2022 Marin Alpine Trail E2

So overall the EeB is awesome for me. It gave me the next day after and MTB or Moto ride back. I can dial up the assist according to how I'm feeling. Great for my age group that doesn't recover as quickly as the young guys. I was able to ride some super tech and steep chunky trails that I haven't had the fitness or strength to ride in a long time. Freaking awesome!

For me using ECO mode is better for super technical climbs with switchbacks. The EP8 system gives you an extra ½ pedal stroke after you stop pedaling. It takes some getting used to it to anticipate it. In BOOST or TRAIL this extra ½ crank is sometimes too much and the front wheel comes up and can get away from you quite easily to point of being obnoxious.

The bike and geo work good going up and especially down. The geo never feels too slack or too steep too short or too long. I prefer short chainstays to manual over stuff. They nailed it. Especially after I swapped bars and stem and slid the seat back. It monster trucks down gnarly terrain and pick its way up on climbs.

Now the negatives...The bottom bracket is comically too low. Pedal strikes happen way too much on relativity smooth trails. Combined with the Mullet setup, which is great for smooth flowy descents, it sucks for anything but a smooth climb. Pedal strikes happen way too often. It zaps confidence on technical climbs with exposure and flatter trails when you want to accelerate and put the power down. It completely defeats the purpose of an an Enduro E-Bike.

With the low BB and mullet wheel setup it puts the motor down too low as well. I bottom out on the motor rolling over stuff quite a lot. Especially the singletrack above my house. I attempted to roll over a rock section and it bottomed out so hard I thought I was going to have to send the bike back to get fixed. But is hardly scratched it barely left a mark. It didn't do anything for my confidence though. With the low BB I need a better rear hub so I can ratchet the cranks on technical climbs. The Shimano hub doesn't perform well when ratcheting at all.

The EP8 app is awesome for adjustments but you can't use it while the bike is operating. The display and controls on the bike are simple and compact. The display reverts back to the main display after a few minutes while riding. This is obnoxious when you using the cadence screen to stay in the zone for maximum effectiveness of the power. The battery charge indicator on the display sucks. It only has five bars to show it's level. This makes it hard to determine your range since each bar represents 20% of charge. I ran out of power once because of this. I started with 3 bars and did a technical 5 mile ride and it immediately went to 2 bars within seconds of pedaling down the trail. The Bosch system display 0-100% of charge on their display...just saying.

In summary I'm still a satisfied rider and will continue to enjoy the bike. It sounds like I'm griping a lot but the Pros outweigh the Cons. I haven't been this excited to pedal in along time! My next Eeb will be a full 29r to hopefully get the BB and motor higher off the ground.
Special thanks goes out again to Two Hoosiers, Ogden, UT for working with me get this bike purchased and dialed. I really appreciate it.