Thanks for tuning in today we're going to
be reviewing the Trek Domane+ AL 5 electric road bike.
The Trek Domane+ series of road bikes combines electrical assist with the comfortable
ride and endurance geometry that has made the Domane bike so popular. It's a natural combination
as the e-assist allows Riders to ride even further than before while enhancing the ride quality with
the integrated battery. Normally we show you the unboxing per feature here in this part of the
review but because most people are going to pick this up from the store we're just going to jump
right into the specs. We have the Domane+ AL 5 which is the most affordable aluminum variation.
This retails for $3500 which is significantly less than the sl6 which is $8500. This has a 250 watt high drive hub
motor and that's driven by a torque sensor in the bottom bracket to give your natural
and intuitive feel. This has the 100 series Alpha aluminum really comfortable and affordable ride.
You have the Shimano 105 R7000 component set including the hydraulic disc brakes which gives you a nice
smooth ride and a lot of confidence while you're descending. We also have all the utility to expect
with the rack and fender mounts integrated into the frame with these stealthy little rubber covers.
This bike as equipped is 31 pounds and that's the 56 centimeter variation. To provide you a little
bit of contact Trek offers three main series of road bikes. The Domane which is known for
the endurance geometry and comfortable ride. Emonda which is lightweight skinnier tires
and then you have the Madone which is their aero racing bike. Within each of them you can
spec them out all the way from a few grand to over ten thousand dollars. Within the
Domane+ lineup you can see the full lineup here you have the $3500 AL 5 which
we have here with the 105 and aluminum but you can go all the way to thirteen thousand
dollars with the Dura-Ace Di2 and their SLR lineup with the carbon fiber frame. The most
affordable SLR is the 8500 one which has 105 Di2 but the same carbon fiber frame.
Visually it's hard to tell apart the Domane+ from the standard Domane series of bikes.
You have that classic endurance geometry and a really nicely proportioned frame that hides
the battery inside the down tube. We have the metallic silver here but it's also available in
red and black. You don't get the flashy colors like you do with the SLR but still looks good.
Components are a mix of in-House Bontrager Elite parts as well as the Shimano 105 series.
You can see controlling the e-bike is very simple you have two buttons a little button on each side
of the hood the left one will increase the assist level. Yhe right one will decrease it between the
three available modes. The 105 shifters here are very nice 105 used to be the lowest level
but really feels as good as it gets. A lot of that trickle-down technology from the Dura-Ace series
have come down to here so it's nice smooth and simple to operate. Domane is printed on the top tube
this black stripe and that hides an integrated monitor. It's flushly mounted in there it
shows you the battery level and assist level the batteries indicated by the horizontal bars and
then these squares indicate the assist level. So you can see when you hit the buttons they will
increase to show the mode between zero all the way up to three and a big power button to turn
off. The display so it's really a nice design that almost completely hides the assist modes.
You have direct mounted hydraulic disc brakes on the front and rear as well as internally routed
cables through the fork as well as for the rear shifter and brake so everything's nicely hidden.
Charging the batteries is easy with a little hidden socket here you just open up the cover plug-in
they're provided cable and then charge it. The only sign that something's amiss here is the bottom
bracket which is a little bit bigger and has the welding marks from the factory when they install
the battery and the torque sensor. The rear brake also is directly mounted no additional brackets
and then the rear you can see the big hub motor. This is one of the big downsides of this bike you
can't just swap in a rear wheel as it has a custom spacing. You have a nice Shimano 105 with the 11
speed setup and a very big cassette on the rear that lets you climb. The other nice thing here is
you have hidden mounts so you have fork and fender mounts that let you put racks or bike fenders
and you can see they have little rubber covers so when you're not using them it's almost completely
hidden. With this bike you can also run pretty wide tires so you can use this on or off-road. You get
a standard saddle here it's called the Verse and it has a nice little center cutout which is pretty
comfortable but you may want to upgrade this. [Music] When it comes to electric bikes like the
Domane+ AL 5 that we have here we usually ask two questions: can I ride this bike without power
comfortably and then with the power on does it feel natural and does it improve the performance.
For the first question the answer is yes you can easily ride this bike without ever turning on the
motor as you have a nice smooth classic geometry that Domane is known for. So it's very comfortable
it's more upright the racy bikes and with the 32 millimeter tires, carbon fiber seat post and fork.
It's a very smooth and comfortable ride that really dampens all the vibrations on the road.
Now obviously with 31 pounds and the battery in the down tube it is a heavy bike so you feel that.
It's less responsive and fast on flats and climbs compared to the Emonda or lighter bikes like the
Tarmac so you definitely know that you have extra weight but it's still very comfortable
and if you're doing longer rides you're not trying to do constant sprints or win a race it's a great
combination. Now when it comes to the e-assist we're also impressed with that. With the hub motor here
it's not quite as natural of a mid-mount motor but it still feels fairly natural. It almost feels like
someone's pushing you from behind in the higher assist modes while the lower ones are a little more
seamless. This is only a level one bike which means it does cut out at 20 mph so most of the assist mode
is better suited for climb so if you're doing a long slow climb you want to use the assist mode
to make it easier even in eco mode. We're really impressed with the power this is not really a big
motor but the lighter weight of this compared to other e-bikes and then the gearing on here means
you can really go up steep climbs even in eco mode very comfortably. The range on the bike is
55 miles but if you do a lot of climbs we found the range come down drastically. On the climb
that you can see in this video this was about 3600 feet and 33 miles which almost drained the
whole battery so we do recommend using the range extended battery if you plan to do longer rides.
We do wish there were more assist mode than the one to three we felt like eco mode was a little
stronger than we would have liked would have been nice to have a sub eco mode or to be able
to do five percent increments or ten percent increments instead of jumping between just
three modes. Otherwise really simple to use the big downside of this hub motor setup is the fact that
it doesn't quite feel as natural as a mid-mount motor which would apply a power directly at the
crank and the hub spacing is more unique with the setup so you can't just swap out a wheel. [Music]
One of the cool features about this bike is that there is an app for the HyDrive rear
motor. You can download the Hyena app and then connect it to the bike by double tapping the power
button with it on and you'll see the display will go blue to indicate that it's connecting. From here
you get the registration information and a little information on the bike automatically transmitted.
Within the app you have a couple options you can track your rides but the most important
thing, here is you can actually tune the assist modes. As you can see there's three assist modes
and you can adjust them between that 33% areas so for each one you can make it either more or
less. By default it's about 12 the gradual rise in the modes but if you wanted more power you
can crank them up if you wanted less you could also reduce it it's a really cool feature and
it really lets you customize it. I do wish there were more modes than three but at least with this
app you can customize experience. There's also a charge alert here so you can actually add a
little notification from the app to your phone the battery gets under a percentage.
Now let's go over the scorecard for the Domane+ AL 5. We're going to grade it on four different
categories: design, components, handling and value. For design we give it an A, it's very
well proportioned bike doesn't really look like an e-bike as a battery is really hidden in a down
tube and then you just have the hub motor in the rear. Component wise would also give it an A, it has smooth
Shimano 105 shifting with the hydraulic disc brakes that give you nice braking. For handling
we'd also give that an A because you have the endurance geometry it's really comfortable. Even
though it doesn't have the elastomer that Jamani is known for between the wide tires the carbon
fiber fork and seat post it's very smooth ride and it descends really well due to that extra weight.
For value we'd also give this an A because it's an affordable e-road bike that rides a lot
like a standard road bike but just a little bit heavier as you have the battery on there.
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