The Marshall looks like a mountain bike with a comfy cruiser feel to it. A step-thru version offers a slightly lower top bar than the regular version. Upway offers you to select if you would like to receive your bike either 85% assembled or 99% assembled. When I first started riding electric Schwinns, I was largely limited to cruiser e-bikes. But with several new commuter-specific e-bikes like the Schwinn Coston CE that I recently tested, this household bicycle name is making a big move on the wider e-bike market. Over the years, Schwinn has empowered millions of people, earning a special place in the hearts and minds of generations of riders. We have spent over a century building the bicycle industry into what it is today, and we’re not done yet. Overall, given the fundamental shift I have seen in my personal bike riding habits this past summer, I very much enjoy having an e-bike. I really simplifies the whole process and eliminates the need to send phony thank you notes for things you don’t need and can’t use. Wait till you get to be my age and you will understand. I didn't have the opportunity to try out the Monroe before it arrived, so I went on faith. I was also sent the medium frame version, which turned out to be slightly small for me but fortunately, the build ended up being just right for how I like to ride. I've put bicycles together on my own in the past and tend to be good at putting the bigger pieces together correctly like the handlebars, wheels, pedals, and so on. The part I have the most trouble with is the fine-tuning, which is one of the most important aspects of the set-up process. The bike offers a smooth, comfortable ride, enough assist options to either get a workout or just cruise, and has plenty of range to get me around town. That it's also one of the more inexpensive e-bikes on the market makes the Monroe 250 an excellent choice for anyone buying their first e-bike or looking to add to their lineup. The Monroe 250 is also quite heavy at nearly 45 pounds. For comparison, my main bike — the REI Co-op Cycles CTY 2.1 — is bigger and weighs just over 30 pounds. The added weight makes the Monroe a pain to lug into my basement for storage. Fortunately, when riding, I can't tell that it weighs more than my other bikes. That bike has been sitting outside in the rain, and sun, and salt air for 5 years now and has been remarkably unfazed by being neglected. I did a Google search for “cruiser e-bikes” and found a link to the Schwinn website. I confess I have never heard of most of the companies selling e-bikes these days. There was a certain comfort level right from the start about dealing with a brand I knew and trusted. Unfortunately, Schwinn doesn't outfit the Monroe 250 with any accessories you'd typically want for commuting, such as fenders or racks. To be fair, not many competing e-bikes tend to come with these extras anyway, so with its comparatively low price, you'll have extra money to pick out the accessories you want. Respectfully, most of the e-bikes you find online come from companies with alphabet-soup for names that may sell just as many portable batteries as they do e-bikes. The original factory in Chicago that once employed as many as 2,000 people is long gone. The Schwinn brand is now owned by a Dutch conglomerate that manufactures bikes overseas and sells them to big box stores such as Target and Walmart. When you grow up riding something as standard as a classic Schwinn bike, trying an electric bike can feel somewhere in between exciting and nerve-wracking. Our blog is coming in hot with a play by play on how exactly you ride an e-bike. The whole package is aesthetically really old-timey looking -- which will not please everybody, though we find it to be really quite charming. It's surprisingly elegant, and though one friend described it as "goofy" looking, we think that its look suits the intended rider -- but more on that below. For those not terribly familiar with electric bikes, the Schwinn's battery charges up about as fast as its contemporaries on the market, and is actually much faster than many.