The Fullest Fat: Giant Reign E+ 3 review

What is this Giant Reign E+ 3? It’s a very eMTB [sic]. Full power motor. Massive 800Wh battery (with the option of running a 250Wh range extender for £349).

• Brand: Giant
• Product: Reign E+ 3
• From: Giant UK
• Price: £4,999
• Tested by: Benji for 2 months

Pros

• Great motor and battery
• Excellent geometry in general
• All the ‘budget’ Shimano stuff is excellent

Cons

• Fork needs fettling
• Short head tube
• Long stem (for this sort of bike)

The Reign E+ sports 170/160mm of suspension. Super progressive geometry. It’s full-on headfirst dive into e-MTBing. Full bore eMTBs are like a different sport. A different vehicle. This Giant Reign E+ is very much about giving the e-people what they want

At £4,999 this bike is at a price point to be very much in the My First eMTB target market. And on the whole, I would strongly recommend it. But it requires a few minor tweaks here and there before leaving the shop floor.

Firstly, the front end is a bit too low. Especially on the L and XL sizes. The low front end really hampers this full-fat-heavy and long-chainstay-ed bike’s manoeuvrability. I ended up running 50mm rise handlebars with all of the spacers under the stem. (I also swapped in a shorter 35mm stem too as the XL’s 50mm stem felt too long). Considering the otherwise excellent progressive geometry, the short head tube is a real quandary. But it’s not a killer blow.

Secondly, the SR Suntour Durolux 38 may not work very well out-of-the-box. This is the second Durolux 38 I’ve encountered that suffered from trapped air in the lower legs from the get-go. The result being you can’t get more than approx 50% travel out of the fork. It’s easily sorted; as well as leting air out of the bleeder screws/holes, you’ll also need to slightly undo the foot nut at the bottom of the fork leg (the air chamber leg) and you’ll hear air escape, like opening a can of Coke. I’d also recommend injecting some fork lube oil into the lowers via the aforementioned bleeder screws/holes.

Oh, I’d also put some better pads in the brakes. Maybe just the front brake. The OEM pads in the otherwise excellent Shimano MT420 brakes just aren’t very good. The OEM pads probably last a long time (ours showed very little sign of wear) but they simply aren’t powerful enough for this bike. With some better pads in, there’s so much more top-end power, not to mention greatly improved feel and modulation.

Other niggles. The Maxxis 2.6in EXO+ front tyre was not great. Just nowhere near enough support in the casing; the flimsy and undamped tyre collapses before the stout and well-damped fork has any chance of soaking up the impact. Also, the Shimano Cues rear mech clutch was overtight, which caused ropey shifting. It was a quick fix (remove the clutch cover and undo the bolt) but a lot of folk may not ever fathom it. Once tweaked, the shifting was great.

Any half-decent bike shop will do these little things for you, and it’s a good idea to do it straightaway whilst in the shop so you get a better deal.

The only non-solvable issue I had was that the bottle bosses are relatively high up the down tube which prevents the easy use of bigger water bottles. But if that’s the price we have to pay for the low tube top tube (and piggyback space on other Reign E+ models, or upgrade path) then that’s a price worth paying.

Although it may sound rather negative to kick off a review with the niggles, I have done it this way because it really will make all the difference to your experience of this bike. I can imagine a lot of people demo/testing this bike and being very disappointed. My first ride on this bike was not great. The front end beat my hands/arms/shoulders to death. There was also a whole load of “woah Nelly!” sensation of a runaway bike careering out of my control.

The last few rides I’ve done (after all the aforementioned fettling) on this Giant Reign E+ 3 have been utter joy.

And a lot of joy. In terms of range stats, a recent ride was 43.62km long with 1,135m of climbing, done entirely on top assist mode (‘Power’), and I still had about 15% battery remaining. For reference, I weigh 73kg, the ground conditions were pretty dry, the tyres were a Vittoria Mostro up front and a Maxxis High Roller II on the rear.

I’d actually put this bike way up there with the best full-power eebs I’ve ridden. I do still have something of a soft spot for the Haibike Nduro 7 (another Yamaha powered machine) but I’d probably give the nod to the Giant due to its superior all-round geometry.

Perhaps the greatest geometry attribute with the Reign E+ is its short seat tube and resultant acres of standover. Combined with the smaller 27.5in rear wheel of the mullet design, the Reign E+ never really felt worrying on technical terrain. It never felt like it was going to take you down with it should things go awry. It always felt like there ample room to stop and/or bail out whenever you needed to do.

Full power ebikes with big capacity batteries that can also accept long travel droppers AND have nicely low slung top tubes for decent dstandover are suprisingly few and far between. The Giant Reign E+ is one of them. Maximum points to the geometry/frame design crew at Giant. Double maximum points for not routing the cables through the headset either.

Speaking of geometry, I prefered the Reign E+ in its High geometry setting. I know right? Unheard of. The thing is, the High setting is still slack at the front (I measured it as nearer 63° than 64°), the seat angle remains sufficiently steep, the reach gets a smidge longer (better suiting shorter stem) and the higher BB results in a much more manoeuvrable bike. You simply don’t need low BB height on long bikes. It makes them handle worse in my experience.

And the increased pedal clearance is appreciated on technical terrain. Especially technical climbs. The Giant Reign E+ is an exceptional climber. Rider-forward geometry, great rear tyre, grippy suspension, confident standover, powerful and predictable motor. It’s a total blast finding bonkers stuff to try to ascend up.

In terms of assist power then, what are the scores on the SyncDrive Pro2 motor doors? Torque is the ‘industry standard’ 85Nm. Support is up to 400%, and whilst its impossible to nail down any reliable info about peak power, it is certainly in excess of 600 watts.

I’m a big fan of the feel of Panasonic/Giant/Yamaha (delete as you wish) motors. They have a pleasing amount of thrill and power but without any surprises or unhelpful shoves. I also like the noise they make; it really helps you know what the motor is doing which is, again, particularly good for technical climbing.

Whilst the motor itself is fine and dandy. The controls and display info aren’t amazing. The modest remote near the left-hand grip looks pretty neat but is weirdly hard to operate accurately when riding. The ‘buttons’ don’t really work as buttons; you have to kind of lever them slightly to actuate. I’m not that much of an assist-level switcher so I could live with it. Others may get frustrated. The basic 5 LED display on the top tube is… well, basic. The colour informs you of your assist level, the number of lit LEDs tell you your battery life remaining in big, crude 20% chunks.

It’s just as well the battery in the down tube is as massive as it is. 800Wh! With that much power, I wasn’t often concerned by the crude battery LED display. There was usually loads of battery power left.

You can fire up the Giant app on your phone to keep an eye on precise battery level but that’s far from handy. The app by the way is one of the better ones out there. Quick, reliable, pretty straightforward and allows you to do a decent amount of motor tuning also.

We did experiment with the Automatic assist mode on the Reign E+ and while it does basically work and some folk may really gel with it, it was always a bit underpowered and/ior slow to up the assist level for our tastes/impatience/laziness.

Let’s bash through the specification sheet now.

As mentioned, the SR Suntour fork required work out of the box (as it were) but once sorted proved to be a decent big burly fork. It is a tad on the oversamped side of things for lighter riders but most folks will be fine with the range available.

The Fox Float Performance EVOL rear shock was an impressive unit. Despite it lacking a piggyback reservoir it didn’t seem to get fazed by anything. It’s worth pointing out that the UK doesn’t really have a great number of descents that last much longer than a couple of minutes.

The rather modest wheelset turned out to be really, really good. The wheels are just Giant AM30 tubelss-ready rims on Shimano MT410 hubs but they rolled and rolled forever (okay, not literally). Super smooth and a not insignificant factor into this bike’s impressive lack of sluggish handling.

The Shimano drivetrain and brakes we’ve covered already. Ditto bars and stem. The own brand saddle and grips were really comfy.

On the trail, the Reign E+ was a surprise. Not only does it seem to look really cool (for want of a better word) once it’s out there and someone is riding it, but it also showed a very high level of manoeuvrability for such a seemingly OTT steamroller of an eMTB. Although the fork could be a bit dead feeling for lighter riders, the back end was as lively as you want it to be.

I definitely think it’s worth restating the fact that the stock cockpit is far too low (for an XL) and that the geometry works at its best in the High setting. The Reign E+ as it comes – low bar and Low geo setting – is a bike that is decidedly un-manoeuvrable (possibly good for all-out Alpine DH speed-descents) whereas the Reign E+ with a higher bar, shorter stem and High geo setting is a different machine altogether.

The only times its heft made itself unwelcome was when it was time to lift the bike over an obstacle. Which is something of a definite problem with full-power eMTBs if your terrain often calls for some lifting and carrying. You can genuinely do yourself a strain injury if you’re not careful.

Overall

From teething troubles to total trail taming, that has been my experience of the Giant Reign E+ 3. It’s an ebike that could convert a lot of people away from regular mountain bike altogether. It can just do so much more terrain than a regular bike, both in terms of sheer mileage but also severity of terrain. It does borderline feel like a different sort of sport. The Giant Reign E+ 3 is not perfect out of the box but its niggles are solvable and the upgrade potential of this model is massive.

Giant Reign E+ 3 Specification

• Frame // Allux SL aluminium, 160mm
• Fork // SR Suntour Durolux 38 Boost EQ RC2, 170mm
• Shock // Fox Float Performance EVOL, 205×62.5mm
• Wheels // Giant AM30 rims on Shimano MT410 hubs
• Front tyre // Maxxis Minion DHF, EXO+, 3C MaxxTerra 29×2.6in
• Rear tyre // Maxxis High Roller II, DoubleDown, 3C MaxxTerra, 27.5×2.5in
• Chainset // Praxis Cold Forged 4130 e-HD, 165mm, 36T
• Drivetrain // Shimano Cues LinkGlide 11sp, 11-50T
• Brakes // Shimano BR-MT420, 203/203mm
• Stem // Giant Contact SL 35, 50mm
• Bars // Giant Contact Trail 35, 800x35mm
• Grips // Giant Tactal Pro-E Lock-on
• Seatpost // Giant Contact Switch dropper, 200mm, 30.9mm
• Saddle // Giant Romero Trail
• Bottom Bracket // Giant
• Motor // Giant SyncDrive Pro2, 85Nm
• Battery // Giant EnergyPak 800Wh
• Size tested // XL
• Sizes available // S, M, L, XL
• Weight // 25.5kg (56.2lb)

Geometry of our size XL

• Head angle // 63.7°/64.5°
• Effective seat angle // 76.7°/77.5°
• Seat tube length // 475mm
• Head tube length // 120mm
• Effective top tube // 649mm
• BB height // 25mm/15mm BB drop
• Reach // 500mm/505mm
• Chainstay // 454mm
• Wheelbase // 1,295mm/1,296mm