Ghost E-Riot Trail Pro review

The 29 inch wheels come fitted with a sensible Maxxis DHF and DHR front and rear. Shimano SLX brakes with 203mm rotors handle the stopping, and a Shimano XT 10-51 cassette and derailleur is paired with an e*thirteen 34T crank and chainring. Bars and stem are Ground Fiftyone, with 780mm wide bars for control. Suspension comes in the form of a 150mm Fox 36 Float Factory FIT4 eMTB+ up front plus 140mm Fox Float DPX2 Factory at the rear.

Mechanics may be pleased to note that cable routing is external, fitting underneath a tool-less clip on and off cover on the top of the down tube. Riders will be pleased to hear that while it’s not silent, it’s not unduly rattly either.

The medium test bike here comes with a (slightly curiously rear offset) 150mm dropper – you’ll get 125mm on a small or 170mm on a L/XL, which is part of the ‘Super Fit’ geometry promise from Ghost. The marketing also promises endless traction thanks to the ‘especially balanced TractionLink system’. 

That geometry looks fairly modern – the seat angle is perhaps a little slack at 77 degrees, but at 467mm the reach is decent rather than short as is sometimes the case on trail ebikes. The chain stays are long at 450mm, and the head angle is neither steep nor slack at 66 degrees. All in all, numbers which perhaps suggest a stable ride. I went pedalling to find out.

On the trail

The Ghost E-Riot Trail Pro is an all new frame for Ghost, and there’s much marketing whoop about the ride quality:

‘…the trail-specific SuperFit geometry and our TractionLink system, which ensures that the rear wheel never loses traction on the uphill or downhill. The result is an e-mountain bike which lets you enjoy the effortless flow uphill and allows you to throw yourself into turns on the downhill, nimbly and giddy with anticipation.’

Ghost

There’s also a fair bit of hype about the SuperFit geometry:

‘The new geometry concept by GHOST gives you an optimal feeling on your new bike right from the start. Regardless of your height. You will ride with more control, for longer periods of time, with more efficient power transmission.’

Ghost

All this meant I thought I’d be hopping aboard, setting the suspension, and whooping giddily off into the hills. The reality was a little different, and it’s taken me a while to figure out quite where this bike works best, and who it’s for.

Firstly, it’s quite low at the front – rather aggressive for a trail bike, and especially for one of this weight, I found. Add to that the fact that, despite the apparent bike specific tuning, I struggled to get the fork not to feel like it was diving at the merest touch of the brake, and I was feeling all a bit bum up, head down and teetery. I swapped the bars out for something with a touch more rise, and put a whole two extra tokens in the fork. This helped a bit, but then I had the rear shock to play with – it took a while to find a sweet spot between sofa-soft and having pedal strikes, and too firm. It’s the first bike in a while where I’ve really wanted to use the climb switch on the shock. All in all, not quite the intuitive ‘hop aboard and ride’ I was expecting from the marketing.

The motor is excellent (apart from the stupid Bosch charging attachment which seems unduly complicated and in need of precision when plugging in). The eco mode feels pretty much like it’s just enough to overcome the weight of the bike, but hop it up two notches to ‘eMTB’ mode and it’s a great ‘ride everywhere’ choice. It’s enough oomph for a scrabbly climb, but not so much that you’re out of control, or surging if you put a half pedal in on a descent. Where I live is too hilly and I am too disinclined to torture myself, but if you stay in eco mode you can get a long way. Even using plenty of eMTB mode on local hills I could ride well in excess of 35km without feeling anxious about the last miles home.

There is oodles of torque in this motor, and the bike has made for many happy hours of towing my son up local climbs so that we can descend together. If you’re a parent looking for such a tool, or a heavier rider looking for confidence that the motor will handle you, the Bosch Performance Cx Gen 4 will do the job. I’ve got the same motor on my cargo bike, and it’s done over 2000km of mostly heavy hauling.

As I said, where I live is hilly, so I’ve made plenty of use of the climb switch on the rear shock. I’ve also had a fair amount of experience putting the Traction Link claims to the test, and I think the marketing could do with a bit of a caveat. On scrabbly gravelly climbs, the bike is fine – sit and spin your way up, with the shock set to firm. But on steep rockier climbs where you need a bit of weight shifting to wriggle your way up, I found I was struggling to keep tracking up front, and shifting my weight forward would lose traction quite easily. Staying in the softer shock setting for a little less pinging around off the rocks, and I’d end up with a pedal strike.

On descents too I found that steep rocks were not the Ghost E-Riot Trail Pro’s friend. Those long chainstays combined with the low front end/lack of fork support do not make for an agile low speed descender on which you can pick your way through something. It needs you to open things up and add speed – at which point if you’re flying on rocky terrain, you may want your suspension softer that you can have it to ride up the same sort of terrain. At speed, while standing, it feels like a much better bike. Sitting, it feels more clumsy and ponderous. I’ve struggled to pinpoint the precise cause of this behaviour, and have concluded that it’s most likely a function of the fairly long chain stays, fairly slack seat tube angle and offset seat post putting your weight quite far back on the bike (and yes, I may have made this worse by raising the cockpit), and all of that acting as a considerable lever over the suspension and front of the bike at more extreme angles.

Where this bike is better, and where I think you’ll enjoy it more, is on smoother terrain with less steep gradients than are associated with the Calder Valley. Roll for miles across moorland with that long life battery, swoop your way around a trail centre red, contour rather than plummet down the side of a hill. It’s composed and hugs the ground, it feels stable at speed – it’s a bike that would be well suited to the red route at Dalby rather than the steep trails of Wharncliffe.

Which all goes to say, where I live and how I ride, it’s not the bike for me. I like a steep wriggle, and a slow speed rock tiptoe. However, there will be plenty of people who this bike will suit, but yet it feels to me like it doesn’t stack up against the competition on price. If you’re keen to let a bike do the work and just get the miles in with your mates at the weekend, this bike will do it. Want to whizz around a trail centre red route, maybe tow your kid with you? Yup, this will do it. But at £6,599.99 I think there are other bikes that will do it. Yes there are lower spec options than the Pro, but then you’re making compromises on things like brakes – which feel right on this bike for the weight. For the kinds of trails I think this bike works best on, there’s a lot of competition in the market.

Durability

This Ghost E-Riot Trail Pro had rough winter of testing, and save from tightening the cassette on one occasion it’s all worked fine. It is however a bit of a mud collector and a nuisance to clean – flat spots above and below the shock collect the mud, and getting a brush in and about the linkage is both tricky and necessary. Somehow a hose alone doesn’t do the trick – the mud and grass cling on. You’ll need a pokey brush.

Overall

If you’d put this Ghost E-Riot Trail Pro in front of me a few years ago – maybe when the first Intense Tazer eMTB was launched, it would have seemed pretty ground breaking. But here in 2022, it just doesn’t feel like it’s bringing a lot to the party. For me it’s not quite fitted itself into the current eMTB spectrum. The ride position is too aggressive to appeal to the more casual end of the market, but the ride quality is too stable and planted to appeal to the racers. But that’s not to say this is a bad bike. If you buy one and don’t try and chuck it down steep, twisty and rocky places, I think you’ll have a bunch of fun at speed, or casually cruising your way through the miles with mates.