Orbea Katu E30
Small but perfectly formed, this city runaround makes light work of daily errands
The Orbea Katu E30 is a compact e-bike that packs a lot of practical performance into a small package. Compact bikes are aimed at city dwellers who want to make it easy for themselves to navigate the urban sprawl, hence the Katu features 20-inch wheels that offer quick acceleration and increased manoeuvrability in traffic. The bike’s small size and relatively low weight also make it easily portable, and ideal for carrying into apartments.
Performance-wise Orbea has gone for reliability with a Bosch mid-drive system consisting of an Active Line motor and a 400Wh frame-mounted battery. Yet while it’s always good to see a mid-drive motor at this price point, this is Bosch’s least powerful motor and one of its smallest-capacity batteries.
Luckily the Katu is a city bike made for errands, not a high-performance machine for scaling mountains or lugging hundreds of kilos of cargo, so the relatively modest performance of the motor will be in line with most riders’ typical usage. Plus Bosch is well known for the quality of its parts, so you should have peace of mind when it comes to reliability.
Practicality is at the heart of the design
– the Katu features eight hub gears, refined hydraulic disc brakes and an almost complete package for everyday riding in the form of powerful LED lights, mudguards and a beefy centre stand. It’s all useful stuff that should require a minimum of servicing. A rear rack is the only glaring omission from the spec list, although you can have one fitted easily enough. Instead the Katu comes with a capacious front wire basket as standard, which may negate the need to purchase panniers anyway.
Hopping aboard should be just as easy. The Katu has a single-size frame, as is common among compact e-bikes, but the adjustable bars and saddle mean it should suit a wide range of riders, from short to tall. All considered, it’s an easy bike to get along with and it ought to make city riding easily accessible, practical, stylish and fun. Just what you’d want from a compact e-bike.
From £2,199 orbea.com