Trek Allant+ 7S Gen 2 review: buy the Bosch, get the dealer

Buying a motor is buying a supply chain

Almost every review of an e-bike talks about the motor's torque figure and stops there. The more useful question is what happens in year three, when a sensor fails and the bike will not assist. With a direct-to-consumer hub motor the answer is usually an email address and a shipping quote. With Bosch on a Trek, the answer is a dealer who has the diagnostic tool.

That is most of why the Allant+ 7S scores 8.8 while more exciting bikes score lower.

The motor

Bosch's Performance Line CX makes 75 Nm and weighs 2.9 kg. On our 18% test ramp it went up seated, at 19 km/h, with a 12 kg pannier and no drama at all. The Specialized Turbo Vado SL 2, which we like enormously, asked for a low gear and a lot of effort on the same slope.

Delivery is smooth and predictable. There is a small amount of over-run when you stop pedalling, which takes a day to get used to and then becomes invisible. Noise under load is present but low — noticeably quieter than the hub motors on the Rad and Lectric bikes in this index.

500Wh, measured

Our loop at the highest assist level, 78 kg, 12 kg of cargo: 71 km. That is a good result from 500Wh and reflects how efficiently a mid-drive uses gearing compared with a hub motor at the same power.

Bosch's remaining-range estimate is also the most honest in the business. It adjusts to terrain and actual consumption instead of dividing capacity by an average, and over four weeks it was never more than about 4 km optimistic.

The rest of the bike

• 27.5-inch wheels rather than 700c: more stable loaded, and less nervous on tram rails

• Hydraulic discs stopped it in 4.0 m from 25 km/h dry, 4.6 m wet, with no fade

• Integrated lighting run off the main battery, so there is nothing else to charge

• Rack, mudguards and kickstand as standard, all of them Trek's own rather than generic

The one disappointment is the Purion display. It works, it is legible, and it is a small monochrome strip on a bike that costs nearly four thousand dollars. Bosch's Smart System hardware exists and this bike does not have it.

Four weeks of ordinary use

The Allant+ 7S spent its month as a 14 km each-way commute with a supermarket detour twice a week. Over that period it needed one thing: a quarter-turn on the rear mudguard stay, which had worked slightly loose. Nothing else moved, nothing squeaked, and the chain needed lubricating once.

Two details only show up after a fortnight. The first is that the Bosch system's walk-assist mode is genuinely useful on a bike this heavy — pushing it up a ramp into a bike store with 12 kg of shopping on the rack is a different experience with the motor helping. The second is that the battery lock is stiff when cold, and in the first week of a wet autumn we had to work at it twice.

Charging is unremarkable and that is the point. The 500Wh Powertube goes from empty to full in roughly four and a half hours on the supplied charger, and Bosch's charge-limiting option — stopping at a lower state of charge for storage — is buried in the app but worth finding if the bike sits unused for weeks.

What five years costs

The reason we keep returning to serviceability is that an e-bike is not a purchase, it is a relationship with a drivetrain. Bosch publishes service intervals, sells replacement parts through dealers, and supports systems for many years after the model stops selling. Trek commits to parts availability and honours frame warranties through any dealer.

Compare with a direct-to-consumer bike whose motor is a proprietary unit from an unnamed supplier. When it fails out of warranty, there is frequently no replacement to buy at any price, and a €2,000 bike becomes a €300 bike. That risk is invisible on day one and it is the single largest hidden cost in this category.

Who it is for

People who want a commuter that will still be working, still be supported and still be worth something in five years. It is not the cheapest way to get 71 km of assisted range — the Aventon Level 3 costs half as much and goes further — and it is the one that survives contact with a decade of daily use.

It is not for anyone who needs to lift it. At this weight, a flight of stairs is a project, and a wall-mounted hook is out of the question for most people.

Verdict

8.8, second only to the Tern in this index's bike categories. Unexciting, extremely good, and the safest place to put this much money if you intend to keep the bike.