Lapierre EZesty AM LTD review

In a nutshell, the Lapierre EZesty AM LTD is a 140/140mm travel, mid-power, carbon framed, 18.5kg, electric trail bike.

• Brand: Lapierre
• Product: EZesty AM LTD
• From: Lapierre Bikes
• Price: £6,999
• Tested: by Benji for 2 months

Pros

• Fantastic ride feel
• Impressive range
• Looks good

Cons

• The saddle fell apart
• The dropper post coating wore away

In a nutshell, the Lapierre EZesty AM LTD is a 140/140mm travel, mid-power, carbon framed, 18.5kg, electric trail bike. And it’s a really flipping fun one. It uses the Fazua Ride60 system which gives out 60Nm of torque and has a 430Wh battery in the down tube.

This is a bike that is totally redeemed by its ride and its handling. Which is not to say that the build kit is inherently bad. Far from in fact. The build kit is almost all brilliant. But… the dropper is poor. And the saddle fell apart. The saddle I can almost accept; sometimes products slip through the QC net. It’d be simple warranty job to replace. But the way the dropper post stanchion instantly lost its faux-Kashima coating – not to mention its general stiffness of operation – is pretty unforgivable on a £7k bike. Get it swapped out before you leave the bike shop.

Those two bum-based issues were the only negatives I experienced with the Lapierre EZesty AM LTD. This is easily one of the best ebikes I’ve ever ridden. Whilst it may not be the absolute best ebike ebike (it can’t do trialsy climbing things that full power ebikes can do), it is genuinely the first ebike that I reckon I could/would have as my one and only bike.

First and foremost, the Lapierre EZesty AM LTD ultimately rides like a really good mountain bike. To paraphrase some sort of god awful advertising jingle, it rides like you… but on a really good day. It still feels like it’s you that’s doing the inputs that give you the outputs. You aren’t a passenger. You’re a pedaller. Just like you always have been.

It’s easy to forget about the motor and just ride the bike. The motor doesn’t jerkily engage over-eagerly. Nor does it come on so subtly that you’re always semi-concerned about when you should resume pedalling for what lies ahead; a bit like driving a heavy car that needs time to build up its turbo before it actually begins to properly accelerate.

The way that Fazua has designed how the assistance ‘happens’ is pretty spot on in my opinion. I don’t even particularly bemoan the relative absence of overrun (where the motors stays motoring for a bit even though you’ve stopped pedalling).

I am something of a Princess with a pea when it comes to the relationship between pedal-input and freehub-output. To be honest, this relationship is something I typically just try to forget about when riding ebikes, because the relationship is simply not there a lot of the time. On ebikes there is an inherent disconnect between what you do on the pedals and what the freehub decides to do and when. The Fazua Ride60 offers by far the closest experience to my precious pedal-freehub input-output ‘relationship’ of any ebike thus far. I think I’d be prepared to live with this bike as my only bike, as I’ve said already.

Sure, I’d rather not have thru-headset cable routing but I’m not about to throw the baby out with the bath water. Even though I spanner on bikes a fair bit more than the average MTBist, I still don’t find myself having my life wholly ruined by headset cabling. Sorry. Just being honest. Yes, headset routing is stupid. No, don’t rule out bikes that have it.

And yes, I still don’t think the Ring Control bar remote is a particularly great bit of design. It’s just too flimsy and vague. There really is nothing wrong with buttons. It’s another testament to rest of the bike that the Ring Control niggles didn’t really hamper my overall huge enjoyment of being on this most excellent bike.

(If you want to read more of my e-bleatings about the Fazua Ride60 motor by the way, read my Haibike Lyke CF 10 review).

Enough about the E. What about the bike?

I think, as a trail bike, the Lapierre EZesty AM LTD has it dialled. Yes, some folk may bemoan the rather modest amount of dropper post travel (170mm) but I didn’t find it a problem. The standover is still decent, which helps. I am okay with 170mm droppers. Shorter people may not be so adaptable.

It helps that I do have first hand experience that interrupted seat tube designs can enable really excellent rear suspension. Not always mind. But that is certainly the case here with the Lapierre EZesty AM LTD. I’ll go into the suspension feel shortly.

Quickie: it accepts full size water bottles with no trouble whatsoever.

The rest of the geometry is excellent in my opinion. The 65° head angle was manageable. The 77° effective seat angle, which does appear to actually be pretty truthful, made it comfy all-day everywhere. The 140mm head tube length was spot on (on this XL size). The size-specific chainstays were 445mm (XL) which is a good number in my experience. All in all, the geometry formulae deployed by Lapierre works really, really well.

The bike can stay calm when you need it to but it can still have a dick about (technical term) when you want it to. The front-rear balance of the bike felt really nice. No sore palms. No wandery or lifty front end either. You can just stay in the one general place within the bike and have fun. You can still mess about and move around in the bike if you want to but you don’t have to reposition yourself to stop something otherwise going awry.

In terms of suspension, this bike will require a teensy bit more effort for the first couple of rides. Mainly because the shock is essentially hidden from you. The little mudguard that protects the shock is ultimately most welcome. But will initially annoy you because it makes setting sag that much more difficult and – in my experience at least – prone to inaccuracy.

For the first ride (okay, the first three of four rides) I was running far too much sag. And as it turns it, the Lapierre EZesty rear suspension doesn’t really work so well with loads of sag. Anything over walking pace and/or mildly rough will have the suspension flying through all its travel and leaving you banging against the buffers, as it were.

The thing is, I thought I was running quite a modest amount of sag from my eyeball-based assessment of O-ring. I wasn’t. It was significantly over 33%. Eventually I ended up experiencing the best suspension feel with not-that-much-more-than 25% sag. Once set like this, the bike exhibited excellent grip, consistently impressive bump absorption but never lost its alluring joie de vive (French for “pop”).

Let me quickly tick off some componentry comments. The Lapierre eAM+ carbon wheels were… really great actually. They really did add to the zip and responsiveness (both suspension repsonse and pedal input response) of the whole bike. The RockShox Pike Ultimate Charger 3 was pretty much as good as 140mm forks get these days. The Shimano gears and brakes never put a foot wrong. And it’s always nice to see 31.8mm cockpit on bikes. So much nicer feel than brutal 35mm plumbing.

Oh, shout out to the grips. Own brand they may be but they’re nicely squidgy, with a good ‘tread’ and shape. And they have a section of the inner plastic liner cut-out inside that makes a huge difference to how much more comfy they are under palm (where it’s just rubber-on-handlebar).

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A post shared by Benji Haworth (@benjihaworth)

In the above ‘gram you can see the dropper’s wearing-away coating too.

Overall

Despite the seatpost and saddle woes – and the slightly faffy rear suspension set-up – the Lapierre EZesty AM LTD totally won me over with its… irrepressible nature. Aside from the really excellent Fazua Ride60 motor system, it’s a great handling mountain bike. Loads of grip. Amazing composure on fast, rough stuff. Bags of fun everywhere. Balanced and just plain comfy to sit upon for hours on end. It’s the first ebike I’ve ridden that I’d consider having as my one and only mountain bike. It’s easily one of the very best bikes of the year.

Lapierre Zesty AM LTD specification

• Frame // eZesty AM Full Carbon, 140mm
• Fork // RockShox Pike Ultimate Charger 3 RC2, 140mm
• Shock // RockShox Deluxe Ultimate, 210x55mm
• Wheels // Lapierre eAM+ Carbon
• Front tyre // Maxxis Assegai 29 x 2.5in 3C MaxxTerra EXO+
• Rear tyre // Maxxis Minion DHR II 29 x 2.4in 3C EXO+
• Chainset // Rotor E-Kapic Crank, 32T, 170mm (XL)
• Drivetrain // Shimano Deore XT/SLX, 12-speed, 10-51T
• Brakes // Shimano Deore XT M8120, 203/203mm
• Stem // Lapierre Alloy CNC, 45mm (XL), 31.8mm
• Bars // Renthal Fatbar Carbon, 800mm x 20mm, 31.8mm
• Grips // Lapierre Grips Anodized Lock-On
• Seatpost // Lapierre Light dropper, 31.6mm, 170mm (XL)
• Saddle // Fizik Terra Aidon X5
• Bottom Bracket // Fazua
• Motor //Fazua Ride60, 60Nm
• Battery // 430Wh
• Size tested // XL
• Sizes available // S, M, L, XL
• Weight // 18.5kg
• Head angle // 65°
• Effective seat angle // 77°
• Seat tube length // 460mm
• Head tube length // 140mm
• Effective top tube // 652mm
• BB height // 30mm BB drop
• Reach // 505mm
• Chainstay // 445mm (XL)
• Wheelbase // 1,280mm

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