Giant is one of the leading eBike brands, both globally and in South Africa. The brand’s quest to offer feature-packed eBikes at reasonable pricing has no doubt helped with its popularity. We spent some time test-riding the Giant Stance E+1 Pro to see if how it rides. Here’s what we discovered.
This is the first Giant eBike we have ridden. Curiously we haven’t ridden many acoustic Giant bikes either. The last one we rode was a 27.5-inch Anthem around 10 years ago. The new custodians of the brand in South Africa are intent on changing that it seems as we have already had two bikes for our crew to test.
Anyway, we basically had no prejudices when getting this Stance E+1 Pro set up to ride. It did feel quite heavy, but then it is a full eBike and most of them feel heavy to lift off and onto a bike rack. Even before eBikes entered the chat, we have never been too caught up on bike weight because to us, ride feel and performance is more important.
THE BIKE
With budget-price full eBikes, it doesn’t really make much sense to make the frame carbon because weight isn’t really a factor. The Stance E+1 Pro has an aluminium frame made from Giant’s ALLUX SL. The downtube accommodates the battery, so is rather burly, but the frame looks well proportioned. This model has been redesigned from its predecessor and has a rather slack 66.5-degree headtube angle, a rather steep 76-degree seattube angle and 450mm reach (Medium). Importantly, it also has shorter chainstays – 468mm.
The Flexpoint suspension is Giant’s pivot-and-linkage-elimination design that simplifies and lightens the rear of the bike. There’s 125mm of travel in the SR Suntour Raidon R shock, matched to the 140mm-travel RockShox 35 Silver fork.
The drivetrain is Shimano Deore 1×12 with Tektro HD-M750 4-piston hydraulic disc brakes with 203mm rotors. Shimano MT410 hubs are laced to Giant alloy rims with 30mm inner width and wrapped in chunky Maxxis tyres – Maxxis Minion DHF 29X2.50 up front and Maxxis Dissector 29X2.40 at the rear.
Our test bike came in a deep burgundy colour, which can look dark brown in certain light. Understated and practical, which we like.
THE DRIVE SYSTEM
The Stance E+ range comes with the new SyncDrive Pro motor, which is built by Yamaha and tuned by Giant. It’s a level up from the 70Nm SyncDrive Sport and it delivers 85Nm of torque and a claimed 400% assistance. The Stance E+1 Pro comes with a generous 800Wh battery. Although we didn’t get sent one, an EnergyPak Plus 250 Wh range extender is available to offer a total of 1050 Wh of power.
The handlebar-mounted dash is called RideControl Dash and features a colour display with buttons to toggle between the six modes. The whole system and its various power levels can be custom tuned with Ride Control, Giant’s smartphone app.
We must point out the magnetic charging port cover, which is really nifty and should be standard on all eBikes.
THE RIDE
We’ll be honest. We didn’t ride this bike economically. We could have spent hours nursing the battery to see how long it would hold charge and offer assistance, but that’s honestly not our type of riding. So we just shredded it on all the rides we did. But that’s what’s pretty cool. It handles like a trail bike and wants to be pushed hard. You don’t get that from many full eBikes in this price range. By all accounts, it’s huge difference from its predecessor too.
As mentioned earlier, it’s not a light bike but it climbs well. The motor is powerful and punchy, particularly in the higher assistance modes. But it’s quite seamless and controllable and also rather quiet. The assistance is snappy with lots of torque, especially at lower speeds, which makes corner exits and getting over obstacles quite slick. We rode only in dry, loose Highveld conditions, so had to be little mindful of traction with that kind of low-speed power.
We didn’t use it on the trail, but tried the Walk mode in the car park and found it worked well with an easy-to-reach control.
The steep seattube angle means a more planted front end on climbs. This is more important than you may think as the power at lower speeds can be a bit unsettling if you’re not weighted well. There’s no lockout on the rear shock, but we never felt we needed it as the Flexpoint suspension design seems to offer ample movement resistance when climbing.
For a trail bike, the Stance E+ is fairly long, slack and low. This, combined with the super capable, burly Maxxis tyres, makes it feel stable on descents. We had to add some pressure to the fork to be more confident on rocky, fast descents. Very few will tackle these kind of descents at that same speed though, so it’s not a major issue, but worth noting if you are a skilled rider that likes to charge hard. The rear shock was impressive and felt like more than 125mm of travel on big hits, while offering very good small bump sensitivity.
If we were to be picky, we felt the fork and brakes were a little overwhelmed by the rest of the bike, but as mentioned, most buyers of this bike won’t be pushing its limits like our testers did.
SUMMARY
There’s an authentic trail feel about the Giant Stance E+1 Pro. Unlike some full eBikes in the budget category that are a bit cumbersome, the Giant Stance E+1 Pro is content on both flowy, manicured trails and more rugged, natural trails. Not refined, but certainly highly capable for a bike in this price range. It’s got plenty of power and although we didn’t test the absolute range potential, we did manage 40km on an undulating route switching only between the two highest power-assist modes.
The ideal buyer of the Giant Stance E+1 Pro is either a newcomer that wants a very capable eBike to grow to the intermediate level with; or a keen mountain biker that wants to add an eBike to his/her quiver, but is on a budget. Either way, Giant Stance E+1 Pro offers really good battery range with mid-travel suspension and solid spec.
PRICE: R99 990
Note: Pricing was correct in November 2024 is obviously subject to change
