Rock & Rolla
Bike review
A no-frills bike
Tern bicycle's recently-discontinued Eclipse P9 is a bike for beginners looking for comfort and ease of use on a 24" folding bike..
I made plans to outfit Michelle, my wife with a 24" folding bike and my choice was the Tern Eclipse P9.
Why? It has a nice price point (RM2.8K) with some really good features.
The "P" designate on Tern's bike denotes "premium" components.
This means the bike is packaged with lighter and better performing parts.
The Tern Eclipse P9 is one of five choices in the Eclipse family and it ranked fourth after the Eclipse P24h.
I picked this bike for its value for money as well as its design. Its aesthetically pleasing as well as it rides.
It took little effort to assemble the bike straight out of the box.
To get things rolling, I sent the bike to Master Johnny Ng's shop for a tune-up.
The shifter tension was set properly and Johnny had the intuition to mark the cable tension setting on the shifter's nob.
After the tune-up, we took it to a series of rides around the Putra Heights loop.
On the straight a flat road, this bike can easily clock up to 24km/h.
It takes little effort to cruise at that speed.
And the 9-speed transmission on the Eclipse made it easy to tackle hills and undulating terrain.
It takes a little getting used to when transiting from a 20" folding bike to a 24" ride.
I found the N-fold system really practical and fast, as the bike folds in a flash.
Lock-up on the physis 3 handlebar was also solid.
The disk brakes are pretty responsive after the tune-up and since its a mechanical system, maintenance is not expensive.
As premium-item, Tern packaged the bike with a set of Schwalbe Kojak 24 x 1.50 which is considered as one of the best for trekking bikes.