Eaglebear Black bike review: Ode to joy
It’s a brand you’ve likely never heard of, but it’s a bike that’ll probably bring a smile to your face.
Eaglebear is the adult-bike offshoot from the folks behind well-known kid bike brand Prevelo, and its first model – the simply named Black – carries over many of the same design philosophies. It’s lightweight, intelligently outfitted, offers excellent value, and built with a well considered frame geometry that isn’t likely to feel old any time soon. Eaglebear offers the Black in several different variants that start at just US$1,300, and top out at US$1,500.
But perhaps most importantly, the Eaglebear Black is just plain fun to ride, and in a carefree and lighthearted way that escapes many of the enthusiast bikes most of us are used to. It may not be a kid bike, but it’s sure made me feel like a kid again over the last couple of months.
Pros: A no-nonsense and solid bike built for fun, excellent value, smart parts spec, surprisingly lightweight.
Cons: Old-school packing materials, needlessly bold graphics, only available inside the US and Canada.
The takeaway: A back-to-basics bike in the best way possible.
Betting on Black
Eaglebear hasn’t done anything unusual to create the Black. Rather, it’s a classic tale of good execution of a proven formula.
The frame is a TIG-welded aluminum affair with a straightforward layout and a modest amount of shaping. The forward end of the down tube is conspicuously flared to provide additional support for the head tube, the top tube features a flattened triangular profile, the seatstays are only slightly dropped up at the seat cluster, and the chainstays are dropped not so much for additional drivetrain or tire clearance, but more to minimize noise from potential chain slap.
Frame geometry is about what you’d expect from a what is essentially a flat-bar gravel bike. The head tube angle is 70° across the board, and the reach dimensions are longer than what you’d find on a bike with drop-bars – not quite as rangy as a modern trail bike, but a good 30-40 mm longer than you’d find on something like a Trek Checkpoint or Specialized Crux. Stack heights are on the taller side for a modestly more upright riding position, but the chainstays are still reasonably compact at 438 mm considering the generous official tire clearance of 700x50 mm or 650x2.35”.
There’s ample potential for accessories, including three bottle mounts (with one on the underside of the down tube), a top tube bag mount, a dedicated kickstand plate on the underside of the chainstays, front and rear fender mounts, and front and rear rack mounts. Additional three-pack cargo mounts can be found on each fork leg – and speaking of the fork, Eaglebear fills out the Black’s 44 mm-diameter head tube with tapered full-carbon model, something that isn’t often seen at this price point.
Fittings are quite normal throughout, with 100/142 mm front/rear thru-axle hub spacing, a 31.6 mm-diameter round seatpost, an English-threaded bottom bracket shell, and conventional press-fit headset cups. Control lines are routed through the down tube – not through the headset – before popping out near the bottom bracket with simple zip-tie anchoring from there for easy service and maintenance. Should you want to add a dropper post, there’s dedicated routing for that line, too.
Frame weight? No idea. I didn’t bother to strip this bike down to get an actual figure, and interestingly enough, Eaglebear co-founder (and Prevelo general manager) Jim Huth couldn’t tell me, either. I’d normally find that lack of information to be a little disconcerting on a more performance-oriented bike, but I find it almost endearing here, like some sort of indication of what was (and wasn’t) deemed to be of highest priority.
“When my kids were born, I needed a bike that I could just hop on and ride,” Huth told me. “I wanted flat pedals, a rack, and the ability to carry a trailer or kid seats. The idea slowly matured into making a bike that was just a bike, but a good one. I wanted it to be able to be ridden anywhere, for any reason.”
Not surprisingly at this price point, there are a bunch of no-name parts to be found, such as the generic aluminum seatpost and saddle, the aluminum riser bar and stem, the headset, the crankset and bottom bracket, and the wheels. Harping over the absence of well-known brand names would needlessly ignore the obvious thought that was put into everything (more on that shortly), and Eaglebear has spent money where it makes the most sense. The 1x12 mechanical transmission is a complete Shimano Deore affair, including the rear derailleur, wide-range 10-51T cassette, and even the chain. Shimano is also tapped for the MT201 flat-mount hydraulic disc brakes and matching RT-26 rotors (with an upsized 180 mm front rotor for extra stopping power). Meanwhile, Kenda supplies tubeless-ready and fast-rolling 700x45 Alluvium Pro tires with folding beads and 120 TPI nylon casings.
Eaglebear offers the Black in four sizes designed to cover rider heights from 1.55 up to 1.93 m (5’ 1” to 6’ 4”), and in four build variants. The Everyday model covered here would be most closely described as a flat-bar gravel bike, while the Trail version swaps the 700c wheel-and-tire setup for a 27.5” one with 2.0”-wide Kenda Booster Pro tires for the same price. Either can be had in an Adventure flavor that adds a 40 mm-travel KS GTC suspension fork for another US$200, and Eaglebear also has a short menu of factory-supplied accessories such as a higher-rise bar, dropper seatpost, Mac-Ride kid seat, and front cargo rack for additional nominal fees. Huth says all of those add-ons will be installed before shipping, too, with the exception of stuff that just won’t fit in the box.
Huth may not have been able to quote me a frame weight, but whatever the actual number is, it clearly isn’t very heavy. All in, the complete bike coming in at a very respectable 10.71 kg (23.61 lb) in a medium size without the supplied plastic platform pedals.
At this point, I should bring up the elephant in the room: the Eaglebear Black bears more than a little resemblance to the Hudski Doggler, which has been on the market since 2021. Like the Black, the Doggler is a flat-bar gravel bike built with an aluminum frame, versatile (though more MTB-inspired) geometry, a full-carbon fork, and a personality that doesn’t take itself too seriously. It’s a bit more expensive than the Black, but the similarities are there nonetheless.
“The Black spawned from the Prevelo Alpha series,” Huth explained. “We've been toying with this concept since 2019, but the pandemic halted development. That said, it's no secret that the Hudski was one of the bikes we looked at when this project came back. I think people compare to that bike in particular because they have such strong digital marketing, but the Kona Dew, Marin DSX, Poseidon Ambition, Surly Bridgeclub, etc. were all bikes we looked at.”
Oh, and as for the Eaglebear branding?
“Prevelo rebranded in 2022, and Eaglebear (the character) was created during this process,” Huth explained. It was used as a symbol for a US/California brand. If you look at the seat tube of a Prevelo, you'll find him there. We even made stickers. When we wanted a name for the adult bike, Eaglebear was one that constantly came up since it tied the brands together, but the trademark and URL availability were the final factors that secured the deal. All of our other ideas were mostly taken by Giant who seems to have named all of their models after our local spots.”
The grab-and-go bike
I suspect many of you will have a pre-ride routine similar to mine: you get kitted up, fill your water bottles, figure out your route, and so on. In fact, it’s probably so routine that you don’t even think about it, but yet at the same time, it’s a process that adds time and hassle when sometimes all you want to do is just get out the damned door and pedal.
Given the spirit of the Eaglebear Black, I decided to run this test in a slightly different manner that I felt was more befitting the bike’s intentions. Street clothes only. No chamois. No clipless pedals. No plan. Would it be a bike for errands? For casual gravel rides? For longer gravel rides? For just goofing off?
Yes.
Aside from a helmet, the Black would be a “grab-and-go” bike – as in, a bike I could hop on with essentially zero prep on a moment’s notice. It’d be a bike I could grab for a quick spin when I had a few minutes in between work tasks, a bike for getting a few things done around town, a bike for when all I wanted to do was sit and pedal with as absolutely little stress as possible.
And man, has it fulfilled those duties well. I’d even go so far as to say this has been one of the most liberating bike tests I’ve done in recent memory.
First and foremost, this thing is such a riot to ride.
The sporty tires, low overall weight, and good chassis stiffness help the Black feel impressively quick – not just for something with such an attainable price point, but quick, period. The riding position isn’t all that different from a trail bike, but with so much less rotating and static mass, it accelerates more like a gravel bike. The spritely feel encourages you to sprint around town just because you can, and it brought back memories from my college days of zooming through city streets, racing stoplights, and aggressively carving turns – partially because I didn’t want to be late to class, but mostly because it was just fun to do.
The Eaglebear Black’s handling is highly entertaining, too. The sub-80 mm trail dimension, slightly upright positioning, stubby 35 mm stem, and low-rise bars prioritize agility and nimbleness, and the bike practically goads you into dive-bombing corners. The relatively wide bars meant I could also charge sketchy descents even a little better than my own personal suspended gravel bike, it was a treat to hop the bike up and down curbs and other smaller obstacles, and yet it still felt plenty stable when I had the front rack loaded with a big backpack full of groceries. I wouldn’t have minded a slightly longer 50 mm stem for sportier rides (I’d already dropped the supplied stem all the way down), but even the stock riding position was totally agreeable for a couple of hours.
The aluminum frame may be fairly pedestrian, but the bike rides pretty nicely regardless. The tubeless tires allow you to run lower pressures than you might otherwise feel safe doing with inner tubes, there’s a decent amount of air volume in those 45 mm-wide tires, and the contact points have just enough cushiness that I never missed a chamois or gloves.
Overall, the Eaglebear Black is just so fun to blast around on. How much fun, exactly? One of my regular grocery runs is barely 6 km (4 mi) round-trip – a pleasant little jaunt down a bunch of side streets that see little motor vehicle traffic. But on the Black, I intentionally left myself a little more time on the front end and took a long detour that went through some of my regular gravel routes on the northwest edge of town, just because I wanted to. I may have done my shopping a bit sweatier than I normally would, but by the time I got home, I’d logged more than 24 km (15 miles) and wore a big ol’ grin on my face the whole time.
I mean seriously, when was the last time you just went out and rocketed around in street clothes with a backpack on, and actually enjoyed the whole experience? Normally we ride around in those conditions because we’re trying to get somewhere. But on the Black, the errand was merely the excuse to head out the door.
It’s also been quite practical, quicker around town than most urban bikes that are often much heavier and more cumbersome, but still able to haul a decent amount of gear thanks to the optional front rack I added. And since it intentionally doesn’t look like much and no one seems to know what it is, anyway, it didn’t attract much attention when I had it locked up somewhere.
The parts spec is an unexpected bright spot given the price point.
Not surprisingly, the Shimano drivetrain and brakes are excellent, and kudos to Huth for prioritizing the main functionality points. Shifting is as smooth and precise as you’d expect with ample range for tackling legitimately challenging climbs, while the brakes offer solid power and quiet operation with its resin-based pad compounds. Heck, even the brake tabs on the frame and fork are refreshingly flat and square so the calipers can be easily set up without a hint of rub.
The rest of stuff clearly wasn’t just chosen at random, either, despite the lack of name brands.
For example, while the rims may not wear a fancy label, they have a contemporary width of 25 mm between the bead hooks for good tire casing support. They’re also not only tubeless-compatible, but even come pre-taped from the factory, and they’re laced to shiny polished silver hubs with a six-pawl driver, an unusually quick 2° engagement speed, sealed cartridge bearings, and a burly steel axle that bodes well for long-term durability. The wheel build itself is as conventional as you’d expect with 28 straight 14-gauge stainless steel spokes in a three-cross pattern with brass nipples, but both arrived impressively straight out of the box and stayed that way despite plenty of hooning. And while the Kenda Alluvium Pro tires may not win any rolling resistance prizes in a lab-setting drum test, they’re still a lot faster than the garden hoses you normally see at this price point.
Huth may not have had a frame weight handy, but he did say the stock wheelset was 2,100 g – not great, but not terrible, either. He said he would have preferred to spec lighter rims, but doing so would have compromised other areas, such as using Microshift drivetrain parts and Tektro brakes instead of the Shimano bits. Overall, I think he made the right choice.
“We didn't chase weight on Eaglebear the same way we do on Prevelo,” he said. “Instead, we focused on using quality, name-brand parts where we could, such as on the brakes and drivetrain. To get lighter, the price of the rim essentially triples. My preferred spec would be what's on the [Prevelo] Zulu, but we couldn't swing that with the price point. Well, we could, but there would have been a sacrifice elsewhere.”
That no-name saddle has more padding than what you’d find in a performance model, but it’s still decently firm with good support for multi-hour jaunts and a smart shape that doesn’t chafe over time. And although the two-bolt seatpost head on which it’s attached is about as basic as it gets, it nevertheless holds firm and is easy to use with better tool access than I see on some bikes costing thousands more.
I’ve got no complaints up front, either. The four-bolt stem does the job, and while it certainly doesn’t have to be, the aluminum handlebar is double-butted so it doesn’t ride like a steel girder like all-too-many inexpensive handlebars do. Heck, even the grips are comfy with single-bolt locking collars that stay put no matter how hard you torque on them.
No one scores 100% on their first shot, though, and despite plenty of experience on the kid bike side of things, Eaglebear misses the mark on a few points.
Eaglebear is unfortunately pretty old-school in the packaging of the bike, which continues to use an awful lot of foam and plastic. Even worse, all of that non-recyclable stuff didn’t even fully protect the bike, which arrived with some nasty scratches on the down tube from the front hub as well as a front rotor that was badly bent (but thankfully still repairable).
Assembly quality was pretty good overall, though, with properly tuned shifting and brakes, correctly positioned controls, and some good attention to detail such as the saddle arriving level on the seatpost straight out of the box. The one exception was a lower headset cup that wasn’t fully pressed into the head tube – an easy fix for me, but not so much for general consumers.
This is perhaps nitpicking a little, but I also could have done without the enormous logo on the down tube. I get it, Eaglebear. No need to shout.
Finally, while Eaglebear will ship a Black internationally (pricing for other regions is based on current exchange rates), freight costs will make it awfully impractical outside of the US and Canada.
Keep it simple, stupid
I love fancy high-end bikes with all the latest whiz-bang gadgets and tech developments, ones that focus on the most marginal of gains that only the most die-hard performance enthusiasts and engineers can fully appreciate. There’s unquestionable satisfaction in that endless pursuit of “better.”
But while I see the value in bikes like that, these days I’m more often than not chasing a feeling when I get out for a ride. What I prize now more than anything is that sensation of freedom, of joy, of leaving your worries behind – all those things we experienced at kids when we first fell in love with riding bikes in the first place. And I don’t know about you, but the bikes I had as a kid certainly weren’t fancy, and they sure as hell weren’t expensive.
Nope, this Eaglebear Black isn’t going to win any design or tech prizes, and it’s by no means aerodynamic or stiff or super light or whatever. But it is very much the “good bike” Huth set out to build, and perhaps far more importantly, it sure did bring a huge smile to my face.
Given all the weights and burdens and responsibilities that go along with adulthood, that’s as good as gold.
Jeeze I need a bike like this. What a fun read this was!
Cons: it's black.
Personally, I prefer more colourful bikes. I checked the website, but it only comes in black. Not that surprising, considering the name, but still.. :)