corner, assuming (wrongly) that I’d be much slower than he is. I do have to say here that you still need to know how to bike. You can't just toggle up the assistance to the max and expect to get anywhere—you need to know how to upshift and downshift, and you will need to pedal. It just gives you that little bit of extra push to make it to the top without having trembly little typewriter legs. It does what the best ebikes do—makes you feel a little stronger than you have a right to be.

Photograph: Will Matsuda

Photograph: Will Matsuda

The Skitch is technically a road bike, and it doesn’t have suspension. But it’s still plenty capable of riding through the park. I did multiple laps on a cyclocross circuit near my house with hills, banked turns, and single-track, ignoring all the disc golfers shouting at me as I passed. It is not as fun or comfy as riding a full-suspension bike, but it's lighter. I'm not an expert mountain biker, but I found it plenty fun enough. This is the perfect bike for people who bike to work and want to have enough power and battery to take a swing through the park on the way home.

Photograph: Will Matsuda

I stopped monitoring the range after about 30 miles, but the battery indicator on the top tube said that I still had about 30 percent of the battery left. (I weigh 115 pounds, so your mileage may vary.) You can also select drop handlebars if you plan on doing more bike commuting, or add suspension to a setup with flat bars if you want to ride more rocks and bumps. My tester also had a dropper seat post, which lets me raise or drop the seat as I come to stoplights or go up hills. I am pretty sure every bike (commuter, mountain, everything) should have one.

Photograph: Will Matsuda

There is one major drawback to having a gorgeous, expensive bike that can go anywhere and do anything. When your bike is your primary mode of transportation, you do things like leaving it locked up in front of the Grocery Outlet (known locally as "the Gross Out") to run errands. Even with all the best security measures, I really cannot make myself do that with a $7,000 bike. If you’re going to use it as a bike commuter, you are probably biking 12 miles to an office with a locked, indoor bike garage, then straight home to your own garage. You are not taking it as a car substitute to karaoke night at the dive bar.

I have also read on Reddit that people have concerns about the Fazua system, as it's much less common here in the United States and harder to fix. You could go with a Bosch or a Shimano, but it won't be as light. I have decided not to care about this. In general, you're probably going to have to go directly to the manufacturer or dealer to get an electric bike fixed, anyway.

The app is just meh. It's not pleasant to look at or navigate, and it's always telling me to update, urgently, in a process that’s much less intuitive than Specialized’s Mission Control. Mission Control is also a little more useful, as it will automatically adjust the power output to help you make it home. However, the Skitch is light enough that it doesn't really matter if you run out of battery. The app may also improve dramatically in the upcoming years, as Santa Cruz has direct and continuing input on the app's development.

Why would you get this instead of a Specialized Turbo Vado SL? Maybe having a high-end carbon frame, and shaving off a couple pounds, is really important to you. It's one of the lightest ebikes around, but it's only a few pounds lighter than the Turbo Vado SL.

Photograph: Will Matsuda

But I’m not going to discount manufacturer cachet and looks. As someone who made a little whoop sound when I got the email offering a tester, bikes are a vibe. Even the name, the Skitch, is cooler. Riding a Specialized means you’re a Lululemon girlie whose barre classes don’t let her keep up with her tech-bro cyclist boyfriend. But riding a Santa Cruz, in this fun matte forest green? You have retro steeze. “It's a Skitch!!!” you can scream at the disc golf bros as you leave them in the dust. You probably wear jorts with Vans. You definitely attend one secret skate night, or at least you know where it is.

All of this to say, the Specialized is probably a wiser financial choice, but you cannot argue with matters of the heart, and the Skitch has mine. If I had a 10-mile commute each way and a good layaway plan, I would get one of these in a second.