Canyon Spectral:On electric mountain bike eats hills for breakfast, looks great whilst doing so

You can skip past the 9000 pages of technical info from the German bike-meisters: this E-MTB is rad

Canyon Spectral:On E-MTB
Duncan Bell
By Duncan Bell
last updated

Canyon of Deutschland is known as one of the finest purveyors of high-end mountain bikes for those who love nothing better than to chat for hours about tube geometry and suspension damping. So when it turns its hands to an e-bike for the first time, the results are likely to impress. And now the Spectral: On is here and hey, we're impressed!

Canyon details how it put the Spectral: On together in painstaking detail over many, many pages but suffice it to say that it has done a similar trick to Brompton when it comes to its e-bike debut.

That is to say, it's taken the Spectral mountain bike and made it electric. But in order to do so, it's pulled apart everything about the bike, changing what needs to be changed to make a fantastic electric bike. As opposed to bolting a motor and a battery to the existing frame and saying, "There you go, squire."

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Here are some pictures of people showing off on Canyon's rad e-MTB

Wooh, big air!

The key component is the 250W Shimano Steps E8000 drive train. This enables a shorter (430mm) chainstay than on some older motors, which "enables a playful character on the trail." Rather than just firing up the motor and being driven around, it means the Spectral: On feels lively through corners or when "popping manuals over rollers," or "jumping over stuff" as we like to call it.

The 504 W/hr battery is removable rather than integrated, giving easier charging and the option of carrying a spare.

Also on the lengthy features manual: adjustable ride geometry (switching between 'everyday' and downhill-centric handling), mis-matched front and rear wheel/tyre combinations for defter steering and greater traction, stop-on-a-pound-coin brakes and top-quality componentry all round.

There will be four men's and two women's version of the Spectral: On, available from March 8, with pricing from €3,799 for the Spectral: On 6.0 to €5,999 for the 9.0. Canyon won't be showing any details of the bikes online until then, so we will condense the brochure into four words for you: these bikes kick ass.

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Bikes Fitness Tech
Duncan Bell
Duncan Bell

Duncan is the former lifestyle editor of T3 and has been writing about tech for almost 15 years. He has covered everything from smartphones to headphones, TV to AC and air fryers to the movies of James Bond and obscure anime. His current brief is everything to do with the home and kitchen, which is good because he is an excellent cook, if he says so himself. He also covers cycling and ebikes – like over-using italics, this is another passion of his. In his long and varied lifestyle-tech career he is one of the few people to have been a fitness editor despite being unfit and a cars editor for not one but two websites, despite being unable to drive. He also has about 400 vacuum cleaners, and is possibly the UK's leading expert on cordless vacuum cleaners, despite being decidedly messy. A cricket fan for over 30 years, he also recently become T3's cricket editor, writing about how to stream obscure T20 tournaments, and turning out some typically no-nonsense opinions on the world's top teams and players.

Before T3, Duncan was a music and film reviewer, worked for a magazine about gambling that employed a surprisingly large number of convicted criminals, and then a magazine called Bizarre that was essentially like a cross between Reddit and DeviantArt, before the invention of the internet. There was also a lengthy period where he essentially wrote all of T3 magazine every month for about 3 years. 

A broadcaster, raconteur and public speaker, Duncan used to be on telly loads, but an unfortunate incident put a stop to that, so he now largely contents himself with telling people, "I used to be on the TV, you know."


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