Which Is The Ultimate Enduro E-Bike? | Canyon Strive:ON CFR Vs Orbea Wild M-Team

Check out the bikes here:
Orbea Wild M-Team: https://hawk.ly/m/Orbea-Wild-M-Team/i/MBRYTA06

Canyon Strive:ON CFR:
https://www.canyon.com/en-gb/electric-bikes/electric-mountain-bikes/mountain-ebikes-striveon/strive-on-cfr/3429.html?dwvar_3429_pv_rahmenfarbe=GN

We match up two Bosch-powered, race-proven e-enduro bikes, to find out which offers the ultimate performance away from the race track.

Competition has always accelerated the pace of development, and the discipline of e-enduro racing is no different. This fledgling race category has not been around for very long, but it’s already pushing forward at a relentless speed. Advances in equipment ridden by competitors are continually shaping the bikes we’re seeing hit the showroom floor (and your local woods) in terms of motor choice, battery capacity, travel, geometry and suspension characteristics. Case in point; the two e-bikes tested here came out less than 12-months ago and are both designed specifically for enduro racing at the highest level. They share a remarkable list of similarities, from travel, to frame material, to motor brand, but they ride quite differently on the trails. So if you’re in the market for a versatile, full-power e-bike with the geometry and travel to take on pretty much anything, then this test is for you.
Another reason these two rivals make such a compelling match, is that they took home the ultimate bragging rights over their rivals by winning the overall 2023 E-EDR Championships. The mullet-wheeled Canyon under Fabien Barel, and the full 29in Orbea under women’s winner Flo Espiñeira. Their racing pedigree is in no doubt then, but we want to find out how they compare away from the microcosm of elite racing, as both will sell more units to riders looking to blast their local trails than enter a World Cup Enduro race.

Read the full reviews and compare geo and weights by reading the full reviews at MBR.co.uk – all will be going live next week.

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E andural racing is really starting to take off the bikes and the technology evolving at a pace that’s every bit as fast as the racing itself so for this head-to-head test we’ve got the two overall winners of the E EDR series The Ora Wild and the canyon strive On so Danny you tested both of these bikes and before we get into what separates them so we quickly run through like what they have in common yeah they were both launched in the last 12 months specifically to compete in the E EDR which we all kind of know better as the

Ews but is now the EDR so the bike we have behind us the Ora wild Was Won women’s competition with Flo espiner riding it and the men’s Was Won by Fabian Burell a name that’s familiar to all of us fa on the Canyons strive on excellent so two two bikes with Prov and

Prig yeah I mean what a debut I mean they probably couldn’t have asked for better than that really but in terms of similarities we’re talking two carbon bikes both got Bosch Motors performance CX Motors on these ones the top models have got the race motor the race

Specific motor they both have 160 m of travel claimed they both are available with two different battery options is that because the race bikes and what we’ve kind of discovered in the past is that Racers don’t to carry the extra weight of the bigger battery if they

Don’t need it because they can have multiple battery changes I think that’s probably the ultimate reason behind it I think yeah you’re right the races have to have Mand mandatory B battery changes whereas most consumers kind of like to have the most range possible so the biggest battery possible so yeah you can

Choose uh there’s a you know there’s a weight difference there there’s a weight benefit on the canyon of 900 G going for the smaller battery and on the or B I think it’s 700 g is that’s what they quote so in this test you have both bikes with the the larger batteries we

Ended up with the larger batteries on both bikes we started with them on two different batteries but we we brought them together and that’s part of the reason for that is they both come with different batteries as standard so the Ora comes standard with the bigger

Battery uh and you can choose to have a smaller one and you save some money on on the on the full price and then the canyon is the other way around so it comes with the smaller battery and then you pay extra to have the bigger one yeah so they’re both running Fox

Suspension what about wheel size are they both 29ers no so that’s one of our first big points of difference the strion is a mullet uh and the a is 29 front and rear I mean one thing that all Racers of any disciplin or obsessed with gravity or cross country is weight so is

There a big difference in the weight between these two bikes it’s about half a kilo roughly I mean cuz they’ve got some they’ve got or’s got some really impressive claim weights for this this bike does does this bike deliver yeah so the the one that we have there as we

Weighed it was like 23.7 kilos doesn’t sound very light but then you add in the fact that it’s got DH casing tires and it’s got the big battery in there and it’s got 29 29 Wheels cuz that adds weight too y it’s actually pretty impressive uh if you chose the smaller

Battery you could get that down to you know under under 23 kilos 22.8 or something like that so the Cannon’s a little bit heavier about half kilo heavier it has lighter tires though lighter case isit but weird come to later it actually rides lighter the two bikes the other

Thing with the or what what really strikes me about this bike it doesn’t look like a full powered bike they’ve kind of done a really good job of making the down tube look small and and so am I right in thinking you can’t easily remove the battery from this bike yeah

You can’t easily remove it it’s it’s a laborious process so I watched I watched some stuff online and they said basically that the Pro Mechanics for the team could swap a battery in 12 minutes mhm so when so when you so you tried this right

Um how long did it take uh I got to about half an hour and I was like you know what I can’t be bothered with him cuz you were worried you wouldn’t be able to get it back in correctly weren’t you it’s not straight forward it’s not straightforward there’s some like

Washers that are really easy to well they you know they hold the motor in place and they’re really easy to drop out so you need to put grease on them to hold them in place it’s it’s a fa like I can’t see any owners wanting to do this

So do you think that’s a kind of kind of black mark against it it’s a private’s race bike yeah 100% like if if you’re actually doing an Eed Eed race and you don’t have an Ora team backing you up imagine you roll into the pits at like

Lunchtime and you got half an hour and you got CH yeah you’re in a car park there’s you know tools all over the place you’re hungry you’re knackered you just want to chill out and you’ve got to try and change your battery like there’s no way for so yeah if I was

Choosing a privateer race bike to race Eed I would have serious reservations about an integrated battery yeah not because of the way the bike rides but just because of that whereas the the canyon you can do it in like less than five minutes like couple of minutes

Requires one Allen key uh it’s super easy now you do have to be very careful when you’re putting the battery in it’s not like just slide it in bam do up the bolt on the canyon yeah if we just talking about the overall design and convenience of changing batteries the

The canyon is a hands down winner yeah you also had a problem with charging this bike right yeah so even if you have power in your garage or in your shed or whatever if the temperatures really dro the built-in sort of protection within the Bosch system won’t let you charge

The battery they the two what we sort of consider stumbling blocks on this bike but when we rode this bike together on Friday it’s a really good riding bike oh that’s amazing yeah so if we start with the suspension it’s just you don’t need

To spend a lot of time setting it up you just kind of pretty much you get your you can actually run it with bit more than 30% sag it’s it’ll happily sit at like 33% sag it’s just so much stability and support within it it’s got a really

Consistent feel to the suspension as it goes through the travel yeah so you you’re never sort of trying to second guess what it’s going to do and um when you’re actually riding through like a really rough section of track it’s almost like it just sits there just sort

Of folds its arms it’s like come on then is that is that all you got in that sense when we talked about that when we’re riding together it’s a really easy bike to ride it’s like it’s really cal It’s not stressing you’re not stressing you’re just like you’re just charging

Along you’re not trying to like tiptoe through anything you can just basically like you said just open it up and let it let it run yeah it’s I guess it’s kind of a little bit like a swan isn’t it it’s like really Calm above the surface

And Below on the like on the deck it’s actually work working really active but there’s a downside to that too isn’t there or tradeoff is probably a better way to consider it yeah I mean I think how much of it is the suspension how much of it is the weight balance overall

Weight balance of the bike I don’t know but it it’s just not quite as agile as the canyon when you’re on a trail where there’s lots of quick Direction changes or if you’ve got to try and pop the bike off the ground over something get the front wheel up or something like that

It’s just a bit more welded to the deck so it’s not quite as alive and and agile and involving and there’s a place for that too because 10 minutes into a in Juro run that’s exactly how you might want your bike to be because if because

There there’s two sides to that you feel like it’s really hard to manage because it’s the bike’s too planted but also if you’re really fatigued and it’s really rough instead of having to trying to pick your way through you can just relax and let the bike do the work yeah

There’s definitely like an an energy saving element to that but then also you have to put more more energy into it perhaps when you have to make a move like a big move on the trail or when the trail is Tighter and more Dynamic yeah

So you know i’ say it’s sort of uh swings and roundabouts it gives and takes in that respect but when you ride the bike in isolation you don’t it’s hard to pick up on this it’s kind of only when you start riding them really back to back that that these like subtle

Differences come out and I would say like the the suspension the travel is actually identical between the two bikes like they said 160 we measured them at 158 mm but both both have the same stroke shock um you know they’re both on x2 one one’s yeah one’s performance

One’s Factory yeah but yeah it just it just feels like the Ora rides a little bit higher in its stroke and just settles there and it’s like kind of really unflinching there’s also potentially a slightly better Climer and better maybe for technical moves it has a little bit more BB height and because

It sits a little bit higher as well in you know dynamically it has a a bit more pedal clearance and it has shorter cranks as well so okay you don’t have to worry so much about where placing yourself on the trail compared one of the big concerns with people with 2929

Is that the chain STS can get too long have our managed to real keep keep that in check what’s the what was the difference in chain State length between like okay between the between the two bikes that’s really good barely anything really in fact the you know the numbers

On the two bikes are so similar you you wouldn’t believe you know we’re talking 0.1 maybe on the head Ang we’re talking maybe 2 mm on the reach 3 m on the BB height you know they’re really close are there any geometry adjustments on this bike no like zero both bikes got no

Geometry adjustment which is kind of strange when you think about it considering they’re you know pure race bikes and most Roose bikes have a lot of geo geo change and sizewise you wrote the large on the Ora and the medium on the cannon which we’ll get to in a

Minute now when I jumped on this the with the 170 mil drop toer post with this it slammed in the frame it was the perfect satellite for me so I quizzed you about it cuz I said hey Dan cuz your satellite’s only a little bit lower than

Mine and I’m like can you get your satellite right in this you’re like no yeah I just ended up running it a little bit not not full height but the seat tube is taller than the canyon I mean it’s a it’s a large there is a lot of

Insertion depth in the seat tube it also maybe you know you see the head tubes a bit taller as well it’s like a 130 head tube actually looks like the front end’s quite tall and it feels it when you get on it but it seems to work well with the

Kind of dynamic ride of the bike I should also mention that the or com stock with a 160 mil Fork now this bike came with a 170 mil Fork it’s a zero cost option when you buy the bike or you can choose there’s a lot of things you

Can choose with with the O which is a really cool part of you know their sales um you know model uh so you can you can choose the the length dropper post that you want you can choose so we could get round we could basically like if you’re

Like oh actually there’s no way I can run 170 we can run y you can you can choose a different bar rise you can choose different Wheels you know like the tires are a 25 quid upgrade these DH casing tires which is which is great like that’s that’s a

Brilliant thing totally how much does it cost yeah so we got we got the big drawback which is the battery and then we got the second big drawback which is the price which is 8999 for this uh mteam model which is a lot more than the

Canyon there is a cheaper carbon bike so uh think that one comes in at 6699 but you’re not going to get the same kind of suspension quality and stuff on it so what rating did you give it I gave it a nine out of 10 cu it’s

It’s got It’s got it’s got ride quality easily deserving of nine absolutely I really really loved riding this this bike and you know I think uh they they’ve kind of nailed the overall package but yeah I think there was a couple of things with the canyon that I

That I preferred um you know one of the big things being the battery but also little subtle things about the ride as Well so Danny let’s drive on this is a bike we’ve been predicting could be the best bike Canyon ebike Canyon made for a while now is it the best bike I believe so yeah I think uh I think they’ve done a really really good job with this bike

Cuz it’s really actually quite versatile ebike so you can I mean you can win e EDR races on it if you’re faban or if you’re if you’re faban or you can just like hack around your local Trails even if they’re not the like craziest um Enduro tracks so they walk that line of

Making a bike that can do a lot of things I think and what we were waiting for was their first Bosch bike yeah you know the Shimano bikes were great but you’re just like oh it could be just that big bit better with a Bosch motor

And you know you get hungry for the power you get hungry for the feel you’re like oh the Bosch system’s kind of like it’s just got that little bit more like Voom when you when you when you stick it in the higher power modes and the little

Bit of overrun and stuff like that I mean you know both these bikes effectively were built around that system because that’s what the racers want on their bikes isn’t it I mean that you know they want the overrun so they can just get up those little Ledges and

Stuff you know they want the configurable aspect and but I think that was like two or three years ago you know when when that was it was streets ahead of everything else I think maybe the motors have come together a little bit more now and uh it’s not maybe quite as

Far out in front but for most people it’s it’s a it’s a brilliant motor I think it’s got the backup it’s got some good reliability it’s got loads of power works it’s definitely The Benchmark motor it is for sure and like and they took a slightly so they took a different

Approach to Ora so Ora kind of like they they kind of they wanted to build the lightest possible bike so they integrate it get you know like they had the motor in a certain position the battery sits in a different position now with the canyon they’ve kind of clocked the down

Tube around so the battery slides out the bottom yeah so that again that’s like a characteristic or a design that they’ve taken from the spectral on you know they kind of move the the down tube forward so you’ve got room to slide the battery out and it’s it’s a really easy

System like they’ve done a good job with it in terms of you’ve got one bolt to take the the kind of bash guard motor guard off and then it’s toolless there like a little uh cam lever inside that you loosen and then you can slide the

Battery out and you can just slot in you can slot in the 750 or the 625 it doesn’t doesn’t matter got spacer on the end of them so they just fit in there it’s like a really clean system uh makes life so much easier for for consumers

And Racers as well but the battery system’s not perfect is it no so we had quite a few issues with the B with the power cutting out on this a universal issue like cuz I I’ve ridden other versions of this bike it happened to there’s a lot of people have had bikes

Test bikes same thing’s been happening to them y that’s right and um you know I think originally there was a bit of user error involved as in I maybe didn’t get it in in the right place for locking down the lever cuz if yeah you kind of

It’s easier to turn the bike upside down to do this and when you slide it in and out but there is uh some play there you know it’s like 5 mil or something it’s not like a tight fit like a special ized and when you slide it down you’ve got to

Make sure obviously that the the pins from the the connector which are up near the head tube connect with the battery and if you don’t get that right and then you crank up the cam then it’s like no you know it’s bad news so that was the

First issue and it ConEd out quite a lot but recently we had one where it was actually in the right place but there was a part of the a little bit of the cam where the cam bolts in it’s just not strong enough and there’s two little

Tabs that just end up up basically expanding like this and that allows enough movement for the battery to cut out it’s a tiny bit of movement isn’t it it’s a tiny amount of and you wouldn’t even know they were broken so there there’s a rolling change being made to

Those so I think anyone that already has this bike and has a problem with it cutting out there’ll be a new version that just basically bolts onto the bottom of your battery yeah and it’ll have a reinforced Cam and hopefully that’ll just fix it completely yeah so

We we’ll kind of put that to one side I think cuz the rest of the bike’s really good the being able to take the battery out for me is a is a really big plus of this bike yeah so yeah this bike comes stock with a 625 for an extra 200 quid

You can buy the 750 W battery so basically check out you can just you can just plug that in a check out just an option select that that’s pretty much the only option that they do on this bike though you know compared to AA but

You know I think most of the spec you know maybe the tires You’ probably want uh it’ be nice to be able to have some heavier Duty casings so what we got we got double down on the rear and XO Plus on the front I mean I didn’t get any

Punctures with this bike but you know if you were racing Eed you would want thick casings and I think a lot of people Pro probably for just for Safety and Security you know they would want the heavy duty stuff so we said travel on this bike is the same as the Ora but

Setup’s different right yeah that’s right so basically you need to set this bike up firmer than the Ora you like don’t run it at 30% or 33% it’s just too soft that’s how I had it when I first rode it and I was hitting padal and I

Climbing and I was hitting paddles on The Descent and I was like this thing just runs lower it does yeah so the BB height is little bit lower than the O only 3 mil the cranks are 5 mil longer as well so there is less clearance but

It also just it just wants to sit into that sag point a lot easier than the or so you just got to add air pressure in fact so we ended up running at 27% which actually felt really good was kind of spot on and I also added an

Extra volume spacer to the shock as well extra end stroke progression so the two little mods that I think really helped sort of lift this bike like literally as well figuratively and it’s and it’s reminded me something too about the fact that so um this bike’s a medium yeah so

You downsized on it because the the L’s pretty big but I’ve ridden the L and the medium and my concern with the L was that like cuz it’s I thought the ratio the front center to rear center might be a little bit off and it might be hard to

Load the front but I actually found it pretty easy right so that’s good so you can choose size you want but I did ride a rock shocks equi bike in the L where you were sort of talking about it’s quite easy to use a travel I rode the

Rock shocks bike and I was like oh I can’t get all the travel even running it quite soft so they definitely got different characteristics based on the suspension so that’s the top the top model which has got the race motor and stuff and that’s actually exactly the

Same price as the Ora that we we just and this bike costs 6699 yeah that’s still a hell of a lot of bike for that price that’s amazing price yeah a lot of bike cuz it’s got the fork you want it’s got a lot of adjustability in the shock

Not as much as the factory level shock the the geometry is really good it’s got the motor you want like there’s a lot of people will want the mullet Wheels yeah that’s something when I was testing the two of them I definitely buzzed my ass a

Few times on the o a l a lot more than than on this bike especially when you’re looking at the sizing of this strive on it’s got the the medium sizing is so compact I think it really suits the the mullet rear wheel as well so you’ve got

Like a really short seat tube on the medium like 420 I think it is but you’ve got like the reach is 471 I think it is which is big for a medium yep and you got a super low stand over so and you actually the riding position is really

Low as well you know so the bike sits quite low but also you sit quite low on it that’s why you need that sump down but it works you know the the standard with the low bars like actually you again you feel kind of in attacking position but it’s really Dynamic it’s a

Really Dynamic bite to ride like really agile you can the front wheel is so much easier to get off the ground than the OA it doesn’t feel unweighted though like when you’re riding it which is nice because there’s still there’s still traction there’s still grip on the front

It still feels loaded but it’s easier to pick up yeah you know overall it gives it a more playful feel so the the bike feels a little bit more engaging when the Trail’s not you know the most demanding Trail in the world you if you if you’re kind of riding something

That’s more bike Parky or cruisy you can still have fun and not feel over super over biked and let’s face it most people buy on these bikes that’s exactly what they well I mean we’re riding most most weeks we’re riding them on Trails that’s exactly what they’re going to do on them

Yeah right they’re not they’re going to buy the bike and they’re not going to go racing yeah exactly it’s the you know that’s the the the biggest audience for these bikes the biggest market for these bikes so it has to work for those people and and uh this bike really does

Anything else on the bike that like really stood out to you that kind of clinched it for you in terms of the display and the remote they’ve got they picked exactly the right ones you want so it’s got theay top you controller no display just the simple like uh mini

Wireless mini remote on the bars like that’s great it’s got actually a really clean cockpit they both have the through the head set cable routing which we know we’re not big fans of but on the canyon it does look a lot neater than on the

Ora so you rated the canyon a 10 rating yeah yeah yeah it’s a great bike and hats off the canyon that’s two tests in what the last six months eight months where both their ebikes have come out on top yeah like I mean they’re doing a

Really good job they’ve got a lot of ebikes in their range now uh and uh you know but all of them so far that we’ve that we’ve tested have you know hit the nail on the head yeah they’ve done a great job and excellent so that wraps up

Our e uro race bike test sounds like Danny and I aren’t going to be going doing an Eed anytime soon but if you’re up for doing one please let us know um and also which one you’d like to do cuz I mean they go to some amazing venu AR

They yeah and if you’ve actually raced one as well we’d love to hear from you as well that’d be great excellent thanks for Watching