A year ago I bought a Cube full suspension electric mountain bike. By now, I have done just about 1000 miles on it throughout all four seasons.
Here’s what I’ve learned..
Why a full suspension e-MTB?
In the autumn of 2022, I wrote a 1000 kilometre review of my first ever e-bike, the BMC Alpenchallenge AMP city-bike.
The BMC city-bike started my love for e-bikes and bike-commuting. It was reasonably well priced, low maintenance, high quality and a sporty ride on good roads.
A big downside that I also mentioned in the review was that the city-bike did not like rough roads. The BMC was incredibly uncomfortable on the poor quality and poorly designed parts of the bicycle infrastructure of my hometown. Even worse, it was outright bone-rattling to ride over icy roads in the Estonian winter. During my second winter with this city-bike, I couldn’t take it anymore.
Sidenote: e-bikes are heavy. Even the BMC Alpenchallenge AMP which claimed to be a light e-bike weighed ca 19kg. This is pretty much double the weight of a non-electric mid-spec gravel bike. It feels that the frames of e-bikes are built stiffer to take the additional weight of and torque. Commuter e-bikes tend to have narrow tyres and little or no clearance to fit wider, more cushy tyres. With e-bikes, one tends to ride near the maximum speed of the motor assist most of the time, so 25 km/h in my country.
As a result — a suspensionless and narrow-tyred e-bike can feel much more rattly to ride than a “normal” bicycle — the faster speed, stiffer frame and much heavier bike means your wrists and backside will get a pounding.
As I was rattling away on my BMC, I kept seeing local food-delivery couriers blasting through the city on their fat-tyred and fully suspended MTB-s throughout all seasons, seemingly in relative comfort.
I wanted to get in on the comfort. Clearly, what I needed was a full suspension mountain bike with chunky tyres, but also fenders, lights and a rack. An “electric SUV bicycle”, that is.
So, in the winter of 2022, I sold the BMC and bought what felt like the bicycle-opposite of the city-bike ethos — a fat-tyred, full suspension, incredibly heavy (27kg) and expensive (4.4kEUR) electric mountain bike from Cube — 2022 Cube Stereo Hybrid 120 SLX 750.
Why Cube Stereo Hybrid 120 SLX bike?
I wanted maximum comfort in a commuting ready package with quality parts.. as cheap as possible.
The Cube Stereo Hybrid 120 SLX runs on some of the biggest and fattest tyres that still work on “normal” (i.e. not full on “fat bike”) rims and frame — 29’’ diameter and 2.6’’ wide. It has full suspension with 120/130mm range and good quality Fox Float components.
The frame geometry is modern and designed for cross-country riding: a steep seat-tube angle, slack head-tube angle, short stem and a wide handlebar.
It has the latest generation Bosch mid-drive motor, Bosch “Smart System” electronics and a generous 750Wh battery integrated into the down tube.
The “SUV” version of this bike comes with original Cube fenders, a rear rack and lights integrated. These are OEM accessories that integrate perfectly, look good and work well.
The rest of the components are very good — Shimano XT drivetrain, one-finger brake levers operating 203mm disc brakes with 4-piston calipers. The rims are reasonably light and tubeless-ready. The bike even has a dropper post.
The 4400 EUR that I paid for my bicycle, it turns out, is considered good value for an e-bike like this. You can easily pay 6000EUR+ for a sporty full-suspension e-MTB from a top manufacturer like Specialized, Scott, etc.
Does it work for commuting?
For commuting, no.
The problem with commuting is not the ride (which is fabulous), but the stress of parking. Leaving my awesome 4400 EUR bicycle chained to the flimsy aluminium ring on the public street that counts as bike parking for most office buildings is just too stressful.
In my mind, this bike is every drug addicted bike-thief’s dream and will be stolen in minutes, regardless of the lock or GPS tracking that I install. Therefore, the only parking facility in the office that would put my mind at ease would be a locked bike room. But a locked bike room is not available at work for most of us.
Insurance is not an option in my country, since the value of this bike is 2–3x over the maximum insurance amount of a bicycle stolen from a public place. This might be better in more developed economies with a stronger bicycling culture.
What is it good for?
It turns out e-mountain biking is awesome for sport. This bike is also great for bike-touring.
The Stereo Hybrid 120 SLX really is super comfortable, even on the icy bumpy roads in the winter as well as on broken and badly designed bike infra. You can blast over stupid sharp curbs and broken pavement. You can ride up and down stairs and take shortcuts over terrain. Running tubeless tyres also makes punctures less likely and the low tyre pressures you can have with tubeless further increases comfort.
It’s great fun to ride singletracks in the forest. It’s fantastic uphill — I feel like Marco Pantani getting electric doping from the motor and climbing hills at speeds I most definitely could not do without the assist, even on a much lighter normal bike.
The geometry and suspension is good for technical cross country riding — you can manoeuvre in tight corners and take descents at speeds I am comfortable with my skill set. Unexpectedly, the dropper post helps a lot on descents, too.
Everything works — the brakes are strong, the suspension is smooth, the 12-speed Shimano XT drivetrain has a really good range of gears and shifts quite well even under some load.
The fenders and rack work well enough for city riding. When riding offroad in deep mud, you still get dirty, but that’s inevitable.
I did a 500 km bike tour over 4 days in the summer with panniers and was positively surprised. The range with the 750Wh battery is good enough for a long all-day ride and the electric assist makes technical terrain good to ride even with a fully packed bike.
The battery range in my experience has been:
- 200km in “eco” mode on flat asphalt in the summer — this is really the maximum range you can get from the bike if you also put in the pedalling effort yourself
- 150km in “tour” mode on mixed tarmac and gravel in the summer with some headwind and some hills
- 90km in “eMTB” mode on hard technical singletrack with ascents in a warm season
- 65km in “eMTB” mode with high rolling resistance studded tyres in snow and ice and cold weather
What are the cons?
The biggest annoyance for me has been the constant need to do maintenance on the drivetrain. Now, this is of course not unique to this particular bike, any chain-driven bike used off road gets muddy and needs cleaning, degreasing and lubricating.
My previous bike had a Shimano Nexus internal gear hub and Gates belt drive, which was pretty much maintenance free. On this bike’s 12-speed Shimano XT chain-driven system I’ve had to adjust the derailleur cable tension twice as the bike wore in, I’ve had to degrease and wash the drivetrain and lubricate the chain countless times. I sometimes don’t go riding if it’s wet outside just to avoid the inevitable post-ride maintenance.
On my next e-bike, I am seriously considering a belt drive system — either the fancy new Pinion gearbox+motor or normal motor + Rohloff internal gear hub.
This bike is also incredibly heavy at 27kg. E-bikes are all heavy, and most cheaper electric hardtails are also 20kg+, so this is not anything unusual. But still — lifting this bike into a bike stand or carrying it into the office bike storage room is hard. Lifting it up to a car roof carrier is impossible to do alone.
Charging takes a long time with the standard included charger — about 5 hours. There is a fast charger available to buy separately, but it’s quite expensive. So — topping up the battery quickly during the lunch break of a bike tour is not going to happen.
The bike is huge — nearly half a metre longer than an old-school 26’’ MTB and much taller and wider. I struggle to fit it inside our family minivan or transporting. All other bikes we own fit inside the said minivan and are also light enough to carry on the roof.
There is more faffing and expense caused by the complexity of the suspension and the overall setup. You need to set the suspension sag, the shocks will need servicing and it’s quite complex to do it yourself and expensive to get done by someone else. The dropper post will need servicing at some point. Setting up the tubeless tyres is a messy affair and they need topping up with sealant.
In a nutshell
Electric full suspension mountain bikes like the Cube Stereo Hybrid 120 SLX are excellent for semi-sporty cross-country riding. They eat bumpy single tracks, blast up climbs and make you feel like a much stronger cyclist than you really are.
But — this bike is expensive, big and heavy and requires a lot of somewhat expensive maintenance.
It really is the “SUV” of the electric bike market.
For a commuter bike, I recommend getting a cheaper, lighter, easier to maintain e-bike.
