If I was buying an ebike for Cyber Monday I would go for this Pure Electric electric Brompton deal

There are some excellent ebike deals available in the run-up to Cyber Monday, mainly on cheaper electric bikes and some of the best Specialized ebikes. However, my personal favourite is a rare and enticing deal on a real British design icon: the Brompton Electric. Specifically, on the M6L, which has six gears as well as a battery-powered motor. 

Brompton recently rationalised its range so the M6L is now officially an 'old' Brompton. It is, for most people's purposes, the same as the 'new' Bromptons however, and is as much fun to ride as it was at release a few years ago. The six-speed option is particularly good if you lice somewhere very hilly, or you intend to use the Brompton with the motor assistance turned down or off, so you get a workout.

• Buy Brompton M6L for £2,695 at Pure Electric, saving £300

• Shop all electric bike deals at Pure Electric

Of all the best Cyber Monday deals on bikes so far, this is my pick. However if you are looking for some cheaper ebike deals, try these.

• The best cheap ebike deals of Black Friday

This Brompton deal is the one for those who want a bike of real top quality and longevity. It's made here in Britain too, which isn't something you can say about many bikes. 

Brompton M6L was £2995, now £2695 at Pure Electric
Getting a rare, £300 price cut in the Pure Electric Black Friday sale. This six-speed model is sturdy, zippy and folds away beautifully, in seconds. It's powered along by a bespoke Brompton motor, designed in collaboration with the Williams F1 team, that outputs the standard 250W and applies 40Nm of torque to the front wheel drive. The 300Wh battery propels it along for 45 miles and recharges fully in 4 hours. 

View Deal

Why you should buy a Brompton Electric

Brompton spent a long time developing an electric version of its bike, while third-party electric conversion kits sold extremely well. What they came up with does manage to capture the spirit of the original folding bike with electric assistance to make riding it even more of a breeze. 

The folding action is all but identical, and it goes down to a really tiny size. Although the unavoidable extra weight added by the battery and motor do make it less easy to carry than the non-electric version. It wheels along very nicely in its partially folded mode, however. That's partly because there is a pair of smaller, stabilising wheels placed at the back, a bit like on an old person's shopping trolley. 

That's great for when you're at the end of your journey or getting onto public transport in the middle of it but obviously the real test of the M6L is when you're riding it. Brompton, using expertise from the Williams F1 team were among the pioneers of using more highly developed cadence sensors. As a result, the bike reacts in much more intuitive way to the speed of your pedalling and the amount of resistance being put up by the road – most notably if there's a hill. This kind of tech is still largely restricted to more high-end ebikes even now. The cheaper ones apply motor assistance when you pedal in a rather random and haphazard manner.

Another unusual innovation with the Brompton Electric is that it has front wheel drive. This was and is extremely rare but for my money it makes the ride feel much more zippy and handling more responsive. It makes the bike inevitably front heavy and some users have complained about this, but when riding the e-Brompton I never felt like it was tipping forwards or unstable in any way. 

Allied to the six-speed gearing it makes the ride feel much speedier than most ebikes, which all too often end up trapped by their 15.5mph legal top speed. I'm not even sure it is faster – but it sure feels it. It's more enjoyable; less of a mid-speed chore. 

The other thing about Brompton, which has now been going for over 40 years, is that it can be relied on to build bikes to last, and to supply great after-sales support and servicing. The Brompton may be twice the price of many good ebikes, but I would back it to last a lot more than twice as long.