Kingsong riding modes (what's your preference)

[Thatmustache]

Im curious to see what other people think of the 3 different riding modes you can choose between on the Kingsong wheels, and how it affects the performance, and the feeling of riding, and also importantly which mode you prefer to ride on?

I ride a Kingsong 18XL, which is my first wheel, and the one i've learned to ride on. So far I've ridden the entire time completely on "experient mode", with the exception of trying learner mode while I was learning. Recently I've been playing around with the settings and have been trying "riding mode" I can notice some difference between these modes, and I'm not sure which one I like more now.

Anyways, what are your thoughts/ experiences?

[The Fat Unicyclist]

"Expeerienced Mode" uses a little more power (if you are a range junie) and it also makes riding on hills more difficult (<insert some physics reason here>).

I ride my 18XL in "Riding Mode" (the middle setting) as it is not too soft for general riding and is better on the hills - and I do a lot of hill riding!

[Thatmustache]

8 hours ago, The Fat Unicyclist said:

"Expeerienced Mode" uses a little more power (if you are a range junie) and it also makes riding on hills more difficult (<insert some physics reason here>).

I ride my 18XL in "Riding Mode" (the middle setting) as it is not too soft for general riding and is better on the hills - and I do a lot of hill riding!

Hey thanks! So the "experient mode' (as it says on my app lol) uses more power, therefore less range?

Very interesting to hear that you ride on "riding mode". I figured that everyone rode on the "experient mode", but I was pleasantly surprised when I started playing around with "riding mode"

[LanghamP]

19 hours ago, Thatmustache said:

Im curious to see what other people think of the 3 different riding modes you can choose between on the Kingsong wheels, and how it affects the performance, and the feeling of riding, and also importantly which mode you prefer to ride on?

There's one more mode that hasn't been implemented by the manufacturers.

That mode is, "carpenter ball is always level regardless of braking and acceleration."

That means if you're touching the entire wheel against your legs, and you brake or accelerate, the wheel doesn't move from against your legs. It tilts so its pedals stay perfectly level in respect to apparent down and not true down.

I imagine such a wheel initially feel soft until it caught up with you being off balance, and then the pedals would tilt a lot before gradually leveling themselves.

Because the wheel moves with your legs, I imagine it would feel much more of an extension of your lower body than present wheels.

[UniVehje]

Usually experient mode and on trails and offroad always that. Recently been using medium setting for long distance pavement riding. It’s more comfortable and gives better range. 

[The Fat Unicyclist]

12 hours ago, Thatmustache said:

Hey thanks! So the "experient mode' (as it says on my app lol) uses more power, therefore less range?

Very interesting to hear that you ride on "riding mode". I figured that everyone rode on the "experient mode", but I was pleasantly surprised when I started playing around with "riding mode"

As I understnad it, it requires a little more power to be more responsive and keep the pedals level all the time. But it would only be a small amount, so don't think it will halve your range.

I would be surprised if many riders kept their wheel in "Learning Mode". But I also think there would be a mix of riders who prefer Riding or Experient modes - or who change between them depending on the situation...

[Rywokast]

experient aka hard.. same goes for any euc

[stephen]

Msx and my z10 and my old ks16s , always ride in soft mode 😁 i just like the floaty feeling 👍 like skiing

Edited August 18, 2019 by stephen

[Olav]

12 hours ago, The Fat Unicyclist said:

As I understnad it, it requires a little more power to be more responsive and keep the pedals level all the time. But it would only be a small amount, so don't think it will halve your range.

I would be surprised if many riders kept their wheel in "Learning Mode". But I also think there would be a mix of riders who prefer Riding or Experient modes - or who change between them depending on the situation...

What kind of extra range du you think you could get in Riding mode vs Experient mode? Are we talking 1-2% or 5-6%?

[The Fat Unicyclist]

13 hours ago, Olav said:

What kind of extra range du you think you could get in Riding mode vs Experient mode? Are we talking 1-2% or 5-6%?

I think that would depend on how aggressively you ride... If you accelerate / brake harder then the wheel will need to use a lot more power to maintain "level", compared with softer acceleration / braking then it would require a lot less.

It would be different for every rider, but I'm thinking about 5% wouldn't be unrealistic... But the only way to know for sure is to test both ways in as much of a controlled situation as possible.

[Blueblade]

Is it just me, or does it seem odd that King Song hasn't found the time to fix the poor app translations on some of the labels. ("Experient" mode? Is that even a word? And "warping speed", that sounds like something the Millennium Falcon did under 12 parsecs). How hard would it be to change those labels to something more appropriate like "Experienced (hard)" and "tiltback speed"? A little bit seems like it would go a long way to avoid confusion and improve impressions about app quality,  IMO).

[ir_fuel]

Oh well, there are still labels in Chinese in the app, so ....

[LanghamP]

On 8/17/2019 at 11:31 PM, The Fat Unicyclist said:

As I understnad it, it requires a little more power to be more responsive and keep the pedals level all the time. But it would only be a small amount, so don't think it will halve your range.

Let's balance a long heavy stick on the tip of your finger. It's easy to do, so long as you react quickly to keep the stick as upright as possible.

Now let the stick get pretty far off vertical before rebalancing it. You have to move your arm a lot farther,more abruptly, and with greater energy.

Does this correspond to the hard vs medium settings of our wheels? I'm not sure they do. They might, but perhaps soft settings encourage slow and easy riding compared to hard riding.

[The Fat Unicyclist]

19 hours ago, LanghamP said:

Let's balance a long heavy stick on the tip of your finger. It's easy to do, so long as you react quickly to keep the stick as upright as possible.

Now let the stick get pretty far off vertical before rebalancing it. You have to move your arm a lot farther,more abruptly, and with greater energy.

Does this correspond to the hard vs medium settings of our wheels? I'm not sure they do. They might, but perhaps soft settings encourage slow and easy riding compared to hard riding.

I don't understand... @LanghamP are you saying that you agree with the information I have shared, or are you saying that you don't?

[LanghamP]

2 hours ago, The Fat Unicyclist said:

I don't understand... @LanghamP are you saying that you agree with the information I have shared, or are you saying that you don't?

The common thought is that harder settings use more power, but is that really the case?

I would think softer settings use more power because they allow the wheel to go further than vertical than harder settings. If you hold a weight in your hand, and extend it away, it's much easier to hold it if your arm is vertical than horizontal.

I think in practice there's no perceptible difference.

[UniVehje]

I was riding my long distance trip in the medium or "riding mode." Usually I ride on the hard mode ("experiment") just because I thought that is what I'm supposed to ride and it is indeed very good for difficult offroad terrain. But I forgot my wheel on the medium mode and on yesterday's ride it felt fantastic! 

I think my problem with medium used to be that I was concentrating too much on how it felt that I never really liked it. Now that I had first about 100 km riding on it and then forgot it and didn't focus on it, it clicked and felt good. You really have to ride different modes for longer time to get adjusted. Short tests will always feel wrong if you are used to something different. 

I think the medium is very intuitive and feels like it reads my mind better than the hard mode. Also more comfortable and responsive feeling. But I liked the hard mode also very much and it's probably better for different terrains. There's probably more differences than just softness. 

[mrelwood]

On the 16S I rode mostly on medium, but the hard mode was clearly better and more effortless when riding over roots and other obstacles. Which does make sense, softer modes tilt more before accelerating, which disturbs the rider’s balance. The MSX is phenomenal off-road because it doesn’t wait for the pedals to tilt at all, it will plow over obstacles with all the power that is required to keep the pedals absolutely flat. It is very stable for the rider.

After riding the MSX on any mode, the 18XL hard mode felt like I remember the medium mode on the 16S. Exactly like @UniVehje said, pretty much any change will feel wrong at first.

On 8/18/2019 at 8:11 PM, Olav said:

What kind of extra range du you think you could get in Riding mode vs Experient mode? Are we talking 1-2% or 5-6%?

On my 16S the difference was about 10% when I emptied the battery on the exact same trip several times with both modes. I had to extend the trip a bit for the medium mode.

The 18XL riding modes could be closer to eachother, or some other reason might make the range difference smaller than it was on the 16S.

 

On 8/19/2019 at 7:47 PM, LanghamP said:

perhaps soft settings encourage slow and easy riding compared to hard riding.

This has absolutely been my experience, in tire pressures as well. The instant feel of power in a hard mode on a hard tire pressure is intoxicating.