Nakto Camel F eBike Review

eBeach Cruisers Nakto Electric Bikes

Electric bike shopping can be overwhelming. With so many different brands, styles, and attributes to compare, finding an ebike that perfectly matches your needs can be difficult. Thats where we come in. Our professional ebike mechanics here at the Tower eBike Repair Shop aim to alleviate that stress, and make choosing your next ebike a breeze with complimentary electric bike reviews on the top ebikes on the market. With all bikes reviewed on the same guiding principles, our ebike reviews come stacked with extensive content detailing everything from purchase experience, to maintenance years down the road so you're able to choose the best bike for you.

DISCLAIMER - Nakto and Camel F are trademarks of Nakto, and use of that trademark in this review does not indicate that the reviewer is claiming any interest in the mark or any affiliation with or sponsorship or endorsement by Nakto.

Nakto Camel F eBike Review

Join our eBike experts as they dive into the Nakto electric bike. Through a detailed scoring system our mechanics review every aspect of the Nakto eBike. Read the full review below detailed with specific commentary videos and content diving deeper into the Nakto electric bike.

Unboxing and Assembling a Nakto Electric Bike

As a bike manufacturer that sells only online, your Nakto electric bike will be delivered in a box that will require assembly. Some brands do a better or worse job of handling this purchase and delivery process. How quickly can you expect your bike? What does the package on a Nakto bike generally look like? These questions are all detailed in our unboxing and assembly guide. Our ebike experts run through the electric bike purchase, unboxing, and assembly process for a Nakto Camel F.

Nakto Electric Bike Unboxing

Follow along with our electric bike expert as we unbox a new Nakto ebike.

Nakto eBike Assembly

Enjoy our complimentary Nakto bike assembly walkthrough video with some tips form our electric bike mechanic.

Operation, Troubleshooting and Maintenance of your Nakto Camel F

There are a lot of common issues that customers may have with electric bikes. Our team of electric bicycle experts has put together this resource to help you self diagnose some of the more common issues you may encounter with your Nakto.

Nakto Screen Walkthrough

First things first - how do you turn on your Nakto ebike? Here we show how to turn on the Nakto display screen.

Nakto eBike Brakes

Adjusting the brakes on your Nakto is a meaningful task. eBikes require more frequent brake adjustments due to their increased speeds and mileage capacities.

Nakto Electric Bike Flat Tire Repair

Electric bikes are heavier than regular bikes and the general rider will put many more miles on them, so one of the biggest pains in the neck you may face are flat tires. Our ebike experts show you how to fix a front or rear flat on your Nakto ebike, and more importantly give you advice on what you can do to minimize flats going forward..

Nakto eBike Tune Up

Because you tend to put a lot more miles on an ebike when compared to a regular bike, tune ups become all the more important. eBike owners can expect to tune up their electric bike at least once a month. Most people have never even had their regular bike tuned up before, so our experts run through the common tune ups so you can self tune your bike at home. With Nakto selling a direct to consumer ebike, it's a good idea to take your eBike into a shop for a tune up right after initial assembly. Our electric bike experts run you through the how, why, and what to expect during a tune up.

Nakto Electric Bike Maintenance

There are a few things you will want to be proactive about maintaining on your Nakto electric bike. A little maintenance can really help you avoid some annoying issues.

Nakto Electric Bike Review

Today, we're going to take a look at and review the Nakto Camel F electric bike. The Camel F is from Nakto, a company that produces kind of knock-off cruiser bikes that come in a variety of different models that you can check out. The Camel F is a beach cruiser-style bike with a back-mounted rack and a front-mounted faux woven basket. It earned a 36 out of 100 on our Tower eBike Score, indicating that it is a non recommended e-bike.

Before we get into the reviews and score, I want to introduce myself first. My name is Stephan Aarstol. I am the CEO of Tower E-bike repair shop here in San Diego where we see thousands of different electric bikes. What we're doing in this review is we're lending our professional electric bike mechanics to rate each bike and maybe give you a few details on why this specific bike visited our repair shop.

We also review and rate the bike overall to help you figure out if this kind of bike is good for you if you’re shopping for a new electric bike. For the rating, we use the Tower 100-point scale that comes from rating each of our seven selected bike attributes. On each of these attributes, we also give a score of 1-10. 1 being the lowest, and 10 the highest. Then we normalize that to get a 100 point scale. The Tower score is the single end result score to rate the overall quality of the bike.

We give the Tower score to help you compare different bikes in case you’re having trouble deciding between two bikes.

We also provide a secondary score on each bike we review, called the specialty score. This specialty score is also out of 100 points but it omits the comfort in the universality attributes that are included in the Tower Score. The reason we provide this score is that some bikes aren't built for comfort or universality in mind. Some eBikes are made custom like mountain bikes or other bikes built for specific purposes. They may kind of focus a lot of their energy on certain areas, and when it comes to the universality of the bike, it may not be realistic for every single user, so it would get dinged in those categories, and would be unfair to have those categories weigh it down, so its important to look at both scores when reviewing the bike.

Let's get into the Tower Score breakdown on the Nakto Camel F.

Materials Quality: 1/10

The first attribute we looked at is materials quality. Materials are one of the first things our ebike mechanics inspect to get to know if the bike is built with low quality or high quality components. What we're looking for here is if the bike has nice pedals, gears, grips, a comfortable seat, or certain things surrounding the bike.

If the quality components on the outside are bad, it's more than likely the quality components on the inside of the bike are also low quality. Or it may be that they spent all their budget on the motor and battery capacity of the bike that they left the rest of the bike with crappy components on the exterior.

For the quality of the materials, this Nakto Camel F scores 1 out of 10. There's pretty much nothing good in terms of materials quality on the Nakto beach cruiser.

All the materials are low-quality. They're cheap, especially the bray on the pedals. We have customers come in all the time with these broken pedals from Nakto. The Camel F comes with a rear rack and a fake wooden basket on the front, but those are both really cheap low grade materials that won’t last longer than 6 months and are hardly functional. It’s a classic case of incentivizing a purchase with accessories when really the accessories are extremely low quality.

Mechanical Quality: 2/10

The next attribute we looked at is mechanical quality. Here we are looking if the bike components are long lasting and made from good reputable branded parts. A lot of people shopping for electric bikes only look at the motor, the battery, the screen and other high selling points. As a result, some miss looking at the mechanical quality of the bike, which is essential in bikes. At the end of the day, an ebike is still a bike and you’re gonna want to make sure it's made to ride.

For the Nakto Camel F, it's just a bike with a small boost of electrical assistance installed in it. Looking at its mechanical components, it scores a 2 out of 10 for mechanical quality. The bike has mechanical brakes, made of cheap quality, which is something that we really advise against on electric bikes.

We recommend that all electric bikes have hydraulic brakes, self-adjusting brakes because, with electric bikes, you're going to take them further distances. You're also going to be riding them heavier, stopping at a faster speed which is really going to wear down mechanical brakes and brake pads. Therefore, if you have mechanical brakes, it's gonna result in a lot of squeaking, and a lot of visits to the repair shop.

In addition, the derailleur quilt stem is really outdated. This kind of derailleur is gonna cheap out on you and break down within months of use.

Low Maintenance: 0/10

The next attribute we looked at is low maintenance. What we’re looking at here is how much of a headache will it be to service and what kind of issues are common on the Nakto Camel F. The Nakto Camel F gets a 0 out of 10 – this is probably the most maintenance needed bike that we see here.

Since the Nakto Camel F is made up of mostly lower quality components, the bike is gonna need continual adjustments. The Camel F has non-stainless steel spokes, with no rust-proofing. It's got multiple gears. It’s also a chain drive. In other words, most aspects of the bike will eventually lead to a lot of maintenance further down the road.

Hill Climbing Ability: 4/10

The next attribute we looked at is hill-climbing ability. The Nakto Camel F scores a 4, and that's in large part to the bike just having granny gears. Not only can you get some electrical assistance going uphill, but it is nice to be able to switch into a lower gear setting.

However, the actual motor and the nM of torque generating from the bike are quite low. The Nakto Camel F comes with a measly 350-watt hub motor. As I’ve said earlier, most of the points for hill climbing came from the granny gears and the ability to kind of get to a lower gearing for you to kind of help aid the bike up a hill. See how the Nakto Camel F actually performed in our climbing test. It certainly can’t provide much assistance and power electronically to help aid you up a hill.

Electric Bike Range: 3/10

For range, the Nakto Camel scored a 3 out of 10. Range is a very important part of any electric bike and should be one of the priorities when shopping for an ebike.

When shopping for an electric bike, we advise looking for Panasonic, LG or Samsung battery cells. Those are trusted brand names within the battery cell industry. Batteries with Samsung, LG or Panasonic cells are going to give you a nice standard output that exceeds any other non branded battery cells which may come from cheaper, lower quality manufacturers and not last nearly as long.

If a company doesn’t detail its bike’s battery cells, it's more than likely they have cheap Chinese cells, which is a lower range on your battery. It also results in lower cycles, and your battery is probably not going to last as long. The Nakto Camel F doesn't have a brand named cells. It’s battery consists of low quality BMS’s has cheap Chinese cells. You pair that with a 350-watt motor, a 10 amp hour battery at 36 volts and you get a very low range.

Comfort: 8/10

The next score we looked at is the comfort of the bike. We gave the Camel F an 8 out of 10., which is a good score. Again, it's a beach style cruiser bike. They have nice swept-out handlebars that are comfortable to use while riding. The bike’s geometry makes for a nice upright riding position and the seat is decently comfortable.

In terms of riding the bike, it is quite a comfortable ride. It is kind of similar to just a regular beach cruiser bike which we liked a lot.

Universality: 7/10

For universality, the Nakto scored a 7 out of 10, a close score to its comfort, thanks to its nice step-through frame. This bike can fit different-sized riders with not many constrictions on the rider size.

Encompassing all of these key attributes, the Nakto Caml F scored a 36 on our Tower E-bikes score giving it a rating of a non-recommended e-bike.

Weight: 60 lbs

The Nakto Camel F weighs 60 pounds which is on the heavier side for the standard electric bike. For a standard beach cruiser we would recommend looking for a bike between 40-60 lbs as you’ll still want to be able to easily pick up and move the bike.

Looks

The only thing we didn't really like about the design is the rack and the basket that the bike came with. It's a selling point for the company to say they include the rack in the basket, but they’re very cheap quality. The woven basket looks like it’s going to break soon, especially if you put stuff that weighs even 20 pounds.

Low Proprietary Risk: 1/10

The last thing we touch on here is the low proprietary risk. We see it all the time here at a tire repair shop where you get customers to come in with a bike that they need a new controller,and the company that they bought the bike from is no longer in business, or they can't reach it from customer service. As a result, they can't get the parts they need. And unfortunately, if you can't get a proprietary part, the bike can't be fixed. So it's something really to consider.

You want to make sure you're buying an electric bike from a company that you can call and reach. It’s also best to look for brands that do not offer super proprietary parts. This is to ensure that when that company does go out of business further down the line or if you're not able to reach them you're not stuck with a bike that you maybe spend a lot of money on and you can't even get running.

And again, here at the Tower ebike repair shop, we have worked on Nakto bikes a handful of times and have noticed that Nakto is relatively difficult to call and find replacement parts. They’re customer service is nearly non existent and finding and diagnosing issues can be very difficult on the Camel F.

Nakto bikes tend to have a lot of non-standard batteries, controllers, LCDs, all sorts of stuff. So on the low proprietary risk score, we gave Nakto a 1, which is pretty low, and it's definitely something to consider when buying a Nakto bike and making sure your purchase is a smart investment.

And that’s our review of the Nakto Camel F bike. Hopefully, this helped answered some questions you may have had about the Nakto Camel F and provided some professional insights into the Camel F model.

Check out our site for tower scores on the growing list of other e-bikes that we see coming through our repair shop.