The best e-mountain bike test in the world – transparent, non-biased and objective.

EMTB tests need to become more objective, comprehensive and detailed. That’s why we founded bike-test.com. The only platform that looks at ALL bikes available on the market with an innovative testing system.

The e-mountain bike market is so vast and diverse that its extremely difficult to find the perfect bike for your personal needs. No matter whether you are a emtb beginner, a changeover or a veteran e-bike nerd. That’s exactly why ex-mountain bike pro Ludwig Döhl founded emtb-test.com. After his active career as a mountain biker, Ludwig Döhl worked for BIKE, Europe’s largest mountain bike magazine, for over six years. But Ludwig quit his last position as deputy editor-in-chief of BIKE to implement his own vision of Bike Test. And that vision includes a sophisticated, innovative and totally objective testing system that not only transparently sorts out the complexities of the market, but also gives you an assessment of every bike without being biased towards any brand. The intuitive filters on our e-mountain bike market overview site help everyone find the best bike, depending on their own personal preferences. The only question that remains is: How can the entire emtb market be evaluated in a uniform and, above all, meaningful way?

 

Which e-mountain bike components are used for evaluation

Overall, we look at each bike uniformly in over 100 meaningful criteria, which should give you a very good and detailed idea about the bike. Our evaluation takes into account all components that are relevant to the riding experience. The main components considered in our mountain bike rating system are:

• Motor
• Battery
• Gearshift
• Brake
• Tires
• Wheel
• Chassis
• seat post
• Frame
• Cockpit

The more than 100 criteria – which we evaluate in a standardized manner – are weighed up independently, depending on the intended use. And that´s the key to our statement quality. Our goal is not only to compare two rear derailleurs that are installed on different bikes, but a lot more: we want to give you an impression of the riding experience that you can expect from your future e-bike. And to do so, we have not only broken down and weighed up evaluation criteria in detail, but have also taken a look at the geometry of all bikes. But first things first.

We apply these evaluation criterias to our emtb tests

For the evaluation of the individual components, we use, among other things, the followng criteria. They get considered differently, depending on the component and to which area of the e-bike this part is installed

• Weight of the component
• ranking in the manufacturer-specific product hierarchy
• product-related physical facts (e.g. larger brake discs have better braking performance. A larger bandwidth of a gear shift is better than a smaller one…)
• general design-related facts (e.g. folding tires are of higher quality than clincher tires.)
• function of a component (experience from practice and everyday life in bicycle workshops)
• product specific criteria (e.g. tread depth of tires)
• material used for a component

Every evaluation contributes to a complete bike check on emtb-test.com. Moreover, it can be traced back to one fact: EVERY E-BIKE, NO MATTER FROM WHICH MANUFACTURER, IS TREATED EXACTLY THE SAME. To make the whole thing as close to reality as possible, an example would be the rating of a brake for a enduro e-bike. It is, for example, more important at a Enduro bike than for a cross country e-bike. This equation lends itself to get the most balanced and non-biased bike reviews on the market!

The handling – the soul of any emtb

Reach, stack, steering angle …? Excuse me? Anyone who deals intensively with EMTBs before buying is quickly overwhelmed by the technical jargon of the industry. Therefore, we have not only evaluated the equipment of each bike, but also took a detailed look at its geometry. So you don’t have to take a degree in bike science yourself, we’ve analyzed the geometry of all bikes uniformly. The handling of an EMTB is not only due to the pure geometry data. Especially the weight plays a central role in EMTB handling. In our understanding, an e-mountain bike has good handling when you actually do not notice that you are sitting on an EMTB. The closer the riding feel of an e-mountain bike gets to the handling of a mountain bike without a motor, the higher its fun potential on the trail. A harmonious onset of motor support is also particularly important. In our handling score, we therefore mix:

• an evaluation of the geometry
• a classification of the weight
• the engine characteristics

to a tangible value for each bike.

Range – this is how far you can go with your e-mountain bike

The range depends on many factors. You can influence some of these factors directly while riding. For example, if you always ride in the highest support level of the motor, a battery charge lasts less long than when pedaling in Eco mode (the lowest support level). Heavy riders use more battery than light riders on the same trip. And on a ride on tar and gravel roads, the battery lasts longer than on a trail ride through muddy ground. Oh yes, and when it’s warm, a battery also lasts longer than in frosty temperatures. Therefore, it is simply not possible to give a meaningful meaningful mileage value at the range. Because this mileage varies significantly depending on who, where and especially how rides the EMTB. But there are also factors that influence the range of an EMTB independently of the question of “who, where and how”. The tire profile, the weight of the EMTB, the efficiency of the motor and, of course, the capacity of the battery are all crucial in determining how far you can ride an EMTB. With our range score, we have brought these values on a comparable basis. So you can see with which EMTB you tend to get further. Whether that corresponds in your case then a range of 60 or 70 or maybe only 45 kilometers we can unfortunately not tell you. But we can tell you that you will get further with a high range score than with a low range score.