400+ Mile Brompton Japan Tour (Bike Review)

400+ Mile Brompton Japan Tour (Bike Review)

Hello everyone, welcome back to the channel. Today we are going to do a review of this Brmpton. I just got back from a 400 plus mile bike ride around Japan on this exact bike with almost this exact setup. So, let’s get right into it and I’m going to tell you what I liked and didn’t like about this bike. [Music] Currently, we are not in Japan unfortunately. We are here in New York. I got back from the trip a couple weeks ago. It was amazing. Some of you may have seen my day in the life video that I posted. I have more content coming, more daily ride video content I’m going to be posting, but I wanted to get this video out first as a follow-up to the other video I made that was a preview of riding this bike in Japan. And now that I’ve done it, I kind of want to go through and talk about the pros and cons of riding a Brmpton, specific pieces that I upgraded on the bike, whether or not they worked out, give you guys a full tour. Well, the bike is still very much in the exact same shape and condition that it was when I was riding in the country previously. Is am I getting kicked out? Hello. So, I wanted first to start talking about kind of like overall impressions. First thing I’m going to say is that this bike was awesome. Straight out of the gate, I’m going to give it a glowing review and say that I really, really enjoyed riding this bike on a long-distance trip across the country. It pretty much never let me down. As you see it right here, this is pretty much the exact same setup I rode. The only thing that’s different is the saddle currently, which I’ll also explain in a minute. There’s even dirt on it from Japan. That’s how fresh off the plane it is. My first topic is going to be comfortability. Now, this is something I was a little concerned about. I’m used to riding a full-size bike. I’ve done several tours on my full-size bike. I ride this Brmpton around town, but it’s not something that I I’ve ever done more than maybe, let’s say, 20ish miles on. doing 400 on it is a pretty big jump. Overall, I would say the comfortability was like a 9 out of 10. And that sounds kind of crazy. I’m kind of can’t even believe I’m saying that. The seating position on this bike is a little bit more upright. You’re not as like hunched over forward. You’re more kind of like sitting upright on this one. Maybe that has something to do with it. My usual pressure points, which are like butt, hands, you know, knees, uh I would say are kind of the three for me. I never really had an issue outside of your kind of daily, you know, wear and tear and irritation that you’re going to be feeling when you’re doing anything that’s long distance and a little bit more extreme. Some people might ride this bike and have a horrible experience, but for me, it was quite comfortable and uh I would very much do another tour on this bike for many other reasons as well. Now, it was comfortable, but let’s get into the first downside of the bike and that is its overall speed. I’m going to give the speed rating overall, I’m going to give it a five out of 10. I am not a fast rider. Most days I was averaging around 8 to 9 m an hour. I knew going into this ride that I was going to be riding slowly on touring. I like riding slow. It’s not really the kind of thing where I try to pack in as much mileage as I can per day. I like to take it slow and enjoy it. However, this bike kind of took it to a new level. It is quite slow. That’s due to a couple factors, right? The obvious is just the gear ratios and the tires. You know, you can only go so fast on the bike because you can only put so much power down. Front bag really acted as a sail. And this is nothing wrong with this specific bag itself. Anytime you have a Brmpton bag that’s on the front like that, kind of just a a giant plane and if you’re running into a a headwind, it’s going to slow you down. So, that coupled with the tires, coupled with the gear ratio, uh made this bike very, very slow. And that being said, if you take the bags off of it, you’re riding downhill, you’re riding in other areas, it can be a very fast bike. The way I was riding it and the situation I was in and the setup that I had on it, not a fast bike. Account for the fact that you’re going to be significantly slower probably than you would be on a normal bike. One of the plus sides I would say is actually the overall stability of the bike. Again, this is something that I was worried about, but I would give the overall stability an N out of 10. And I that sounds crazy maybe, but the bike is obviously small, the front tire is small, a little bit twitchy sometimes, but I found that while riding this bike, especially with the weight, I had no issues with stability the entire time while I was riding. I did one day where I rode for almost 9 hours in the rain the entire time. Uh, never had a single slip, never had the bike lose any form of control going uphill, going downhill, going off curbs, bad pavement, good pavement. Uh, never had an issue with that. Um, I had no issues hitting high speeds going downhill with this bike. It just was completely stable. Never had any moment where I was like, “Oh my god, I’m about to crash.” Because of the bike being unstable. Super impressed by the stability of the small bike, especially given that I was nervous going into it about the small tires. The final general overview topic I wanted to hate here was convenience. This is a pretty obvious one. It gets a 10 out of 10 for convenience. Bike folds up small. We all know this. It’s the key feature of the Brmpton. I just can’t stress enough how lovely it was to be able to get this bike into a hotel, get this bike into a train, get it anywhere I needed to get it without ever having to worry, oh, is it going to be weird? Is there going to be a problem with it? Is it going to take up too much space? Is it going to be too dirty? I never had those thoughts. The Vincita bike bag, which I’m going to review in my bike bag video, but a little preview here, was one of my favorite bags of the whole trip. It was so easy to get the bike to go from bike mode to fold mode and then put it in this bag. Some people don’t even realize that it’s a bike. Hotel rooms in Japan are quite small, so when this thing’s folded up and put properly in the bag and put in the corner of the room, you barely even know it’s there. I took the bike multiple times on many trains, but specifically what I wanted to talk about in this video, too, was taking it on the bullet train. I had no issues with it. You have to have a bike bag to take a bike on a train in Japan. Any train. Non-negotiable. The bike has to be in a bag. You can break this thing down, put it into a bag in 2 minutes tops. Now, as long as you’re being respectful and careful and keeping the bike in the bag and making sure everything’s clean and safe, you’re not going to have any issues with it. The bullet train specifically, taking a full-size bike on the train can be very difficult. There are sections at the ends of the train cars that are reserved for oversized luggage. So, you can reserve that ticket if it’s available and fit your luggage there, but it’s not a guarantee you’re going to get that ticket. So, it it’s always kind of a a challenge bringing a full-size bike with this, I was able to put the bag at my feet. I’m a pretty tall guy. I’m 6’1. Bullet trains have tons of leg room. So, I was able to sit comfortably and have the bike in front of me and in my two bags, the front bag and the back bag were able to fit into the overhead kind of containers of the train no problem. As long as you’re being respectful of the people around you and making sure that it’s not infringing upon anyone’s space, it was a really a really pleasant experience, actually. Okay, we’re now we’re going to get into some of the specific parts that I upgraded for this bike and talk about how that worked out while I was on the ride. First, we’re going to talk about the drivetrain. As I talked about in my preview video, I stepped the chain ring down to a 44 to smaller chain ring that comes stock with the Brmpton, which allows you to have kind of a lower gear ratio, which is better for hill climbing. I would say overall definitely happy with the choice. I did multiple decent hill climbs. some longer hills in the mountains and I can confidently say that it would have been significantly harder to do this ride if I hadn’t stepped down that chain ring. This is not a hill climb bike. It’s not made for that. It’s a four-speed. This is a city bike that’s made for doing commuting and and and around town riding. There was like maybe one or two times where I had to get off the bike and walk it. Mostly because it was probably either really windy or way too steep. I planned the trip around not having massive amounts of elevation. And so it would always kind of get to that point where I was like, “Okay, I think I’m at my limit.” And then the hill would kind of end and I would be okay. So I would say that the step down chain ring situation, I give that an 8 out of 10 for being the correct decision to make for a trip like this. Okay, next I want to talk about a surprise star of this bike, and that is this little kickstand here. I don’t remember the exact price of it. I’ll put it on screen now, but I got it on Amazon. I was not expecting much out of this. Kickstands, I think, are an essential piece of kit when doing a tour. They just come in handy so many times when you have bags on the bike and you need to stop constantly and you don’t want to have to lay the bike over and lean it on something and risk it falling over. And the construction on the thing seemed decent. I had no idea it was going to last, but I never had the bike fall over once. This thing with stood the entire time. I have to give this little kickstand a 9 out of 10. It’ll be something that’s going to stay on my bike permanently. It folds fine with the bike. It doesn’t get in the way. It looks nice. Definitely a surprise hit of the trip. Next, we’re going to talk about the pedals on the bike. I wasn’t really planning on talking about these and to be honest before I set off on this trip, I didn’t even really think twice about the pedals. These are the standard ones that come with the Brmpton, so I did no changes to them. And I didn’t even really think twice about upgrading them. It wasn’t even on my list of things to do. However, if I was ever to do another tour with this bike, I would put different pedals on the bike. These were fine, but I had two major issues with them. Issue number one is that there’s not that much grip on them. Granted, I didn’t have the best shoes for the trip that would have the best grip on them themselves. If I’m going to be riding a flat pedal on a longdistance tour, I kind of prefer something that has a little bit more tooth to it, a little more grit to it, so you can kind of dig your feet into it a little bit better. I found myself slipping off these pedals multiple times, which is never something you want, especially when you’re trying to apply power on the bike. And then the second part was that this pedal is a foldable pedal, which is great for when you know you’re trying to pull the bike, but when you’re in the countryside and it’s dead quiet, you can hear these pedals creek. And I tried tightening them. I tightened every bolt on it. I greased it. I did everything I could. Still have this creaking sound and they just have a little bit of play in them. Again, they’re kind of designed more for commuting when you’re just jumping on and off the bike and not doing, you know, extreme long distances on it. So, I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt. But overall, I would give these pedals a four out of 10. In terms of the overall bike, they would probably be the number one and potentially only thing that I would truly upgrade if I did another long-distance ride on this bike. Okay, let’s talk saddle. Now, obviously, this is not the saddle that I did the ride on in Japan. Now, I’m a huge Brooks fan. This saddle that’s on it currently is also a Brooks saddle. It’s their synthetic one, so it’s a rubbery material. It’s not leather. It’s fine. It’s okay. What I usually do is I keep this saddle on this bike. It’s really great for when I’m riding around town 10 mi or less, but anything past that, I find it to be quite uncomfortable. That’s why I keep it on this Brmpton and I keep the big Brook saddle with the suspension and the leather on my full-size bike, cuz that’s the bike I do most of my long-distance riding on when I’m here in New York. So, the Brook saddle that I did the ride with, 10 out of 10. Once again, I would not do another tour with any other saddle. I am completely sold on it. The most comfortable, incredible saddle. I’ve never had any issues with it. The Big Brooks Chef’s Kiss. Next up here, we’re going to discuss the rear rack. This is a pretty easy one. I’m going to give this rack a 10 out of 10. It’s a titanium rack from HH Innovation. I had zero issues with it to be honest. When I had the bag on the back of it, I never even knew that the back rack was there. And that’s what you want when you have a back rack. You don’t want have to think about the reliability, about any sound it’s making, any noise it’s making, any movement it’s doing. You just want it to do its job and not even exist really. And that’s what it did. So, for those reasons, fantastic rack. Keeneyed viewers will notice that these are not the wheels that I had in the original video, my preview video where I talked about my setup before the trip. I had these really beautiful blue ones that I was super proud of. A couple days after I filmed that video, I went on kind of a shakedown ride around Brooklyn. And during that ride, one of the wheels fell off and is lost to uh the streets of Brooklyn. More than likely, it’s because I didn’t tighten it properly. I don’t really blame the wheel. It’s probably my fault. So, what I had to do basically was get a replacement set quickly. So, these were on Amazon. I’ll put the price here below. Significantly cheaper. You know what? They worked completely fine. And it’s a lesson learned. Sometimes you don’t need to get the cool thing that has a cool color. These still look nice. They perform fantastically. And overall, I would give these little wheels on the back, I’d give them a 9 out of 10. No issues. Even though I was sad, uh, they they worked really well. Okay, next we’re going to talk handlebar grips. These are an upgrade that I did. These are Urggon GP5 grips. Something I talked about in previous videos is that in order to get the bike to fold properly, these grips do not work with that. So every single time that I wanted to fold the bike, I had to unscrew the Allen bolt on one of these so that when the handlebars come down, you could lock the bike properly. Once you did that, the bike bike locks fine. But every time you want to lock the bike, you have to do that. Some people would find that very irritating. Some people would say that that’s a no-go. But for me, you know, every time I got to a hotel or a train or whatever, I’d have to be kind of breaking down the bike anyway. There was a process that goes into that when you’re touring. So it didn’t really bother me. I mean, I’m doing it once a day, maybe twice a day if I have to bring it on a train. And the payoffs were massive. These things were super comfortable. You have multiple positions for your hands. So, while you’re riding, you can kind of constantly be switching that up. So, my hands never got the normal extreme fatigue that I normally get when I go on long distance rides. Usually, I can feel it in my elbows after like a week, you know, just the jittering and the shaking. I had no issues with this. I’m going to give these grips an 8.5 out of 10. And the only points are off are because you have to, you know, unscrew it in order to make it work with the Brmpton. do make smaller ones as someone pointed out in a previous video. They make ones that are little. This part right here is a little bit smaller and they do work with the fold on the Brmpton, but I wanted these ones that were big so I’d have all the options for my hands and I personally don’t regret making that choice. Let’s talk about the front carrier block. In the previous video, I had a red aftermarket front carrier block on here and in the last minute I ended up taking it off and switching it. red carrier block aftermarket one that I bought basically started to become loose on me again. It was something that I just did not want to risk. I didn’t want to be out there in the middle of nowhere of Japan and have the carrier block getting loose and failing and then something goes wrong with it. So, I went ahead and bought the Brmpton official one. It’s kind of expensive and I also don’t really like the way it looks. It’s just this big chunk of plastic. I had no issues with it. The screws and locking mechanism on the back of it is really solid. It never once budged. The little latch to unlock it worked fine. And so I had no issues taking the bag on and off. So overall, I I would give this a 8 out of 10. Glad that I went with this upgrade for the trip. So overall thoughts on taking this bike on a long-distance trip. I didn’t expect I’d be saying this right now, but I would wholeheartedly recommend using a folding bike or a Brmpton or something similar on a long-distance travel biking trip. However, there are limitations to this bike. And I think it’s important to remind people that, you know, you have to really be careful about the planning that you might do on a trip like this. This is not a hill climb bike. This is not an extreme mountaineering machine. This is not an off-road machine. It can do those things in small amounts, but it’s really not designed for that. And so, if you are going on a route that you’ve pre-planned, that you know is not going to be too hilly, you know, is not going to be too intense, you know, this bike is a wonderful match for that kind of ride. I would definitely take this bike on a long-distance trip again without any question and would absolutely recommend it to anyone as long as you know the shortcomings and the pros and cons of doing something like this. More content coming soon. Thanks for subscribing. Hit that like button if you want and we’ll see you in the next one. This cart functions as your room key. [Music] The check-in process is now complete. Yay! I did it. I’m just so happy. This is so much fun. Enjoy your stay at our hotel.

Hello hello!

In this video, I give a full review of my Brompton after a 400+ mile ride through Japan. I talk about what worked, and what didn’t, and discuss the ins and outs of traveling with a folding bike in the country. Would I do another tour on a folding bike? Watch to find out!

Camera gear:
Sony Fx3
DJI Pocket Osmo 3
DJI Filp
GoPro Hero 13