The next ride was on singletrack from my house to Spirit Mountain, Duluth’s downhill lift-accessed park with 24 trails ranging from easy to expert. Lacking a full-face helmet and the landing skills to tackle double-black runs like the one called Calculated Risk, I instead rode Candyland. The machine-built flow trail has some nice high, snaky berms where the bike’s chunky tires kept me upright and stable. I had so much fun tooling around in the bike park, riding up steep inclines like The Puker to get one last flowy downhill ride in, that I had to hurry home for dinner in the dusk.
On the way home, I chickened out while riding a chunky, steep, and extended rock bridge in Trail mode and experienced the only moment of fear in my entire 50-plus miles of testing thus far—I had already committed to forward momentum but chickened out at the last second, so the bike surged forward while I bailed sideways into the bushes. It was more user lack of confidence than bike glitch, but also a good reminder of two things: how powerful the bike is and how it’s only as competent as its rider.
At home, I checked the Specialized app and found that I had climbed 3,451 feet over 22 miles in about two hours, primarily in the bike’s Auto mode. I still had 44 percent battery power and energy in my legs.
Smart Ride
Photograph: Stephanie Pearson
After subsequent rides, what stands out the most about the Turbo Levo 4 is how intuitive it is. The bike’s high-performance torque sensors can instantly “feel” the rider’s output and amplify it, while maintaining control, traction, and precision at higher speeds. This is especially evident in Auto mode, which is the most natural feeling of the four Eco, Auto, Trail, and Turbo modes, all of which are easy to read on the bike’s Master Mind computer on the top tube.
I was a little on the fence about the Turbo Levo’s ability to jump from a Class I to a Class III electric mountain bike. On US versions of the bike, riders can tweak the speed limit by toggling through Master Mind and upping the Class I limit of 20 mph to the Class III 28 mph limit. It’s an easy process designed for mountain bikers who ride along city streets to the trails.
But it also raises a question: What ripper is going to want to toggle back down to a Class I bike—the max limit on most trails throughout the US—unless the speed police are in hot pursuit? By allowing this work-around into a higher speed-limit category, Specialized puts the onus on the rider to follow the rules, which opens a Pandora’s box—especially on trails inhabited by mostly nonmotorized mountain bikers where safety is a greater concern.
Other than the ethical conundrum, my one small beef with the S-Works Turbo Levo 4 is that it’s so much fun that it suspends time. I’m so in the flow that I forget to go home and make dinner.
