Best Budget Electric Mountain Bikes | Decathlon vs Giant vs Polygon vs Yamaha

If you’re looking to buy a high end electric mountain bike, the world is your oyster. But what about the other end of the market? What do you get for £4k or less? We got together four of the best budget electric mountain bikes with prices tags of £4k or less and put them to the test… and the results were surprising to say the least!

Find the best deals on these bikes here:
Polygon Siskiu: https://hawk.ly/m/Polygon-Siskiu-T7E/i/MBRYTD71
Decathlon Rockrider: https://hawk.ly/m/Decathlon-Rockrider-E-Expl-520-S/i/MBRYTD72
Giant Stance E+ 1: https://hawk.ly/m/Giant-Stance-E+-1/i/MBRYTD73
Yamaha Moro 7: https://www.yamaha-motor.eu/gb/en/ebike/mountain/pdp/moro-07-2022/

Time stamps:
00:00 – Intro
02:07 – Decathlon Rockrider E Expl 520 S
08:20 – Giant Stance E+1
16:15 – Yamaha Moro 07
24:35 – Polygon Siskiu T7E

The bikes we reviewed are the Decathlon Rockrider E-Expl 520S, the Giant Stance E+ 1, the Yamaha Moro 7, and the Polygon Siskiu T7E.

Sports superstore Decathlon, has been selling e-bikes for a number of years, but its Rockrider E-Expl 520S looks like its best model yet. It gets air-sprung suspension, an alloy frame, removable 500Wh battery, Brose motor, and even a dropper post. All for £2,999.

Giant makes bikes for many other brands and has arguably the most sophisticated frame building tech on the planet. Hence it’s alloy Stance frame, with Flexpoint suspension design, looks sleek and feels solid. It also comes with a Yamaha motor with plenty of power and torque, and a 625Wh battery. Price? £3,999 from a Giant dealer or online.

But Yamaha doesn’t just make motors… The Moro 7 is the motorcycle brand’s first emtb, boasting a unique twin-spar frame that encloses the battery and shock like a motorbike engine. It also gets some impressively high end parts for its £4,150 price tag.

Finally we have the Polygon Siskiu T7E, available from outdoor superstore, Go Outdoors. It costs £4k, but you’ll need to be a Go Outdoors member to get that price. Fortunately, membership only costs £5! With proper enduro geometry and a genuine Shimano motor and 630Wh battery, this looks like a bike that can be shredded to within an inch of its life.

Find out what happened – and there were highs, lows, and drama along the way – by watching the video and reading the reviews on MBR.co.uk – links below.

I’ve tested hundreds of e-bikes, but I was blown away by how much fun I had on the Decathlon Rockrider E-EXPL 520S given the amazing price

With a cutting edge frame and custom Yamaha motor, Giant’s Stance E+ 1 excels on price and looks

It’s easy to pick holes in Yamaha’s first e-mtb, but the Moro 07 is so much more than a statement of intent

Testing the Polygon Siskiu T7E was a rollercoaster ride, with a terrifying battery ejection, but fixing the issue made it my budget e-bike test winner

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[Music] we’ve become used to seeing ebikes with price tags of 8 9 and even 10 grand but there are some amazing options on the market costing less than half that amount for this test we’ve gathered four models that deliver all of the Power and excitement of a topend d bike at way more affordable prices but which one should you buy before we answer that Al what are the four bikes on test so we’ve got a yam Maro 07 we’ve got a decathlon rock rider Exel 520s to give it its full name it’s pretty long that one right we’ve got the giant stance e+1 and we’ve got the polygon cisu t7e well remembered the basic premise of the test was like like you said in the introduction it seems to be like an arms race to who can make the most expensive ebike but these four brands are actually going hey hold on a second ebikes don’t need to be crazy expensive before we get started on the individual bikes what are the kind of similarities that bring them together well the key thing with these bikes is that they’ve all got aluminium frames obviously that’s a cost saving the next thing is that they’re full powered motors they’re not sub power mid power they’re like full power motors and at the lower end you’ve got 75 newton meters at the upper end you’ve got 85 so like you’re getting all the power and the kind of feel you’d expect from a full power to E Bike and the other thing is they that they have in common is that they all actually ride surprising ly well we’re going to get into this I’m going to nitpick these bikes I’m going to pull some of them apart and they’ve got faults but overall I was I was just blown away by like how much fun you could have on them well that’s great we’ll get to that in a sec the last thing we should talk about quickly is the the price range on these yeah so the price range we start at the cheapest bike which is the the rock rider that’s three grand and then the most expensive bike is the Yamaha Morrow and that’s 4,150 so should we start taking a look at the bikes one by one then yeah and seeing as this is our affordable ebik test let’s start with the G this bike first [Music] perfect so Al you said this was the cheapest bike in the test what is it and how much does it cost well it’s the rock rider I’m not going to go through the full name again there’s a few models in this range and it’s basically it’s £3,000 and it’s a 29er 140 mil travel trail bike rock rider for those that don’t know that’s a decathlon brand it it is a decathlon brand so you basically go to decathlon store or you buy it online bike turns up you can do either way key thing about this bike is it’s Category 3 rated so it’s it is rated as a trail bike um but what we what you’ll find out later on is that you can ride this bike way harder than anything it was designed for so that’s an amazing price right so do you give anything up in terms of motor power or anything no not really I mean this is this is a Bros motor 70 newm of torque and 460 wats Peak power so it’s kind of like a like a modern mid power bike right like the most powerful mid power bikes a little bit more power but like a little bit more torque the key thing with this is like the other Bros Motors it’s super quiet yes because they they use a belt drive right exactly so there’s none of the kind of Freewheel mechanism in the motor clack clack clacking as you go on the trails also it’s really quiet in use so like I mean I was out riding this bike with other people on like bikes cting like we said two three times the price and all I could hear were their bikes no compromise there whatsoever um you’ve also got a 500w hour removable battery it comes out the side of the frame which we’ll get to later it’s actually quite quite a neat feature easy to remove so you could in theory run a two battery system on this bike so yeah you’ve got pretty much close to Modern full power and you’ve got a 500w battery so the range is pretty good and I think having that slightly lower Peak power and slightly lower torque means that you actually get pretty good range out of this bike I believe they’re also offering a range extender on that you can you can get a range extender so yeah you can go all in so you said that you can ride this above its limit so um you know what are the features that help you do that well I think one of the key things is the sizing this is an owl it’s almost got like a 480 mil reach so it’s got a good it’s got a generous cockpit on it it has got like a 460 chain stay on and it’s got a relatively High BB it’s around like 350 the longer chain stay on the higher BB don’t seem to compromise the handling just the way the the dynamic suspension sits in so you’ve got plenty of pedal clearance for technical climbing and and the bike just sort of kind of sits up and it’s got a load of power for like torky kind of techy climbs so it feels really good there but the 29in wheels and just the proportions of the bike it’s got a long wheelbase you can just you can Raz on it I mean we did the video shoot for this right and um you having a blast well I I’ve had a blast every time I I mean I did that short where I was out riding in m and I was like I can’t believe how good this bike is so there are limitations though the key one really is that you can blow through the suspension quite easily CU like like I said this is a category 3 rated bike it’s ready for trail riding I was riding on andural tracks because it kind of felt like I totally could why wouldn’t you right and other people are going to do that too so my tip for the setup on this would be with the xfusion suspension would be to run it a little bit firmer than recommended cuz you’re going to send it off drops you’re going to send it off jump you’re going to send this bike basically so I bottomed it out quite a lot okay so it could do with a little bit more progression and the other limiting factors on it are that the tire compounds it’s their own Brand Tire it’s got a nice tread pattern but the compound’s quite hard and that’s a problem you’re going to see pretty much on all of the bikes in this test so it’s probably going to help your range maybe but totally help your range and when the and when you’re in the when you’re in limp mode it makes it easier because you’re not pushing through the tire drag but in terms of like pushing hard and the hand and the way you want to ride this bike the tire are a limiting factor okay yeah so what about the rest of the components there any Corners cut there for the price no not really it’s got a 10-speed microshift drivetrain and that’s actually got an 1148 too cassette so you’ve got a pretty wide- range cassette so when you are in like one of the lower power modes or you’re running out of battery want to preserve your battery you come to a climb you’ve actually got the gears you still need to make it up those climbs so you kind of don’t you don’t run out of gears and then have to like just keep popping up the power modes that’s really cool I like the fact that the suspension has rebound camping it’s adjustable like I said you just need to run a little bit fmer and it is airspring so you can totally tailor that to your riding style and your weight it’s got ergon style they’re not eron grips they’re ergon style grips are really good the cockpits really good the cable for the display runs in through the handlebar and back out through the stem the saddle’s comfortable The Dropper post works well I mean it’s got kind of everything you need apart from one thing it’s the only bike and test that’s got twin piston brakes not four piston brakes and you notice it right so when you get a bit over enthusiastic got I got over enthusiastic all the time on this bike basically and it’s it’s hard hard to get it stopped yeah so one one of the things you’ll notice here I push the levers in board so that I’m maximizing the mechanical advantage of the brake lever um just to try and eat a little bit more power and it’s got 200 mil rotors I think it just needs four piston brakes so if you’re saying that like power and torque is kind of equivalent to a modern lightweight ebike um is it similar weight as well no definitely not and not for three grand you wouldn’t expect that right it’s it’s 25 86 kilos okay not CRA not crazy heavy um for the price but yeah it’s definitely getting into the into the heavier end of the market again the suspension feels Lively the fast Rolling Tires help make it doesn’t feel heavy because it’s got Pace to it suspension is actually quite effective on it too so like I said you can ride it really hard in fact the pivots came loose on the back end and they used Torx Keys here so you need to be careful like not to just round those off with an allen key I had to run a Spoke key over the rear wheel to tighten that up but then like I was riding it Beyond it intended use cuz I could right well I mean that that says it all really doesn’t absolutely it’s a great little bike and I mean there’s and there’s a few things that I would do if this was my bike personally I’d upgrade the front tire to something with a little bit more tra more grip a softer compa and keep that as a spare for the rear I mean it wouldn’t take much just to kind of Step It Up and Notch but then I’m also recommending people to ride this bike Way Beyond what it was designed for yeah I mean that’s amazing what uh what kind of rating did it get so I gave this bike an eight just because like 3,000 in fact this bike’s actually currently discounted to 2,699 that’s incredible it is incredible and like the whole time I was riding it yes there are faults with it I was just blown away by the level of performance for the price so it’s it’s totally deserving of up an eight [Music] rating so this is the giant stance e+1 this bik is currently just under four grand but it’s also discounted too so you can pick one of these for under three well yeah that’s a lot of bike for the money right that’s sounds like a bargain yeah and I mean I I rode this in the in the shoot and um I mean it was it was it was pretty cool I actually really enjoyed it as well yeah it’s a really fun bike what’s the motor on this bike so this is the second bike in test I have a Yamaha motor so this is giant SN Drive sport motor with 75 newm of torque it’s also got a 625 wat hour removable battery and it’s just got a little hole on the side here which probably had a key at one point but now it’s just a torus key pop it in there pop the battery out when you put it back in you got to be careful cuz it doesn’t just kind of click in it almost feels like you got to tighten it to secure it but yeah no issues with the battery rattling or anything like that so so is is that one of the biggest batteries on test it is that’s 625 and we get to the polygon in a bit which has got a 630w hour battery so they’re the two bikes with the most range essentially yeah okay and because of that Danny it’s also the heaviest bike on test it’s 26.440 um and they have I mean there’s a few little things on the bike like it’s got EXO casing tires hard comp dual compound hard compound so the bike’s going to get heavier when you put proper tires on yeah but you get Max’s Tires out the box which is pretty cool which is pretty cool yeah totally and um there is a weight saving measure on there which I guess hasn’t done a lot has it hasn’t which is the rear suspension design which is there’s there’s no pivot at the rear axle so this isn’t giant normally have a might they call their Maestro suspension design which is a twin link Design This is the flex Point suspension design so there’s no pivot on the rear triangle it’s it’s an it’s a flex State Design so it’s out the stay is just basically Flex to absorb the variation in the linkage but it’s still it’s still has this co- pivot kind of layout here where the swing arm and the shock are all connected together through one big kind of oversized bolt which is really cool I mean that leads me to something about I’d say this is the best quality frame of the four bikes in this test it’s the one where it feels like the components are compromised but the frame isn’t You’ hope to see that from someone like giant would you wouldn’t you I mean they’re the one of the best bike frame manufacturers and when they make frames for other brands so yeah you would hope to see that but it’s also Giants at a disadvantage in this test because all of the other brands are like direct to Consumer and you for giant you go through a dealer yeah so there’s a margin in there AB it’s got to be worked into the price that the others don’t and that’s kind of reflected a little bit in some of the components but I cannot fault the frame quality I mean this is the bike where your pivots aren’t going to wear out in 6 months something’s not going to fall off it you’re not going to have to keep torquing it up it’s it’s super well made so you kind of think of this as an investment that you’re going to upgrade and build on yeah yeah absolutely like one of the compromises is the Shimano 10-speed drivetrain and not because it’s 10-speed it’s just basically got an 1143 tooth cassette which which isn’t a wide enough range on any bike no no I mean you know that I because you you do need to keep that Cadence spinning don’t you keep you need to keep the Cadence High keep your feet spinning for the for the steeper grain to keep to get the assistance from the motor and also if the battery runs out you need easy Years cuz you might still have to climb out of a valley to get back home or get back to your van whatever so like I’d like to see that I mean the performance of the shifting was really good the link Glide chain and cassette feels really robust and the other thing that on the bike this bike’s got four piston tectro brakes but they had variable bite point on the rear brake and I think that might be a consequence of the fact that the cables run through the headset so at some point the brakes been taken apart to be threaded through and it hasn’t been bled properly so that’s that was a little bit of a frustration on this bike something to to sort of make sure with your dealer if you’re buying it from a dealer then you can take you can just reel it back in and go hey come on my my back brak’s not feeling good they can do a bleed and and you’re good to go yeah I mean that is totally one of the advantages so the thing that’s interesting with this bike is the suspension it’s got 125 on the rear and 140 in the front and neither of the the fork nor the shock came with O-rings on them for you to set the side I notice your zip tie down I’ve got a zip tie on there and I think maybe I got one of my old hair bands on here from when I had a top knot basically I kind of put that on the fork so that’s a little bit of an oversight I don’t know how much it cost to put a o-ring on a fork or a shock but really you do need it to help set the suspension up and setting the suspension up in this bike is not entirely straightforward there’s a very narrow usable range of rebound adjustment on on the rear shock where it kind of feels right um so it’s worth spending time getting your sag and your rebound setup and this sort of same goes for the fork but the fork Fork’s much easier to set up because it’s got recommended settings but the Fork’s got this it’s got this real pitter patter action like it’s super smooth feels like almost it’s got no damping in the initial part of the stroke but when you hit something real hard and real deep it’s almost like it it sucks at the bottom and holds down there for a second and you get a little moment of fear and then and then it recovers so the suspension feels it felt amazing on the blue runs and stuff at bik part whales because you’ve got this super free super fast action like as you go across all those high frequency bumps and like me and Jamie were riding this bike and another bike there and we were both like oh my oh my Lord this bike just feels so smooth but when you start hitting the brakes and start riding terrain where you’ve got you’re riding more dynamically pitching and stuff yeah you don’t have the damping support within the fork especially in the fork it’s noticeable um you kind of get pitched onto the fork a little bit more that’s where the real compromise is on this bike is that it probably needs a better Fork yeah so again we’re talking about a sort of terrain that maybe this bike is not really intended for but yeah yeah but I mean you can you ride it you can totally ride it on that terrain right and um and like I said it’s a really solid package it just doesn’t feel like it’s going to fall to bits on you yeah I mean I I noticed that and uh and I would concur about the suspension as well front and rear it’s felt almost like frictionless to almost like you’re just floating on a sort of which is amazing when you’re on a consistent gradient it’s just when that gradient changes rapidly that’s when your weight shifts around and the kind of suspension just becomes a little bit like kind of wallowy especially on the fork the rear is not so bad cuz only got 125 M travel I’d also say that what’s really interesting with this bike is that the geometry is not that different from the high-end bike that we had in our ebike of the Year test but I had no issues really with like getting the front end up on this bike and I think that’s just a result it’s got a higher front end it just it’s maybe it’s a little bit shorter in reach little bit less travel to pull through but yeah it’s it just it and also maybe that that feel with the suspension it’s easier to kind of push into makes the bike feel you can destabilize the bike more easily by that you you’re kind of talking about the change they length to a degree aren’t you it’s a long chain stay there long chain stays yeah yeah so that I guess that helped the climbing as well yeah I mean it does Ian it helps it helps position your weight forward for climbing and then obviously you’ve got like a you got a 75 newm torque motor you’ve got power there and I really like what Giants kind of moved away from its kind of you know used to have the little kind of LED display that now got a proper display so you can see metrics on there you’ve got like your battery life the only thing about it is though where you turned the bike Upside Down Danny you scratched it sorry yeah so it is something to be it’s that’s a disadvantage of having it here rather than Behind The Handlebar is that it is more prone like if you crash or if turned it upside down you can see the scratches on the display so uh really great quality frame really Supple suspension that works great on the sort of smoother Trail blue trails and stuff and a decent component package the component package has got some little flaws in it that that you could kind of work around and live with you’re right you’re basically you’re getting a really top quality frame that that you can upgrade as you go along and a and a good price at the moment if you quick it’s at a disadvantage because you buy it through a shop so that means that the components can quite be as high as the other bikes in this test so I also give this bike an eight you get that support that you might not get with some of the other brands yeah so you’re paying a kind of insurance policy down the line pay for service yeah [Music] yeah so I mean the the Yamaha right we’ve had this before in the show and stuff but this is a really really distinctive bike isn’t it that’s one way to put it Danny but what’s interesting is I had quite a few people come up to me when I was testing it and say they really liked it like they like the fact that it looked different I mean I think it’s cool that you know motorik brand has come into the market and they’ve taken their knowledge from a different slightly different form of uh two wheel transport and they’re applying it to this and it’s it’s different to what bike companies do right absolutely and what they’re calling this this frame layout is they’re calling the Dual twin because you’ve got twin top tube and a twin down tube and they put the shark in the middle and the battery sits in the middle so I I kind of like the fact that they’ve taken their own spin on it and this isn’t actually yamaha’s first ebike apparently they’ve been making ebikes for 30 years this is their first emtb though okay yeah so a Yamaha motocross bike has a larger front wheel and a smaller rear wheel like a mullet bike right but they haven’t done that on this bike no they haven’t so this bike was released two three years ago when they first showed it and then it was kind of it was late coming to Market so it’s got 27.5 in Wheels front and rear with 2.6 in tires so kind of like a sort of 2018 Spec s of wheel yeah exactly it kind of dates it a bit so when we get into the ride performance of this bike I actually don’t think the smaller Wheels detract dramatically from and may actually have some benefits okay but before we get to that it is a Yamaha so we should talk about the Yamaha motor totally so you said this motor has a bit more go than the one on the giant right this is the PW X3 and it’s got 85 new met of torque and you feel it like you feel the bikes it might have a higher Peak power too I don’t know but you just you just feel it’s got It’s more get up and go and it’s also got that same feel that you get on the on the motor in the giant where when you put your foot on the pedal it’s kind of like there’s an eagerness for it to go which is tunable within the app so you can kind of tune that you can tune that initial pickup back or increase it so it’s kind of really advantageous for Steep technical if you stall on a climb or something like that you get going again but like you said when when you’re not used to it you can be sort of sat on your bike put your foot in the pad a chat to your M shoot from underneath you yeah like whiskey throttle right it’s like and there’s another really interesting thing about this motor because it’s a Yamaha with a Yamaha motor they don’t have to hide the fact so the motor is like really visible it’s not got loads of casing and housing and kind of like different brand names on it and stuff it’s like it’s just they’re showcasing it there aren’t they really see and it’s got a really narrow Q factor now if anyone’s watching this and they don’t know what Q factor is it’s basically the distance between the outside edges of the crank arms so how basically far your feet are apart yeah exactly um and this one is I mean I compared it to five other bikes we had in the and it is by far the narrowest so while everyone’s obsessed with having really short crank arms for obvious reasons right because it allows you to spin your paddles and not clip them on the ground narrow is good too because one it increases your efficiency in terms of how you pedal but it also means that when you’re Lent over or when you’re trying to climb up through like a gully or something like that the edges of your pedal clearance exactly so I re I really like that about it all the bikes here have kind of fully enclosed batteries in the down tube but the one on the Amar is kind of semi-enclosed is it it is it is semi close and and it’s removable so it’s a 500w hour battery you got your little charging port up top here to remove it you have to take the cover off there’s some bolts there and then there’s a bolt down to the bottom for for removing the battery so you could run a a two battery system with this bike quite easy a little bit more fast than just putting an allen key in the side or pop one in the bottom like it’s not something you’d want to be kind of like having to do mid- race or something like that but it’s totally doable disadvantage of that approach no water ball yeah kind of sucks yeah I mean you wouldn’t you probably wouldn’t get one in there anyway would you well no you probably wouldn’t but you definitely wouldn’t want to drill holes in your batter to attach a b what about travel on this bike what sort of bike is it this bike is kind of heavy hitting bike it’s got a 160 mil travel lyric fork and then it’s got a Super Deluxe shock on the rear and they claim it’s got 150 travel on the rear but I only measured it at 139 so it doesn’t quite deliver the travel they claim and I don’t know maybe that’s the thing from the motorbike world too or Bicycle World or maybe maybe they just wanted to make it sound better but it’s a pretty high-end looking shock and Fork though it’s a pretty high-end component package Al together Danny so we’ve got you’ve got a high-end fork and shock you’ve got mura mt5 brakes you’ve got a XT drivetrain with a 10 51 tooth cassette so you got a really wide gear range it’s got a good bar it’s got good bar width it’s got a decent stem it’s got a really cool saddle this is a Yamaha saddle it’s got a little grip pad at the back for like steep climbs best of all it’s got like you tuck your fingers in here and it’s a little handle for like putting it in out of the van or put and it’s really comfortable too so the Spec’s amazing it’s the only bike on test that’s got good rubber Compound on the tires these are Max Tera front and rear so on the rear tire the Recon it’s a little bit shallow and I rode this bike in the winter too and um you definitely don’t have the traction you need for climbing um so I’d like to see like a DH or two or something that on the back just to give it a little bit more bite but XO plus casin and Max Tera rubber like night and day better than the tires on any of the other bike loads more grip basically and and with the Plus Tires as well I mean you know we we sort of do them a disservice Now by you know they’re not fashionable but when they came out there were a lot of positive things about them there are and there some positive things about them on this bike too what happens is that you you’ll remember this when we first started riding plus-size tires is that the tires give the bike bounce so this bike’s actually way more Dynamic than the shock tune of the geometry would suggest it’s quite playful it’s quite easy to move around and it’s really easy to make a mistake with the setup on this bike because it’s also got really wide rims so although they’re only 2.6 in tires they’ve got a really wide rim which helps like kind of bring the whole tire volume up so you really do have to run like 20 psi or below especially for like if you’re like 85 kilos if you go 23 24 PSI basically you feel like the suspension is just too harsh and it’s because the tire is not working properly yeah so it’s got a really good spec on this bike so does that impact on the scales is that an advantage yeah it’s the lightest bike on test it’s 23.62 kilos so that’s quite a difference uh then moving up to the kind of giant is almost almost 3 kilos yeah yeah away the wheels they’ve got really wide rims and if they just went to like a standard 30 mil rim width they could probably shave like 300 g off the wheel set so they could almost get it below like 23 kils which is impressive for a full power D bike yeah absolutely so were there any other aspects of the ride that kind of stood out to you yeah I mean the bike just feels really solid you know when you’re riding the the decathlon bike or the giant they kind of feel a little bit more like flexy and flimsy and again that could be result of like they got spind L not spindle Force but the damping’s kind of Freer um they’ve got 29in wheels which is more Flex than that this bike feels like you can kind of charge into like way rougher terrain and the bike’s not going to kind of deflect I’d like to see a lighter tune on the shock just so you could allow the rear suspension to be a little bit Freer on it because currently I run it wide open and I’m 85 kilos so if you’re lighter than me you’re going to struggle to get the rebound fast enough and it’s one of those shocks where if you crank the rebound all the way around and push the bike down it’ll go y so it’s unusable basically absolutely they totally need to shift the range um to make it lighter in compression too so the rear suspension is a bit bit more Supple so you’re not relying on the tire for that traction so much and then it gives it gives it a wider range of Rider weights that it can accommodate so for a first attempt uh uh e- Moun bike yamah hav seems to have done a pretty good job right they had done a pretty good job and obviously they could have hit the ground running a little bit faster with just some simple tweaks like if they got an MX so had a 29in front wheel um maybe a slightly shorter chain stay I don’t don’t mind the long chain State on the size large but like on the small and medium I’d like to see a shorter chain State just to balance the weight distribution but there’s not much else you can kind of fault it for so what was the rating then I give this bike an eight because obviously it’s it’s the most expensive bike on test and things like the shock tune things like the chain stay length for the smaller sizes people are just basically even though I don’t think the 275 Wheels front rear really impacts the handling it’s just not on Trend and people just aren’t going to they’re not they want the latest thing yeah [Music] so our fourth bike and our winning bike Our Winning bike look at it here it looks super modern looks super aggressive kind of doesn’t look like it belongs in this category yeah I mean it is I mean theyve nailed it right it’s got a low top tube it’s got a slack head angle it’s got adjustable geometry 29inch Wheels front rear it’s kind of build as like e and Juro Trail and Juro so yeah it is it is an aggressive bike and it’s price the price is £4,000 but to get it for £4,000 this bike comes from go Outdoors you need to have the discount card which costs 5 so yeah5 well spent that is it is isn’t it absolutely so it looks aggressive does the travel match that purpose absolutely it’s got a150 mil Fork but nowhere on the website could I find the travel on the rear I don’t so obviously I measure all of that so it’s got 144 Mill of travel in the rear okay so yeah so I’d also say that the geometry was slacker and lower than claim too so it kind of went from actually being sort of Trail geometry into full in Juro geometry so we’re looking at like it’s got 63 degree head angle it’s not meant to have it’s meant I think it’s meant have a 65 degree head angle this this in the low position it’s got a 325 mbb height it’s low it’s low exactly it’s got a 1265 wheelbase and it’s the only bike in this task that doesn’t have like a 460 mil chain stay the chain stay length is 445 I sounds like a killer set of numbers well they are even if they’re not the right numbers they’re not they’re not the numbers they going in the right direction they’re not the numbers the polygon website they are they they’re good numbers yeah that makes a huge difference and the other thing with the bike is that the suspension’s like it’s fully adjustable so youve got rebound and compression adjustment on the shock and on the fork I’d actually say they’ve gone a little bit too far with the shock because you can even adjust the ifp pressure so there’s a second valve here underneath this little cap where you can you’ve got a quite a narrow band of adjustment but you can change the and I actually think unless you’re kind of really in the suspension basically do not touch it and there’s a risk that someone will actually attach a pump to it and think it think where you put the air in the shark so I I actually think they should expect a shark where they blank that off completely yeah okay but yeah it’s got like a bolt through Fork piggy back shock I mean it’s Suntour stuff right yeah it is oh yeah this is where this task gets messy so I blew the shock on the second ride okay so had zero damping and before the shock blew the battery fell out okay so so you’ve been on a journey with this bike right I have been on a journey with this bike I mean so if you can see I’ve got like a I’ve got a nuke Pro proof tool strap wrapped around the the down tube because basically the battery comes out it’s a basically bottom loading battery um and when I was at bike part Wells testing the bike I jumped into a section and just whatever way I landed kind of like there was kind of big GeForce and a big bump um the battery just fell out hit the front wheel and spun down the trail that’s pretty scary it scared me big time and I thought well okay maybe we hadn’t located the battery correctly so like benefit of the doubt slammed the back in real hard rode off jumped in into the section on rim Dinger and it did it again and that was really scary so I actually rode it without the battery in it for a little bit and then the shock blew but what was really interesting was with no battery and no damping I had to ride it back to the van with no assistance and this bike’s got a Shimano ep01 motor and like there’s just so little drag in it okay it was the only time during the test I actually thought you know what these hard compound handstamped tires I’m so pleased they’re on the bike because when I was pedaling up the fire road back to the van I was like okay there’s no resistance in the motor there’s very low resistance on the tires this is brilliant and I’d actually written the bike off so I had a conversation with with polygon um and go Outdoors they sent a replacement shock the replacement shock’s been fine so I don’t know what was wrong with the first shock that was on the bike it was really easy to fit to and they actually got me a a a sizing tool from Shimano to check that the battery mounts were had been positioned correctly so you met me in the car park on bank holiday Monday and I do not recommend anyone trying to do that in a car Park I was I was there for quite a while but I got I got the I got the connectors out checked the mounts um used the tool put it back in what was interesting was that the mounts were too close so although you think that would make it tighter I think what it meant it was that the mechanism couldn’t engage fully so once I sized them correctly Slamm the battery in um I couldn’t get it to fall out um whereas before I could basically bounce the front end and the battery just fall onto the floor but I still rode it with strap on yeah because now that it’s happened it’s hard for me to trust it and that’s my only real concern with this bike is that if you’ve got one of these bikes and it hasn’t been checked I’d recommend that you go and get get the battery checked or that you run it with a strap on on the down Tu because it is scary those things aside it is still the best ride in bike in test first ride was in seran I was like hey this bike’s really good it’s really good shape and then we went to bike par Wells and I was just like I was having like one of the best before the battery fell out and the Shar BW I was having one of the best days ever cuz the riding position is really good on the geometry is really good it’s got SLX brakes four piston no inconsistency feels super good even the grips it’s got these kind of little kind of desk grip ripoff grips they’re excellent you’ve got Shimano motor you’ve got a really neat display behind the bar you got the new controller which is kind of the did like it’s it’s got a little bit more functionality than just like the two buttons the position on the bike feels excellent I was just having a total blast and then everything went wrong but they fixed everything really quickly too so uh a lot of ebikes with Shimano motors come with third party batteries right is that the case here no that’s a Shimano um 630w battery okay so genuine Shimano battery yeah I could see that when it land on the yeah and actually and this this bike as a package is 24.6 kilos pretty decent it is pretty decent for a 4,000lb aluminium full powered ebike yeah it’s got a really good specification now that the the battery mounts have been sized correctly I’m not really concerned about them there’s a little bit concerned over the reliability of the sun tour supension components and like and getting those service like down the line whereas we know with like the Yamaha bike it’s got rock shocks on it if you need a shock service or if you want a different I mean that’s the thing with the Yad you could just you just literally go and get the shot retuned like anywhere it’s really easy to do I’m not I’m not so confident about that but then if you do have any problems with your suspension again you can roll back into a go Outdoor Store and say hey you guys you need to fix this but the ride quality was standout like I rode all the trails of bipart Wells that I normally ride and I’m so pleased the battery didn’t fall out in any of the big jumps but yeah the bike Dynamic so this is the the the best riding bike best handling bike of all four bikes by a country mile absolutely and my only reservation from like I’m so I’m going to rate it a nine because I I want to separate it from the 38s that are in the test it needs better tires deserves better tires it deserves that needs because they’re a hard compound um and they just don’t have they don’t have the traction for the kind of terrain you’re definitely going to take this bike into they don’t have the traction in the climbing and they definitely don’t have the traction for like when you want to slow down on like super steep gnarly tracks cuz you’re going to want go and ride all those tracks on it so it needs better tires and that’s really the only shortcoming in the specification so that’s why I couldn’t get a 10 and then I’ve got that bit of reservation about the reliability of the with the shock blowing so so quickly so it sounds like uh you know what was was basically a write off bike you know we had a nightmare day and um it’s completely turned around and we we’ve had a pretty happy ending really it is it’s it’s the best bike in test and I’d like to say that like all of these bikes have compromises that’s to be expected when you’re trying to build an ebike to to such a competitive price point it’s not that they’re cutting Corners it’s just that you don’t have the options you can’t just go and speca or the new lyric or the new 38 or oh let’s have tea type or oh I’ll have a I’ll have a wireless dropper you don’t have any of those luxuries right the people that are putting these bikes together it’s so competitive like and they’re trying to get the best bits on the bike for your best value for money and sometimes they get it wrong I think the key takeaway from this whole task is that all of these bikes were so much fun to ride and test and I think like if when brands are making more affordable ebikes I think we’re just going to see more and more people on them yeah that’s got to be good yeah totally so that’s a wrap for this video but if you want to find out more about each individual bike in this test we’re going to have the reviews the full reviews online on m.c. and we’re going to do some deep Dives on each individual bike so look out for those videos coming soon