Boardman MTX-E 8.9 review: Mid-mounted motor makes molehills out of mountains

Boardman Bikes’ name isn’t just a coincidence. The company was co-founded by Olympic medalist and yellow jersey wearer Chris Boardman in 2007, though it’s now owned by Halfords.

The MTX-E 8.9 is a hybrid electric bike rather than something you’re going to ride in a time trial, with a mid-drive motor and a lot of Shimano bits and pieces attached to it.

With its front suspension fork, thick downtube and sloping geometry, there's a definite hint of the e-mountain bike about it, but it’s better suited to lighter off-road adventures as well as commuting and just getting around town efficiently.

Boardman MTX-E 8.9 review

Price and availability

The Boardman MTX-E 8.9 is available from Halfords. There is also an MTX 8.9 without the E, which is a much cheaper acoustic bike that often turns up in searches due to its similar name and is priced much more cheaply.

At £2,200, the Boardman MTX-E 8.9 is more expensive than the Fiido Nomads Pro, which also has more torque, and there's a cheaper Boardman MTX-E 8.8, too, with less torque than either and a less premium spec sheet.

Design and build quality

It would be easy to look at the Boardman MTX-E 8.9 and see similarities to Trek’s Marlin+ 8 or the Haibike Alltrack. It’s neither of those bikes, being more of a city hybrid with a sporty costume on.

The angle of the top tube is rather rakish, and you’ll need to jack the saddle up a bit if you’re tall (you’ll need the large 54cm frame option if you’re over 5ft 9in), which can make it look a bit spindly at the back end, but otherwise it looks like a solid bike.

This is underlined by two design features: the first being that, despite being described as a unisex bike on the Halfords website, it has a top tube. The angle means it’s easy to get on and off, and such divisions of bikes by gender belong in the 19th century, but it lacks the pure convenience of a step-through universal frame.

The top tube passes the saddle post with a slight downward kink, and the straight-line style of something like the Fiido Nomads Pro looks more modern, but it’s certainly not an unattractive bike.

The second thing that makes the MTX-E 8.9 recognisably stand out as an e-bike is that thick downtube, in which the battery nestles. As a mid-motor design, it’s chunky all the way to the pedals while the rest of the frame is thinner.

The battery is a removable Shimano 36v design with a capacity of 504Wh, and there's an easily accessible charging point at the bottom of the seat tube.

Such a large battery can take a while to charge, and you should put aside most of the day to get it from empty to full again. While there are mounting points for mudguards and a rack, neither is provided as standard, and the model delivered to me doesn’t have a kickstand either.

As the flagship model of Boardman’s MTX-E series, you get the Shimano EP6 motor here, with the maximum legal 250W output, as well as 85Nm of torque.

The torque level of a motor determines how fast it can accelerate from a standstill and how well it goes uphill. Motors with 60Nm aren’t uncommon in leisure and commuting bikes, so the extra turning force here makes the MTX-E 8.9 a better choice for slightly rougher, hillier terrain.

It’s not a completely off-road bike, however, as evidenced by the tyres. They’re 50mm-wide Goodyear Connectors, a tubeless gravel tyre that’s nonetheless good on all sorts of surfaces.

They position the MTX-E 8.9 as an all-round bike that’ll be good on the farm tracks and towpaths that make up so much out-of-town cycling infrastructure as well as paved roads on the journey to the office.

The saddle and handlebars could be better, being a little thin on padding for longer rides. They’re not actually bad, but the handlebar grips in particular, with a thin soft layer over something harder, can become tiring when you’re putting in the miles.

Performance

There are three levels of power assist on offer from the MTX-E 8.9, and the boost from the mid-mounted motor is transferred to the back wheel through an 11-speed Shimano CUES groupset controlled from a lever under your right hand.

It’s fairly smooth-shifting; CUES uses Shimano’s Linkglide tech to avoid the classic jerks between cogs (though this isn’t completely successful, you’ll still feel and hear gear changes) and should be more durable too, though as it’s only been around a few years this hasn’t completely been proven yet.

Much of the time you’ll be content to leave the power setting in the middle and let the gears take care of evening out your pedalling, and there's a noticeable difference between levels 2 and 3.

Turn it up full, and the bike moves forward urgently as the torque sensor registers the pedals beginning to turn, making hill starts from stationary a possibility and bringing up the max assist speed surprisingly quickly, after which it can feel like pedalling through glue in contrast.

It’s also quite noisy when putting out full power, which at least has the benefit that pedestrians will hear you coming. The difference between the extremes of the cassette is also quite large, meaning you’ll be able to tackle some pretty steep hills, even if you’ll be going pretty slowly by the time you reach the top.

It’s all controlled through a small but effective LCD on the left of the handlebars. It won’t switch on while it’s charging, which makes it easy to avoid the classic mistake of riding away with a cable attached.

While I’ve certainly seen larger screens on e-bikes the information is clear, with the remaining battery charge easy enough to discern even if the remaining range is shown as a very small number.

Joining it on the left is what looks exactly like another gear lever, but which instead controls the dropper post for the saddle. Press it while riding, as first-time riders coming from a mountain bike might, and you’ll suddenly find yourself a lot lower down and with your knees splayed out, which is suboptimal to say the least.

Stopping is handled by Shimano hydraulic disc brakes, with a 160mm rotor at the back and 180mm at the front. If you got out of the habit of using your front brake during the side-pull era, this might be enough to get you pulling it again, as it’s very effective and using both will slow you well even on a downward gradient.

Also, at the front of the bike is an air-sprung Suntour suspension fork, nothing special but enough to make rougher surfaces less irritating with its 100mm of travel. You can switch it off if you’re going to be on-road, but there's very little reason to unless maxing out the range is your primary concern.

With the 504Wh battery full of juice Halfords claims a 60-mile endurance, and while that’s going to depend on the size of the rider as well as the nature of the paths you’re riding on and the ambient temperature, the remaining charge indicator drops noticeably more slowly than on something like a Brompton Electric.

On one hilly ride the range decreased from 37 to 20 after about 12 rather than 17 miles having used the highest boost level for some of the ascents.

Verdict

An e-bike with a mid-mounted motor is worth the extra investment over a rear-hub model, and one with a greater amount of torque is too. The Boardman MTX-E 8.9 is a fun bike to ride, its motor making things like climbing hills without getting off and pushing possible. With its sporty look, grippy tyres and effective brakes, it’s an excellent ride for dirt paths, byways and looser surfaces too.