500c Bafang Display : The Mini-Me Of Ebike Displays

I’ve been pretty disappointed by almost every Bafang ebike display I’ve ever used. My number 1 complaint is that most ebike displays are way to big, and make your bike look too much like an ebike with any casual glance. With a backpack battery and a little discretion, I’ve found that most people don’t even notice that I’m riding an ebike on the trails, even if I stop on the trail and let them pass. If you don’t bring attention to yourself by looking down at your bike and if you weren’t riding insanely fast without pedaling, most people will just assume you’re on a normal bike. Nothing screams ‘EBIKE’ like having a large display on the handlebars with lots of wires coming out of it.

The updated 500c Bafang display (aka the Luna Mighty Mini display) available here for $69 is a display that is worth buying on its own and upgrading whatever display you are running. Lunacycle had this display developed to fit bikes like the Luna Banana which didn’t have a display that worked very well for it, and Bafang is now reselling it to their other dealers. I have about 12 Bafang displays right now, many of them are pretty beat up with broken brackets and screens and so I bit the bullet and just ordered one to test with. I really liked it, both because of the color display, the wattage graph on the left side that fills up with bars showing you at a glance how much juice you’re chugging (in watts) as well as native support for 52v nominal battery packs.

Before the 500c display came out, if you wanted to have a discrete Bafang ebike your best bet was to dump the display entirely. Instructions on doing this can be found on the Powered Ride website article here. The biggest disadvantage of doing this is that you lose your ability to switch PAS levels or disable PAS by selecting level 0 (it stays at your last setting). If you don’t care about PAS or only use one PAS level ever and aren’t afraid to cut and solder cables and plug them into your expensive ebike motor then it’s a distinct possibility (I’ve never tried it). For the rest of us, there is the 500c display.

Pros

• Lighter and smaller than any other Bafang display currently available
• Support for any battery voltage from 24v to 52v nominal
• Shows proper voltage level up to 60v
• Haptic feedback (unit vibrates when you press a button)
• The bracket is a lot more solid than the plastic brackets on most of the other Bafang displays
• Works with any BBSxx drive unit or the Ultra Max

Cons

• Hard to see in direct bright sunlight
• You have to buy it for $69 if you want to upgrade your current display
• Have to hold the power button down for a pretty long time to get the unit to turn on

For using the display there are a few things you want to know

• Long Press Power button to turn on and off
• Long Press + turn the headlights on and off (if you have headlights, none of my kits do)
• Short press MENU button to cycle through display settings/trip meter
• Long Press MENU to get to the menu settings
• Press + or – to change menu settings
• Long Press on MORE in the menu to get to extended settings Password is 1919 (Bafang) or 1199 (Luna)
• In the advanced menu, you can set wheel size and number of PAS levels as well as a speed limit
• Press + and – together to reset the trip meter
• Speed Poles is how many poles your motor has (don’t change this)
• Start Poles is how many turns of the speed sensor happens before the motor cuts on

I haven’t bought a BBSxx drive unit in a while (I currently have 4 BBSHD’s, 8 BBS02s and 1 Ultra Max) but if I buy another BBS02, BBSHD or Ultra Max you better bet your favorite weasel that I’m going to order it with the 500c display. Small and light for discrete weight weenies like me, it is now my newest favorite display.

It’s about time.

Ride On.