I couldn’t even make it through the video. He mentions the price as one of the “pros” simply because of the polish? No mention of the insane value you’re getting in battery, motors, VESC, no mention of any components.
And the acceleration tests weren’t even a fair comparison. He’s running 6 inch wheels on the other boards while the Barrel has 8s. Obviously they’ll have a bit more torque on the low end. Hence why the Barrel won all of the 10mph pull runs.
Pretty disappointed. Never been the hugest fan of Fred but this review is an absolute joke.
I went into that review expecting to hate it with how you guys were talking about it. I gotta be the contrarian here tho. Fred is right from a consumer esk8 viewpoint. I would’ve been really disappointed with what I got out of the box here from the looks of it. I’m not gonna point people at this board in good conscience anymore. The hardware IS a good deal, if you wanna rip it all off this short deck, replace the tires with something reasonable (god forbid you prefer thane like me tho), probably a new pulley, new bushings because for a first board with this style of trucks I probably ordered the wrong duro, and its just death by a thousand cuts. Looks great for baby’s first eMTB kit. Its not a killer pick for a first board.
I dont love Fred’s content, frankly I find his video style kinda grating. But the info I wanted to see was here, and this board is obviously not for me.
Maybe they shipped the board with 15% ppm input deadband (standard vesc settings), I forgot that a few times to… Why cant he just open vesc app to change that?
Eh, his acceleration tests of the barrel entirely ignore that the zeus pro he’s comparing to is setup for much lower top speeds. He spends all of about 30 seconds on the top speed of the barrel and clearly hasn’t tested it up to it’s limits, but a significant portion of the review goes over the acceleration comparisons off the line, while entirely ignoring that there’s a massive principle difference in setup. He’s also entirely ignoring the VESC capabilities as if it’s going to be just the same as a hobbywing ESC, when in reality an hour spent dialing in the settings after opening up the box could have that barrel absolutely ripping ass off the line.
Does he make valid claims? Yes. It’s unfortunate that shipping was so delayed and updates were few and far between, and the use of rubber gaskets on the enclosure hardware without anything to protect them from abrading into nothing is pretty negligent. The battery sag issue is also pretty bad on lacroix’s part, it seems like their battery readout and voltage power cutoffs are running the cells down to absolute minimum, and they should have absolutely tweaked that to more accurately represent the usable percentage. I’m not going to discredit those parts of the review - that’s fair game and is something lacroix should absolutely work on, regardless of how much i respect them as a brand.
He gets a lot of hate, and i’d say deservedly so. He’s made some pretty crap claims, and doesn’t have a proper understanding of a lot of things. If all you want is “here’s me opening a box and comparing it to a random other product”, fine, but it’s absolutely not a good technical review, nor is it showcasing what each product is actually capable of. Buying a boutique board with a fully configurable VESC and entirely ignoring that aspect of the board is just… dumb.
I think he’s just making content for the unthinking and uninterested e-skater which makes the hobbyists mad. As an ex-journo I kind of get making content for your audience, tho why should I listen to some rando whose only difference from me is that he has ridden something I haven’t. Might as well ask any other Barrel rider…
I think to be a competent reviewer in this space you need to have some technical knowledge of what you are reviewing. He seems to actively ignore that. Also sounds like he was
comparing marketing range on paper between the boards, which is useless instead of the actual cell used/config.
**Shows the barrel losing only the first 30 feet of a drag race**
Now I know some of you are thinking, just change the settings in the app. First and foremost, I don’t want to do that. That’s kinda the point of buying a production board instead of making a DIY board myself. I don’t want to go into the internals of the electronic components and switch things up. I just want to complain about how slow this thing is, even though I’m afraid to hit top speed and it beats everything after a few feet with these de-tuned settings. Especially that Ares X1 that Tzantzig is shilling. That thing is slowwwwww. Not the Unity powered Flux though. That thing is super fast.
“Balanced” is subjective. Some riders might be completely fine with the riding characteristics of the board. For others, having the ability to change things is really beneficial and can’t be overlooked.
I’d love for import boards to be able to be more configurable for instance. Some riders might get on a Zeus/hurricane etc and find the acceleration to be too high and want more mid-high end power without the ability to tune it.
Maybe Lacroix could benefit from having the board available in two tunes or something. Like a tune for more low end or high end. Still with the ability to tune everything imaginable.
It’s not, but it’s one of the only remotes that doesn’t disconnect in areas of high interference. I’ve had every single china board disconnect on me in times square. Never had a puck disconnect on me.
Lacroix has a following here because they make quality shit. If you think the chinese boards are better simply because they run 13s vs the barrel on 12s, you are misguided.
The beauty of buying a lacroix is that it is customizable. You can change the throttle curve, replace the wheels, lower top speed in favor of insane torque, use a different remote. There are so many levers to pull to make the board perfect for you.
If you put 6” wheels on the barrel and increases the throttle curve, you would destroy any chinese board in a drag race (as useless as I think that test by itself is). The amount of power available to the motors is about 1.5-2x any of the similar price point competitors.
I suppose this was not directed at me, but if it was, I abolutly don’t care about the Puck
I know people love them for their reliability though, not for their extensive features, for sure
Mario (the one wheel guy) did a review of the Hoyt Street UAV, another boutique esk8 board that uses the same controller and remote as the Lacroix Barrel.
There is a beautiful explanation in his video between the power of a production board vs a VESC based board.
Quite often a symptom of production boards, especially ones that don’t use VESC based controllers, is that they are really punchy right off the line, from 0 to about 10-12mph, and once you get above that pretty much all the power is gone. Which is a really nice parlor trick because if you are demoing it somewhere, or someone who first gets a board and they start riding it that initial punch is very impressive. But that punch just disappears and that’s not the case on [VESC based boards]. Since the Stormcore can be configured, it is setup to have a very even power distribution from the lower to the top end of the speed range.
Funny, that’s exactly what we saw in the esk8unity “review” video of the Barrel.
I think you and the review you posted completely misunderstand the market for this board and honestly for a reviewer that is fundamentally the first thing you should figure out and makes the review pretty awful.
This board and things like it from my view are not for people who want a cheap Chinese completely uncustomizable prebuilt experience. They’re for people who want to be able to tweak, customize, and have a DIY-like experience without spending months and months building it themselves. Also even if they don’t mind spending months and months this is cheaper than a similar DIY would run by far.
As someone who has never remotely considered buying a lacroix or any of the more expensive Chinese prebuilts, his review started sounding like a joke to me when he decides a prebuilt having customizability through the vesc app is a negative. Actually, it started seeming like a joke when he did the take-off race in a lower power setting. That was just where it was really like “can’t take this seriously”.
In the end to someone who understands the purpose and market for the board both you and the reviewer just come off as ignorant and not giving the board a chance. I guess if his reviews are only meant for people who never want to adjust anything or tinker in the slightest then it’s fine for the people his reviews are meant for. You can’t be surprised when it gets shit on by people who are the opposite of that though.
As someone with very little experience with anything like these boards, the washer thing was the only thing I found of substance in that review.
Also
Lol, at least it keeps the board active. This post was dead before my purely factual based comments.
Is a pretty good joke. You’re just spouting opinionated BS no one here wants to hear.
Ummmm, getting back to the board…Anyone else have a chance to ride it? Any thoughts and/or opinions? I come from a street board back ground and am confused by the use of such a short deck. Can anyone enlighten me?
