Orbea Rallon/M RS-LTD first-ride review: in 20 years testing MTBs, I've never seen anything like this. It's awesome 

The new Orbea Rallon RS could redefine the lightweight or SL segment of the eMTB market.  

Although this is very much an ebike, it doesn’t ride like one. It sounds clichéd, but it’s true. 

That’s down partly to how unobtrusive the TQ HPR40 motor is. With only 200W of peak power and 40Nm of torque, the assistance is subtle – don’t expect wild levels of front-wheel-lifting grunt when cranking out of turns. 

You very much feel as though you’re doing the bulk of the work on the climbs, but that extra bit of help means you can ride very slightly faster or further. It’s a discreet enhancement rather than neck-jarringly rapid.  

For me, that’s a real plus, but for some, it’ll negate the whole idea of an electric mountain bike. 

What’s more, the Rallon RS’s motor, derailleur, dropper post and rear shock all run off the same battery, with a level of integration we’ve not seen before. 

• Read more: New Orbea Rallon RS redefines lightweight eMTBs with next-level integration, big travel and light weight 

Orbea Rallon/M RS-LTD takes integration to the next level 

At the heart of the Rallon RS is the TQ HPR40 motor, powered by a 290Wh battery. This is capable of delivering 200W of peak power and maximum torque of 40Nm. 

The HPR40 weighs a claimed 1,170g, making it nearly 700g lighter than TQ's more powerful HPR50 motor. 

Alongside powering the motor, the battery also supplies juice to Orbea’s Mountain Control MC10 dropper post, the Shimano XTR Di2 derailleur and Fox’s Float X2 Live Valve NEO rear shock. 

Everything connects through a single control unit and can be managed using the bar-mounted HMI (Human Machine Interface) remote (with the exception of the gears, which use the XTR Di2 shifter), introduced on the latest Orbea Rise RS, late last year.  

• Read more: Electric bike motors explained: comparing Bosch, Shimano, Fazua, Yamaha, Specialized and ebikemotion systems

With all the electronic components hardwired into the main battery, you lose some of the cleanliness that comes from wirelessly controlled parts.

However, when you plug your eMTB in to charge, everything else charges, too. That means no last-minute additional dropper post or derailleur battery charges. 

More than that, though, Orbea claims the components are able to communicate with one another, which could help enhance the ride. 

Orbea has partnered with TQ and Fox for the Rallon RS project. It claims that by enabling the shock to receive data from the motor, including power (from rider and motor), cadence and speed, the algorithm can optimise shock performance, toggling damping settings more effectively and boosting predictability. 

The plumbed-in dropper has a part to play here, too. Not only can the post talk to the shock, ensuring that when the dropper stays compressed, the damping remains fully open, but it’ll communicate with the motor, too. 

TQ’s sensors enable the motor to know if the bike is going downhill. If the post is dropped completely, it’s able to alter assistance levels, lowering them so you don’t create any unwanted or untimely power spikes when descending.  

In terms of motor modes, there are three – ‘range’, ‘rally’ and ‘ultra’. The latter is the most frugal of the three but adaptive, and should, in theory, only deliver assistance when you really need it on the hardest climbs. 

You can also buy a 160Wh TQ range extender, should you want to ride even further. 

Big travel and automatic suspension control 

The Rallon RS frame is based on the non-powered Rallon enduro bike and is also made from carbon fibre. 

There’s no ‘Gravity Link’, though (used to convert the Rallon Enduro into the Rallon DH), in order to make room for the drive unit and battery. 

It also features a carbon rocker link, which saves a reported 200g but is just as stiff as its alloy counterpart on the Rallon. 

When it comes to the 170mm of rear-wheel travel and the suspension itself, Orbea has opted to build the Rallon RS around electronic, adaptive rear shocks, and designed the kinematics to suit.  

As a result, it has opted to design the frame with a relatively low anti-squat figure (the built-in resistance the suspension layout has to prevent pedal bob), at just over 80 per cent at sag, to improve sensitivity and responsiveness.

The thinking here is that the shock can do the heavy lifting, using its automated compression damping to firm the bike up when it's being pedalled, rather than compromise suspension performance and go for a higher anti-squat figure at the outset.  

Long, low and slack 

I rode a medium Rallon/M RS-LTD. The ‘M’ denotes the smaller 27.5in rear wheel, although you can run a 29er if you wish without disrupting the geometry (this is enabled via a rocker-link swap). 

A 455mm reach is paired with a 445mm rear centre and 638mm stack. 

Orbea has included a host of geometry adjustment, including a flip chip enabling you to drop the bottom bracket by 8mm and slacken the head angle (which sits at 64.25 degrees in the neutral position) by 0.5 degrees.  

Angled headset cups give you even more scope to tweak the head angle by +/- 0.75 degrees.  

A steep 79-degree seat tube angle is intended to keep you right over the bottom bracket for efficient pedalling. 

The highest of high-end 

The LTD build is the highest-spec of the two Rallon RS bikes on offer, as is reflected in the price tag. 

Highlights include a Fox 38 Factory fork with 180mm of travel to match the X2 Live Valve NEO shock at the rear, Shimano XTR Di2 gearing (with an e*thirteen Helix Race crankset) and XTR brakes, Oquo Mountain Control MC32TEAM wheels and Maxxis tyres. 

Orbea claims the size-medium build here weighs an impressive 17.45kg. A large non-assisted Rallon weighs approximately 16.34kg, according to the Basque brand.  

Rallon/M RS-LTD ride impressions

I rode the Rallon/M RS-LTD for two days during the launch event in Arkerrata, within the Navarra region of the Basque Country in northern Spain. 

We largely rode on natural singletrack descents, with a couple of laps on more sculpted jump trails to cap off each day. 

Most of the tracks were fast and flowing, although often got steep and sometimes included long sections of embedded rock, requiring precise line choice. 

Although the Rallon RS has a motor and battery, it doesn’t feel like an eMTB. That’s down largely to the minimal torque and power on offer. 

Silence is golden

Get cranking out of an uphill turn and don’t expect the front end to lift up uncontrollably or the bike to surge forward. Things are far more subtle.  

For a start, there’s no motor noise – no whir or whine, no matter the cadence. It’s silent. 

In the ‘rally’ mode, the punchiest of the trio, you can feel the motor adding to your input, which helps you ride this big-travel enduro bike more like a sprightly trail bike that weighs less and rolls on firmer, faster tyres. 

You still have to work, though. The motor feel is as promised; this is a rider-dominant rather than motor-dominant experience. 

That means you’ll need to rein in any eMTB expectations you might have of scaling near-vertical walls or ripping up climbs at 25kmh with your hair blowing in the wind. That isn’t what this bike is all about. 

The ‘rally’ mode is more like ‘eco’ mode on a full-power bike, but without all the weight and noise. Drop it into ‘range’, or the even more economical, adaptive ‘ultra’, and that help fades into the background a little more, kicking in less frequently. 

Likewise, don’t expect to keep up with mates on full-power or modern lighter-weight eMTBs because you’ll most likely struggle. But if you’re looking to ride further or keep up with far fitter friends on non-powered bikes, this might be just the ticket.  

In terms of power delivery, the TQ unit feels very natural, predictable and easy to control.  

As for the bike itself, the steep seat tube angle and upright seated position provide a comfy place to sit and winch your way up the hill. The geometry isn’t particularly stretched-out, but I found my medium test bike really comfortable on long uphill drags. 

Thanks to the automatic damping control, pedalling feels decently efficient, too.  

As for range, it’s hard to comment without testing the bike for longer. The first day of riding took in close to 1,000m of climbing and I returned with over half my battery left, which suggests that, if you’re smart with mode selection, you could cover a lot of ground. 

Keeping things natural 

The Rallon RS doesn’t ride like a lightweight eMTB on the descents. While it might feel like a trail bike on the climbs, albeit with an upright seated position, it’s very much a capable enduro rig on the downhills. It’s balanced, in terms of suspension feel and geometry, stable and planted, but can still be thrown about.  

There’s none of that ebike motor noise and no rattling – with a single remote to manage so much, there are few cables to slap against each other. The assistance is subtle enough that when you press on the pedals out of a turn, you’re not jolting forwards, as you might do if there were more power on tap. 

The weight feels similar to that of a burly enduro bike, too. This means riding light, hopping sections or chucking the bike around in the air takes less effort than with some of the chunkier ‘SL’ bikes on the market that have a good few kilos on the Rallon RS. 

While many brands promise a ride feel that’s closer to a non-powered bike, few deliver. The Rallon RS, however, comes closest to achieving this. 

It’s not all plain sailing, though. 

Prolonged presses on the dropper remote left it in the programmable ‘smart’ mode (enabling you to access smart features, including a 20 per cent, partial drop). I wasn’t expecting this and didn’t know how to make the most of it. Time on the bike would fix that, I’m sure. 

There’s also a motor quirk when descending. If I left the motor in ‘rally’ mode, I found when I needed to adjust my foot position to get through a deep, rocky gully or set the cranks properly when linking awkwardly spaced, slow, tight turns, there was some initial friction to overcome as I started backpedalling. 

This is down to the HPR40 motor using only one clutch, rather than the two most eMTB drive units employ (which is part of the reason the HPR40 is so small).  

In some situations, it feels a little like pedal kickback and can be a bit disconcerting at first. 

Switching the assistance off for the descents remedies this and smooths things out – and this is what I quickly got into the habit of doing.  

Other things to note are that I ran both the fork and shock adjusters fully open, suggesting that, at 68kg, I could benefit from a lighter tune in both dampers. 

The Shimano XTR brakes offer loads of power with masses of control and feel, along with consistency. The gearing also works well, but there’s more chain slap than I expected. 

However, any niggles feel easy to overlook. I really like what Orbea has done here. The Rallon RS feels like what I envisage a lighter-weight eMTB should be, with enduro capabilities on the downhills, but enough assistance on the climbs to make it feel as though you’ve switched to some faster-rolling tyres and a shorter-travel trail bike. 

Orbea Rallon/M RS-LTD initial verdict 

Orbea’s Rallon RS is a bold move in the world of eMTBs, when every other brand seems to be chasing more power and torque.  

As a rider who loves riding a non-assisted mountain bike more than an eMTB, it feels like the best compromise yet. Climbing is a little easier, but the handling on the descents isn’t dictated by the extra bulk or lighter-weight components often used to keep traditional SL bikes within the category. 

But more than that, the level of integration here is incredible. It’s hard to predict what living with a bike such as this will be like, or the problems the interconnectivity could pose down the line, but being able to plug it in once and charge everything feels like a win. And decluttering the controls is the icing on the cake.  

While the Rallon RS and its limited assistance levels might not be for everyone, I'm into it.