IS THAT CREAK ME OR THE BIKE? REAL-WORLD PRODUCT REVIEWS FROM REAL-WORLD RIDERS.

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Yamaha YDX Moro 7

Price: £4,350.00

From: Yamaha

Tested by: Benji for 3 months

In a sea of perfectly fine bicycles, I love a surprising bike. And this Yamaha is a very surprising bike. Surprising how? Well, I thought it was going to be a load of rubbish. The chrome and blue aesthetic is rather naff. The back end and linkage don’t look up to the job. The head and seat angles are ‘wrong’ (66.2°/70.2°). It has small (27.5in) wheels with ‘quasi Plus’ 2.6in tyres FFS. However, it took less than one complete shakedown set-up ride on the Moro to have my prejudices enthusiastically thrown back in my face.

This bike is great. In terms of the motor, I’ve had Yamaha-powered bikes before and they’ve always felt really nice to me. Sure, the stem-side display isn’t amazing (simultaneously huge yet uninformative) but the motor itself is powerful (85Nm) without any surging or jerking about. It’s predictable. Which is a very good thing. In terms of on-trail handling, the Moro is a winner. Really well balanced with a great feel and liveliness that – on paper – it has no right to exhibit. It’s almost like Yamaha knows a thing or two about two-wheel machines or something. I’m going to give the Yamaha designers mucho big ups here; I genuinely believe that it’s the split top and downtubes that come into play with how this bike handles. The mass of the bike is in an ideal position. Not too high but – crucially – not too low either. The ‘centre’ of a bike is the middle of the downtube, not the BB area. The Moro wears its weight incredibly well and never feels overly stuck-down nor OMG-woahhhhh! high up. That ‘weedy’ looking rear suspension design is also really good. And yeah, small wheels work fine. Glancing again at the price tag, I’d say this is easily one of the best entry-level eMTBs currently available. Surprising stuff.

Split tubing

Blue/chrome colour: ice cool or leaves you cold?

Formula Selva C

Price: £849.99 (plus £45 for additional CTS valves)

From: Elro Distribution

Tested by: Benji for 4 months

Coil sprung forks are few and far between. In reality, it’s a two-horse race between this fork and the excellent Marzocchi Bomber Z1 Coil. I’m going to give the nod to the Formula Selva C. Both are £850. The Selva packs 170mm of travel into the axle-to-crown distance of a 160mm Bomber. And, much more significantly, the Selva is multiple forks in one package; you can change the essential damping characteristics by swapping out dinky valve circuits (called CTS kits). You get two CTS kits in the box: Gold (jack-of-all-trades) and Violet (high flow). You can purchase additional CTS for £45 each. Swapping CTS kits takes two minutes using the supplied tool. Not only is this just pleasingly nerdy and fun in itself, but the CTS aspect really does give you a wildly different fork. FWIW I’ve typically swapped between Red and Silver CTS kits. The Red is for faster riding with harder hits. The Silver is great for slower and/or slippier conditions. The rebound range on offer is pleasingly broad; for once it is possible to set the rebound too fast. The compression adjuster (which does low- and high-speed compression) also offered meaningful adjustment. In practical terms, I did have my worries about the clockworky-looking top adjusters getting clogged up with muck but that just hasn’t proved to be the case. The 35mm stanchion chassis has been perfectly fine stiffness-wise. And I do think their relative slinkiness and minimalist decal aesthetic look really cool. Back to on-trail performance: just flipping amazing. Fluid feeling, supple AF, bags of support, firm but never harsh, useful on-the-fly damping adjustment. The only caveat I have about these class-leading forks is that the recommended coil spring weight didn’t work for me. At 73kg, Formula suggests a Soft spring (65–75kg) but I ended up running Super Soft (55–65kg). Make sure you buy your Selva C from a place that’s prepared to help you out with trying different springs. It’ll be more than worth it. This is the best-performing fork I’ve tried.