Focus Jam 2 SL 9.9 review

Mid-power eMTBs currently offer the best all-round mountain bike experience and the Focus Jam2 SL is the best mid-power experience I’ve had so far. Br …

By ben_haworth

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Focus Jam 2 SL 9.9 review

So an £8k bike with significant problems that needs money spending immediately to make the gears and dropper work like a properly designed bike. How’s the Fazua motor for reliability and repairability?  What’s Focus’s warranty support? These things matter far more on an ebike than a normal bike. After hassle with a Canyon I now check bikes come with normal easily replaceable bearings too.

I own one. I bought an 8.7 in the sales, stripped it, and rebuilt with great kit. The niggle about the remote is fair. Even the updated version is still not perfect. What I did find is the cable routing needed finishing inside, and since, it’s the quietest running bike in my quiver.

I don’t agree about the removable battery. That’s a great feature IMO. Takes about 10 seconds to remove and have charging. Battery cover comes off with one small twist, battery out simply, and the charger cable magnetically clips in and done. For really big days, or stage races, you can keep a second charged battery ready. Fixed batteries are inflexible and as you say, the bike itself has to be near a socket! What I would say is that I have added a couple of tweaks to the cover to make it as solid and silent as it should have been from factory.

Bottom line, I’m saying the niggles are easily rectified, and the removable battery is clearly divisive, but for me, was one of the USPs Vs the competition.

Where we agree 100% is that it’s a superb, versatile bike. Mine’s down to 17kg in light guise, and 18.5kg in big mountain guise, in size large.

Great bike.

You can also get a Acros headset top cap that allows you to run a normal stem and removes the need for stem cable routing.

It still goes through the headset but it removes the ‘kink’ as it goes around the bar so the dropper and mechanical shifting will work better.

I can see the point of the stem routing if you’re on AXS shifting and dropper so there’s no actual cables running through there, hoses don’t tend to mind tight corners so much.