My first day with the bike, and it's a wet one! So far I haven't done much more than ride it home from the shop, but I'll give y'all my initial impressions.
The ride: the incredible adjustability of the Tern stem really let me fine-tune my riding position. I'll probably need to adjust the saddle a little more, but I'm 6ft with very long legs for my height, and my ideal reach is firmly in the range of adjustment for the bars. On most non-folding bikes I start to feel hand pressure pretty shortly into rides, and I had no problem with this one. I should check the tire pressure, but the 20" wheels felt fine even riding over bumps and railroad tracks. I probably felt the bumps less than I normally would on my 700cx28's that I normally ride. It was stable enough that I could turn one-handed while signaling with zero issues, but I did not feel comfortable riding with no hands.
The fold: it folds pretty small, and is easy to cart around folded, especially if you leave the handlebars unfolded. It's a little awkward/slow to fold for now, but I think it will be fine once I get the hang of it. I feel like even when I get used to it it's probably going to be an ~1 minute fold. It is really easy to get the shift/brake cables wrapped around the rear brake lever when you fold it, which can be dangerous if you don't notice when you unfold it. The trolley wheels on the back of the cart really need good smooth floor/pavement to work well.
Things I still need to try: I need to see if my luggage (ortlieb front rollers) are compatible with the rack. I probably want to buy some sort of system for carrying cargo on the front as well. Tern makes both a click-in-place luggage mounting system or also a more traditional rack. I'm not sure what I'll go with yet. How well it rides when loaded is going to be pretty important to me.
When I set out to get a folding bike my ideal bike was: small/convenient fold, disk brakes, fenders, dynamo lighting. I realized that combination is an as-of-yet-unsolved engineering feat and what I was looking for was a bit of a unicorn. So far I like this bike, and I think it's going to serve me well for urban transport and luggage-light international travel, but time will tell. An interesting note is that the bike has a mounting point for a disk brake in the rear, but not in the front. I wonder why Tern made this choice and if they have any plans to release a disk brake model in the future?
