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I’ve tested a few different Cyrusher electric fat tire bikes over the years, and they all have the same basic qualities: The fit and finish might not match the pros, but the bikes offer a fun helping of ridiculous excessiveness. The Cyrusher XF900 full-suspension fat tire e-bike might just be the most excessive yet, in all the best ways.

The Cyrusher XF900 launched late last year and is even larger in person than I had expected from the photos. It doesn’t just look massive – it is massive.

It’s overbuilt so that you can take it just about anywhere and throw it at just about any terrain.

Between the fat tires and full-suspension, the Cyrusher is basically begging you to finally leave the asphalt behind and do some real exploring.

While I tested it with a fair amount of commuting-style riding, a lot of my adventures didn’t just head for the trails – they left the trails behind completely.

Take a look at how the bike fared in my video review below, then keep reading for my complete review!

Cyrusher XF900 video review

Cyrusher XF900 tech specs

  • Motor: 750W nominal, 1.5 kW peak rear hub motor
  • Top speed: 45 km/h (28 mph)
  • Range: Up to 100 km (62 mi) claimed, actually less (see below)
  • Battery: 48 V 17Ah (816 Wh)
  • Charge time: 5-7 hours
  • Max load: 150 kg (330 lb)
  • Weight: 34 kg (74 lb)
  • Frame: 6061 aluminum
  • Suspension: Front dual crown air fork, rear spring shock
  • Brakes: Zoom hydraulic disc brakes with 180 mm rotors
  • Extras: 21-speed Shimano drivetrain(!), LCD display with speedometer, wattmeter, battery gauge, PAS level indicator, odometer, tripmeter, headlight and tail light, included fenders and rear rack

An extra helping of parts

The Cyrusher XF900 comes pretty much fully loaded.

The rear hub motor is nominally 750W, but they’ve overloaded it to pull 1.5 kW of peak power. On a lighter e-bike that’d be crazy high, though on the heavy XF900 it’s just quite high. It’s not going to throw you off the saddle, but you’ll want to make sure you’re holding on tight when you blip the throttle or engage the pedal assist.

A cool feature that I don’t see very often is that the throttle’s power level is actually tied to the pedal assist level selector. With five levels of pedal assist, if you start in level 1 and mash the throttle to 100%, you’ll experience a gentle takeoff. In pedal assist level 5, the throttle gives you that jolt of power that many riders are looking for. Any number in between provides an increasingly more enthusiastic throttle response.

With a powerful e-bike like this, being able to tone down the throttle is a nice feature. It’s useful when you want to do low-speed maneuvering as well as when letting a friend try the bike when you aren’t so sure how familiar they are with powerful e-bikes. I can leave it in level 1 or 2 until I see that they aren’t going to whiskey throttle their way into a brick wall.

On the battery side of things, the company doesn’t mess around with puny 48V 10Ah batteries and they don’t even waste time with a 14Ah pack. They go straight to the 48V 17Ah pack to give the best range. That’s the kind of big battery you need when you’ve got a powerful motor and controller. They still advertise the silly range of 100 km (62 miles), but that would only be possible on pedal assist level 1 and with a tailwind. Expect a throttle-only range of a third of that, and a pedal assist level 3-ish range of maybe just over half the max stated range. This is a heavy bike with lots of rolling resistance, so it’s not going to be terribly efficient.

Off-road riding ready

As I mentioned in the opening, this e-bike is really designed for exploring the unexplored.

The giant fat tires and suspension make it easy to hit obstacles you’d never consider on a hardtail e-bike with 2″ tires.

Both the front and rear suspension are middle shelf; they aren’t top notch parts like we find on e-bikes that cost nearly twice this much. But they’re good enough for recreational riding, which is exactly what I was looking for.

When the riding got seriously rutted out or technical, I definitely had to come out of the saddle. The suspension just isn’t plush enough for the really rough stuff. But by and large I could stay planted and have a great ride through dirt, gravel, high grass, and some light sand.

The powerful motor and the tires’ ability to pretty much float over anything means you aren’t limited to trails. I did plenty of riding through tall grass fields where I had no idea what I was riding over, but apparently it didn’t matter. I couldn’t see the ground but I could still roll right over everything.

The only thing getting in my way was the pair of derailleurs to snag grass and weeds. This is one of very few e-bikes to sport multiple front chainrings. The 21-speed setup is interesting, but it feels unnecessary.

The advantage of all of those gears is mostly on the low end, where you can drop into lower gears for more torque during hill climbing. But with a powerful motor like this, you don’t really need to drop so low since you’ll be climbing at faster speeds anyways.

The increased granularity also makes it easy to find the perfect cadence. But again, that just feels unnecessary on such a powerful e-bike. Maybe the purists will enjoy the increased gears, but I pretty much left the bike in a single gear the whole time: the highest one.

That’s because the Cyrusher XF900 is just so damn fast. It tops out at 28-ish mph (45 km/h), and it gets there on throttle-only riding or with pedal assist. Technically it’s not a class 3 e-bike if it can surpass 20 mph on throttle, but no one stopped me to ask and I didn’t volunteer that info to anyone.

At those speeds, the bike is an equally capable road warrior and trail tackler. I don’t often hit top speed on the trail, but the open road gives me the room I need to run fast. Back on the trails, if I hit the mid-20s of mph, I consider that pretty darn fast.

Any complaints?

Nothing is perfect, and I have a few gripes about the Cyrusher XF900.

The fenders are as cheap as they come, though I get that fat tire fenders for a full-suspension e-bike are a hard nut to crack. The good news is the rear doesn’t flop too much because the rear rack holds it in place. The front gets a bit floppy, but what can you do? That’s cheap plastic for you.

Next, the front headlight is fine but the rear tail light frustrates me. It isn’t a typical e-bike light that runs off the main battery. Instead, its a saddle light that has its own battery. That means two main downsides: the battery will need somewhat frequent replacing if you ride at night often, and it will be blocked if you put stuff on the rear rack. I also found myself sometimes clicking the button when I moved the bike by lifting under the saddle. If I didn’t notice that I accidentally clicked on the light, it could run for hours during the day and drain the battery by the time I need it at night.

A torque sensor also would have been nice. The cadence-based pedal assist sensor is fine, but when you’re playing in the big leagues you start to want to see those nicer parts that make the riding experience just a bit more comfortable and responsive. At this price, a torque sensor would have been a nice touch.

Lastly, I’d say the price is a tough sell. At $2,799, this is one expensive e-bike. You certainly get a lot: high power, larger-than-average battery, fast speeds, full-suspension, hydraulic disc brakes, included rack and fenders, etc. But it doesn’t come cheap.

It’s actually evenly priced against several other full-suspension fat tire e-bikes in its class, but you have to really want all of these features to write a check that big.

From my time on the bike though, I can definitely say that this is one hell of a ride. Being able to explore everything from the concrete jungle to an actual jungle, and doing it for more than just a few miles, is an experience that I hope everyone can have at some point.


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Pete Townshend’s Quadrophenia talked about modern masculinity before Gen Z was born 

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Pete Townshend's Quadrophenia talked about modern masculinity before Gen Z was born 

Despite The Who’s Quadrophenia being set over 60 years ago, Pete Townshend’s themes of identity, mental health, and modern masculinity are just as relevant today.

The album is having a renaissance as Pete Townshend’s Quadrophenia A Mod ballet is being brought to life via dance at Sadler’s Wells East, and Sky News has an exclusive first look.

As Townshend puts it, the album he wrote is “perfect” for the stage.

Pete Townshend
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Pete Townshend

“My wife Rachel did the orchestration for me, and as soon as I heard it I said to her it would make a fabulous ballet and we never really let that go,” he tells Sky News.

“Heavy percussion, concussive sequences. They’re explosive moments. They’re also romantic movement moments.”

If you identify with the demographics of Millennial, Gen Y or Gen Z, you might not be familiar with The Who and Mod culture.

But in post-war Britain the Mods were a cultural phenomenon characterised by fashion, music, and of course, scooters. The young rebels were seen as a counter-culture to the establishment and The Who, with Roger Daltry’s lead vocals and Pete Townshend’s writing, were the soundtrack.

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Quadrophenia the album is widely regarded as an essay on the British adolescent experience at the time, focusing on the life of fictional protagonist Jimmy – a young Mod struggling with his sanity, self-doubt, and alienation. 

Townshend sets the rock opera in 1965 but thinks its themes of identity, mental health, and modern masculinity are just as relevant today.

He says: “The phobias and the restrictions and the unwritten laws about how young men should behave. The ground that they broke, that we broke because I was a part of it.

“Men were letting go of [the] wartime-related, uniform-related stance that if I wear this kind of outfit it makes me look like a man.”

Paris Fitzpatrick and Pete Townshend. Pic: Johan Persson
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Paris Fitzpatrick and Pete Townshend. Pic: Johan Persson

This struggle of modern masculinity and identity appears to be echoing today as manosphere influencers like Andrew Tate, incel culture, and Netflix’s Adolescence make headlines.

For dancer Paris Fitzpatrick, who takes on the lead role of Jimmy, the story resonates.

Paris Fitzpatrick, who takes on the lead role of Jimmy in the ballet
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Paris Fitzpatrick, who takes on the lead role of Jimmy in the ballet

“I think there’s a connection massively and I think there may even be a little more revival in some way,” he tells Sky News.

“I love that myself. I love non-conforming to gender norms and typical masculinity; I think it’s great to challenge things.”

Despite the album being written before he was born, the dancer says he was familiar with the genre already.

“I actually did an art GCSE project about Mods and rockers and Quadrophenia,” he says.

“I think we’ll be able to bring it to new audiences and hopefully, maybe people will be inspired to to learn more about their music and the whole cultural movement of the early 60s.”

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In 1979, the album was adapted into a film directed by Franc Roddam starring Ray Winstone and Sting but Townshend admits because the film missed key points he is “not a big fan”.

“What it turned out to be in the movie was a story about culture, about social scenario and less about really the specifics of mental illness and how that affects young people,” he adds, also complimenting Roddam’s writing for the film.

Perhaps a testament to Pete Townshend’s creativity, Quadrophenia started as an album, was successfully adapted to film and now it will hit the stage as a contemporary ballet.

It appears that over six decades later Mod culture is still cool and their issues still relatable.

Quadrophenia, a Mod Ballet will tour to Plymouth Theatre Royal from 28 May to 1 June 2025, Edinburgh Festival Theatre from 10 to 14 June 2025 and the Mayflower, Southampton from 18 to 21 June 2025 before having its official opening at Sadler’s Wells Theatre, London on 24 June running to 13 July 2025 and then visiting The Lowry, Salford from 15 to 19 July 2025.

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Russell Brand charged with rape and sexual assault

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Russell Brand charged with rape and sexual assault

Russell Brand has been charged with rape and two counts of sexual assault between 1999 and 2005.

The Metropolitan Police say the 50-year-old comedian, actor and author has also been charged with one count of oral rape and one count of indecent assault.

The charges relate to four women.

He is due to appear at Westminster Magistrates’ Court on Friday 2 May.

Police have said Brand is accused of raping a woman in the Bournemouth area in 1999 and indecently assaulting a woman in the Westminster area of London in 2001.

He is also accused of orally raping and sexually assaulting a woman in Westminster in 2004.

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Ashna Hurynag discusses Russell Brand’s charges

The fourth charge alleges that a woman was sexually assaulted in Westminster between 2004 and 2005.

Police began investigating Brand, from Oxfordshire, in September 2023 after receiving a number of allegations.

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The comedian has denied the accusations and said he has “never engaged in non-consensual activity”.

He added in a video on X: “Of course, I am now going to have the opportunity to defend these charges in court, and I’m incredibly grateful for that.”

Metropolitan Police Detective Superintendent Andy Furphy, who is leading the investigation, said: “The women who have made reports continue to receive support from specially trained officers.

“The Met’s investigation remains open and detectives ask anyone who has been affected by this case, or anyone who has any information, to come forward and speak with police.”

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Tom Cruise leads moment of silence in tribute to ‘dear friend’ Val Kilmer

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Tom Cruise leads moment of silence in tribute to 'dear friend' Val Kilmer

Tom Cruise has paid tribute to Val Kilmer, wishing his Top Gun co-star “well on the next journey”.

Cruise, speaking at the CinemaCon film event in Las Vegas on Thursday, asked for a moment’s silence to reflect on the “wonderful” times shared with the star, whom he called a “dear friend”.

Kilmer, who died of pneumonia on Tuesday aged 65, rocketed to fame starring alongside Cruise in the 1986 blockbuster Top Gun, playing Tom ‘Iceman’ Kazansky, a rival fighter pilot to Cruise’s character Maverick.

Tom Cruise, star of the upcoming film "Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning," leads a moment of silence for late actor Val Kilmer during the Paramount Pictures presentation at CinemaCon at Caesars Palace on Thursday, April 3, 2025, in Las Vegas. (AP Photo/Chris Pizzello)
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Tom Cruise said ‘I wish you well on the next journey’. Pic: AP

Val Kilmer in 2017. Pic: AP
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Val Kilmer in 2017. Pic: AP

His last part was a cameo role in the 2022 blockbuster sequel Top Gun: Maverick.

Cruise, on stage at Caesars Palace on Thursday, said: “I’d like to honour a dear friend of mine, Val Kilmer. I can’t tell you how much I admire his work, how grateful and honoured I was when he joined Top Gun and came back later for Top Gun: Maverick.

“I think it would be really nice if we could have a moment together because he loved movies and he gave a lot to all of us. Just kind of think about all the wonderful times that we had with him.

“I wish you well on the next journey.”

The moment of silence followed a string of tributes from Hollywood figures including Cher, Francis Ford Coppola, Antonio Banderas and Michelle Monaghan.

Kilmer’s daughter Mercedes told the New York Times on Wednesday that the actor had died from pneumonia.

Tom Cruise takes part in the Paramount Pictures presentation at CinemaCon at Caesars Palace on Thursday, April 3, 2025, in Las Vegas. (AP Photo/Chris Pizzello)
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Tom Cruise at Caesars Palace on Thursday. Pic: AP

Diagnosed with throat cancer in 2014, Kilmer discussed his illness and recovery in his 2020 memoir Your Huckleberry and Amazon Prime documentary Val.

He underwent radiation and chemotherapy treatments for the disease and also had a tracheostomy which damaged his vocal cords and permanently gave him a raspy speaking voice.

Kilmer played Batman in the 1995 film Batman Forever and received critical acclaim for his portrayal of rock singer Jim Morrison in the 1991 movie The Doors.

Read more from Sky News:
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He also starred in True Romance and Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, as well as playing criminal Chris Shiherlis in Michael Mann’s 1995 movie Heat and Doc Holliday in the 1993 film Tombstone.

In 1988 he married British actress Joanne Whalley, whom he met while working on fantasy adventure Willow.

The couple had two children before divorcing in 1996.

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