- Okay, now that we're through-
- Smell it!
(laughing)
- Like a Cliff bar and Monster.
And Taki.
- I mean, honestly,
your bowels must be such a state.
(laughing)
- They feel fine.
(laughing)
(upbeat music)
- Hey, I'm Matt.
And we're here at the 2021
Pink Bike Summer field test in Sun Peaks.
The full carbon 29-inch wheeled,
170 mil Travel Kenevo SL is a lightweight e-bike.
That might win over some of those that
are put off by some of the
heavier machines out there.
Let's talk about that smaller
power plant for a second.
It has 35 Newton meters of torque,
with a 320 watt hour battery.
Plus the 160 watt hour range extender.
The Kenevo SL is the first lightweight,
long-travel e-bike from Specialized.
It shares the same motor,
and battery as a Levo SL.
And features the new Mastermind display.
The Mission Control app lets you
play with output assist levels and so much more.
The motor haptics are always being tweaked,
to be more organic with the pedal input.
With the location of the adjustments
on this bike, you can tune the head-tube
and C-tube angles independently to some degree.
The bike shifts in the neutral
head angle position sitting at 64 degrees.
While the chain stays in the short setting,
yielding a 76.5 degree C-tube angle.
To reach the slack of 62.5 degree
head-tube angle, you'll have to use one
of the offset head-tube cups provided.
And then put the chain state
in the low BB setting.
This will give you a 76.2 degree C-tube angle.
The Kenevo SL is available in four sizes,
fitting riders from 157 centimeters
to 193 centimeters.
This S4 size bike, we had on test,
had a reach of 489 millimeters
in the stock configuration.
The chain stay length is quickly adjustable.
Just pop off the rear wheel,
flip the chips at the dropout,
and then pick between a 442 or a 447 millimeter
chain stay length.
The familiar look of the Kenevo SL's
six bar suspension design stems
from their demo downhill bike.
And is also shared with the Enduro.
Basically the non-motorized version of this bike.
The small bump compliance, mid stroke support,
and bottom out are controlled separately,
from the rearward starting axle path,
with the help of these tension links.
This bike gets the full Fox treatment
with a factory 170 mil, 38 up front
and a float X2 outback.
How do they work on the trail?
That's what we're going to talk about next.
(beep)
(ominous music)
- Cut!
The Huck to flat has claimed yet another victim.
That carbon practice crank arm broke
when Jason landed.
Now Jason's okay,
but we've sent the crank back to practice
for them to inspect it.
And here's what they've got to say about it.
(contemplative music)
(slow beat music)
Alright.
We've gone through all the details
on Specialized Kenevo SL.
It's time to talk about how this
relatively lightweight e-bike climbs.
Now, when I say lightweight,
it's 44.6 pounds with that range extender,
or 42.2 pounds without it.
What does that mean on the trail, Henry?
Because some other e-bikes here weigh-
I mean that Norco is 56 pounds,
some of them are 54/55.
- Yeah, I mean, this is-
it's obviously drastically lighter,
you know, kind of 20% lighter sort of thing.
Than a couple of these bikes.
This is a really good climber.
Yeah, it's-
I would say it's, you know,
a similar mark to the Yeti.
They seem to be two very distinct flavors,
these two bikes we've got,
the Norco and the Commencal.
Whilst being very capable descenders,
and offering, you know, loads of grip.
They're probably not quite as punchy,
or snappy as something like the Kenevo,
or that Yeti.
- I want to ask you guys about the motor,
because this definitely gives out less help.
It helps you less than the full size e-bikes.
What was that like on the trail?
Going from riding, like,
something like the Norco, which is all the power,
you're going up everything.
To something like the Kenevo,
that definitely gives you less help.
Did you find that a hindrance?
Were you making less things, you know?
- And I think with the Kenevo,
it puts itself ,in actually almost,
kind of no man's land.
- Yeah
- Because for those of you
that can ride by yourself,
I think it's great.
I think it's also really good for people
that want to ride with people that
aren't riding non-motorized bikes.
- Yeah.
- But compared to the Norco and the Commencal,
you know, it's just not as grunt-y.
- Right, yeah-
- Especially on fiery climbs.
If those, if those-
if your friends want to kick on, you'll just-
"I'll get a coffee, I'll meet you there".
- Right.
- You got nothing to go with it.
- Matt, can you speak to some technical climbing,
and how your approach might be different
on this e-bike as opposed to something
with more power behind it?
- Yeah.
I would say this one climbed more
like a traditional bike in a sense that, yeah,
you could actually go maybe down a gear
to something a little bit harder to push.
And do some of those ratcheting moves,
without the bike kind of taking off on you.
- The one last thing I want to talk about
before we move on from climbing,
is peddling efficiency.
It matters on all bikes, motors or not.
But if we're talking, e-bikes the Kenevo SL,
obviously it's going to help you less.
So maybe that peddling efficiency
might be more important, Henry?
- Yeah, I would say so.
And this goes with very little bop.
It's got-
it's a bit more characterful,
it's actually about picking your line.
It's not about just hitting
stuff as fast as possible.
It's actually amazing what I found cool
with the Yeti and the Specialized was
how slow
you could get up climbs, you know?
I mean, it wasn't just like-
charge
- You kinda need that momentum on those climbs.
- Yeah, you could actually just go,
okay, I've got the grip, I've got the poise,
and I've got the balance.
Now I'm going to leave it in economy,
and just get on up.
(slow beat music)
- Alright, boys enough about the climbing.
I'm super interested to hear
how you guys got on with this
thing on the downhills.
Because it is substantially lighter
on the descent.
So, Matt, is that noticeable on the trail?
We're talking, you know,
more than 10 pounds of weight here.
What does that mean on the trail if we were
to compare the Norco Range VLT,
to the Kenevo SL?
- Yeah.
There's a lot of weight differential
between these two, but if you want to talk
about a Kenevo to a regular downhill bike,
I've definitely ridden downhill bikes
that are the same weight bracket, you know,
low 40 numbers.
And this thing was really, really good.
Really planted, really composed.
- Does it feel like a normal non-motorized bike?
Cause we have those here too.
You guys have been switching back and forth.
- It definitely doesn't feel like
such a boat anchor as some of these bikes.
And I think you really notice that
when you're leaned, you know,
once that-
once the weight is really low
in the Kenevo,
I think it does help there's just less,
in general.
When you're on one of those big bikes,
that's got like, you know, 45, 55 pounds even,
and you're leaning it off the y-axis,
that's one of the places
you'll really know the weight.
Similarly, when you get up to speed
in these bike park trails,
you know you want an e-bike
because you're just going that much faster.
It felt great at speed.
But for me,
the weight was pretty, pretty noticeable.
- [Mike] Alright.
Let's move on to some suspension talk.
Henry, earlier you mentioned that you had some
hard bottom-outs on this bike.
- [Henry] Yeah.
I mean, part of the, you know, the nature
of us being here is we're testing a lot of bikes.
Sometimes, we can't spend the week
or whatever you want to really
fine tune every aspect.
- Yeah.
- So we've been going between bikes,
that both Matt and I have been riding.
And I think we both felt that we probably,
if this was to be our own bike,
we probably ended up putting a bottom-out
adjustment spacer on there.
- So the good thing is with that Fox shock
on that bike, you definitely have the tuning
room to do that.
To add a volume spacer in there,
and get a little bit more ramp up.
What about the other end of the travel?
This thing has 170 millimeters
of rear wheel travel.
That's the same as the Norco Range VLT.
And Matt, you talked about that bike
being kind of stuck to the ground,
monster truck, lots of confidence.
The Kenevo SL has the same amount of travel.
Is it similar?
- [Matt] It is similar.
In that it hugs the ground,
but it kind of gives you that rewarding feedback.
If you pushed into it, it's light enough.
And the suspension action just feels lively,
that you can pick it up,
and be a little bit more playful on the trail.
Unweighting over different sections
of rock and root.
- Alright,
we're going to close out the descending section,
with a question for these guys.
Full-size e-bike or Kenevo SL, Matt?
What are you doing?
- This is a pretty tough one.
I do, do a lot riding by myself,
and although I do enjoy technical challenges
climbing up hill, I don't like just burning time,
spinning up fire routes.
I might go for the halfway weight of the Kenevo SL,
if I could shell out that much cash for it.
- Alright, fair enough,
Henry, full-size e-bike, 55 pounds
or Kenevo SL, 44 pounds?
- I think ever being a slave to fashion,
as you know Mike.
- Yeah, I can tell.
- I think it really depends what my friends had.
If my friends have full e-bikes, I would abs-
I wouldn't go for the Kenevo.
I would just feel, I'd feel-
It'd be the same thing the e-bike
thing is solving by-
It's great I think when you've got
a couple people on e-bikes,
and some people want some extra assistance,
and it kind of neutralizes the whole group.
But I think you get a problem, within it
where everyone will be on the super powerful ones.
And you'll be like "Wait for me, oh, sorry guys".
And it's just like, oh, we're here again.
This is what it was meant to solve.
- Right, yeah.
Okay so,
it sounds like you're going to lean towards the
full-powered e-bike then?
- Unless I had friends, I mean,
I've got to get some e-biking friends first.
- Yeah.
- Assuming they all ride Kenevos,
then I'd get a Kenevo.
- Okay, so-
- I will do what-
what the dream situation is, they say
"Henry here's $15,000, go buy a Kenevo".
Oh yeah sure, I can do that.
(slow beat music)
- Let's start with the pluses from you, Matt.
- Yeah, I mean,
this one has the full Fox factory suspension,
and the float X2 offers a lot of adjustment
with that suspension layout.
I think it really blends well with the shock.
Another thing we really liked about
some of the code RFC specs,
was that big power up there.
And then this one, yeah,
it's pretty hard to fault with the spec.
Full AXS from Ceram.
So the wireless dropper posts,
the wireless shifting,
and the fancy rainbow chain and cassette.
- I want to point out that on an e-bike,
full of wires and cables, and everything,
to be fair, Specialized has done
a pretty good job with the packaging on this.
The other e-bikes have all these little wires,
and like rubber bands around the handlebars.
And like, it seems pretty chintzy to me.
The packaging on this thing,
Specialized has done a killer job.
AXS is also part of that because
it takes away cables.
Henry, let's talk about some things
that we didn't like as much.
- Yeah, I mean,
I absolutely agreed with
the 220 volts on the front.
I would've loved to have seen
it on the back as well.
The AXS, I mean, you're totally right.
Some of the front ends of e-bikes look like
a movie prop from a 1980s movie,
where they got like a bomb disposal,
and there's just wires everywhere.
- I'm just waiting for one of those wires
to get pulled out in a crash,
or I get electrocuted
- Hopefully it's not the green wire.
- I know, boom!
- It was supposed to be the red one!
(laughing)
- But what it means is that,
it is so much neater.
However, that AXS lever didn't really play
that well with the matchmaker clamp.
- You're really nitpicking here.
- No, but that's-
it's not nitpicking,
because this bike is 15 grand.
- Yeah.
- Like if you-
- There are two different paddles.
Maybe the other paddle works better for you.
- Maybe it does, but Matt had a similar problem.
- It's also not a paddle, it's a button.
You don't need to paddle it.
You just gotta-
(clicking)
- Hold on there, sunshine.
You said paddle, not me.
- Yeah.
(laughing)
- I'm not accountable for you.
- You guys wrote paddle down here.
(slow beat music)
Our test bike is the $15,000 S works version.
There's basically nothing to upgrade.
I don't know about you guys, but I mean,
would you change anything spec wise on this bike?
- No, I mean, it's absolutely decked,
and it's really well put together.
The whole thing in an amazing package.
- Right.
And that does include the range extender
battery that goes into the bottle cage.
Unfortunately there's only one bottle cage
location on the bike.
So it's almost like if you do want
to be up there for seven hours,
you either have to do it without water,
or wear a backpack.
It's like, do you want more battery?
Or do you want to be hydrated?
- Yeah, yeah totally.
- Which is a bit of a bummer,
but there is also the Kenevo expert.
That's $11,000,
and it comes with non-kashima suspension,
code RS brakes, X01 gearing and aluminum wheels.
Plus 450 bucks for the range extender,
if you want it.
I mean, I can't justify the S works.
Guys?
- Yeah.
That's quite a lot of cash.
And if you didn't want that electronic shifting,
I know a lot of people love it.
I kind of prefer the mechanical to be honest.
So I might go for the expert,
and then hop up a couple of extra things,
if I had 15k to spend.
- Yeah, I mean, absolutely.
We talk about the Yeti being hyper expensive,
and it's the entry level, Kenevo comes in
not that far south.
I would find it hard to look past.
I mean, if I have to buy one or two of them,
there's no way I'm spending 15 grand on a bike.
- Yeah.
- But compared to some of the other bikes,
now you could get the Commencal,
and have four grand to go on holiday,
or buy Bitcoin.
- Yeah.
- Either, or.
- Yeah, exactly.
- What wonderful options.
(slow beat music)
- Alright.
Onto the pros and cons.
Matt, what did you-
what did you like about the Kenevo SL?
- I really liked the adjustable geometry.
I know we went through this phase,
where we didn't have it, and we had a lot
of adjustments.
And now we're trending back on some bikes,
without any adjustment.
Like we saw in our field test with like the,
Weir1, and a couple of others there.
But I really appreciate being able
to tune the chain stay length,
for a different rider size,
and with Specialize's S sizing.
Yeah.
You can tailor the head tube angle,
as well as the C tube angle.
For the weight, this handles really well.
Plus that option of the range extender,
you kind of have a one bike
to do these monster rides.
And I can think of a number of them
throughout the sea to sky corridor
that would, you know, just blast up
this long fire road,
make that boring part out of the way quickly.
And then just hit the good stuff.
(slow beat music)
- That motor noise is annoying.
All motors are going to make noise,
but that doesn't mean they're all equal.
- Okay.
Question.
What would you rather have,
the motor in the Specialized,
that has that whiny gear sound,
or Shimano EP8 motor that rattles all the time.
What is less annoying?
- [Henry] Oh God, the creaking is annoying.
- Yeah.
- But I feel there's a lot of noise gone,
when you're descending.
You can be climbing for 45 minutes,
and just-
(whining sound)
- Yeah.
- That ain't me.
- Yeah, alright.
- I'd take the EP8.
- Okay.
You've got one more con for me.
- Yeah.
So, naturally we can't review this bike,
without saying that,
it did have a technical failure.
- Yeah.
- Now that might not happen to you.
We might've been really, really unlucky,
but we have to say it.
- For sure.
That's a big con.
- Yeah.
(slow beat music)
- Okay.
We are almost at the end of the Kenevo SL review,
and that means that I got to put these two
guys on the spot.
Matt, tell me what kind of rider this bike
is best suited for.
- Well, let me start by saying there's also
the Levo SL in Specialize's lineup.
That's a little bit smaller travel bike.
So,
somebody who's going to get out
for quick lunch laps, do that kind of short ride,
maybe some more cross country riding,
that would probably tailor to them more.
This Kenevo is essentially a downhill bike,
with a little motor.
So it'd be really good for, you know,
blasting up those fire roads.
Maybe tracks you'd only shuttle
with a downhill bike.
You can do this on the Kenevo SL.
- Interesting.
Henry,
what type of terrain is this bike best suited for?
- I think this makes for a really versatile bike.
And dare I say it,
probably the most versatile on test.
- [Mike] Really? Wow, why?
- Right, because if you can forego
keeping up with other people's e-bikes,
which is a big thing,
it's a big thing to move out the way,
but if you can forgo that, you got a bike
that genuinely has progressive geometry.
And that ticks all the right boxes,
in that regard.
It's going to be great on the descents,
it's going to- it's kind of, you know,
on a technical, single track climb,
it climbs it with poise and you know, vigor.
It's really, really good in that regard.
You can also obviously slog up a fire road.
It can kind of do everything.
And I think,
like I said, if you can ignore the power
of other people's e-bikes,
I think it gives you the most well-rounded
bike on the whole test.
- Interesting.
There you go, Specialized Kenevo SL
gets the most well-rounded award from Henry.
Stay tuned for our e-bike round table,
where I'm going to throw a ton
of questions at these guys.
They're going to have to pick favorites,
and least favorites.
As well as the Huck to flat,
and impossible climb videos.
Make sure you subscribe,
so you don't miss any of them.
And we'll see you next time.
(slow beat music)