Review: Specialized Turbo Tero X 4.0

Unless you are a road racer cutting weight, your bike should probably have a dropper seat post. You can run a cable from your bike’s seat post to a small lever on your handlebars. With a quick flick of the thumb, you can change your bike’s saddle height without getting off, or even stopping pedaling.

A few years ago, every mountain bike got one of these, and it was a game-changer. Sometimes you want your leg to get full extension so you can efficiently transfer as much power as possible to your pedals. Other times you want your saddle to be lower, like when you’re navigating through rocks and the alternative to being able to put your foot down is to slam the rest of your body (and the bike) repeatedly into Mother Earth.

These are just a few reasons I’m excited to see the dropper post added to Specialized’s Turbo Terro X 4.0 ebike. Why develop a whole new frame geometry (as companies like Electra have been testing) when you can just add a dropper post? This and many other smart adjustments turn this all-around electric mountain bike into your quiver killer.

The simplest way to describe the Turbo Tero X is that it’s one of Specialized’s iconic mountain bikes that’s been given a motor and adjusted to work as both a commuter and gravel bike. It rides like a mountain bike—it has straight handlebars that you sit upright to steer, and the medium and large versions have enormous 29-inch front wheels. This particular configuration, with big front wheels and slightly smaller back wheels, is called a mullet-style bike and is considered better for rough terrain, though I have to admit that I was riding the small frame, which can’t accommodate the big front wheel and thus just has two of the 27.5-inch wheels.

Photograph: Specialized

The most obvious nod to mountain biking is probably the suspension system. While a lot of cheaper ebikes now include front and rear shocks, Specialized has been making and patenting full-suspension systems for over 20 years.

When I picked up the Turbo Tero X, the staff calibrated the suspension to my weight—obviously, a rider who weighs 115 pounds does not need as much cushioning as a rider who weighs 200. And as with a mountain bike, you can lock out the front shock so it doesn’t jiggle around as much and waste energy when you’re climbing steep hills. A knob on the single-pivot rear suspension lets you adjust it further, depending on where you’re riding and how.

Like most of the finer things in life, it’s hard to explain how much better it feels to ride a bike that fits you well and has purpose-driven components, rather than ones that were included to tick off specs on a checklist. If you evaluated a bike purely by power, the Turbo Tero X might not come out looking all that great, since it has a Euro-maximum 250-W motor with a 730-Wh battery. 

However, the power of that motor can be precisely calibrated (it also has 12-speed shifters). You can select between three levels of assist, but with Smart Control on Specialized’s Mission Control app, you can also dial in how much assistance the motor puts out, depending on factors that you input, like how long you want to travel, how far, or how much battery you want to have left when you get home. 

Photograph: Specialized

For that reason, it’s a little hard to judge how long the battery lasts. A single hour-long ride with hills and the assistance level jacked up as high as possible ate up over half the battery in testing. Immediately thereafter, I switched Mission Control to get me home with 30 percent minimum battery and started pedaling at 80 rpm, which made the 50 percent battery stretch out over a week. It’s the very definition of “your mileage may vary.”

The bike has a simple display that shows you not only the power level, but the time and battery level. It also shows you how best to optimize the bike’s battery with a cadence counter—it’s more efficient to pedal at a fit cyclist’s 80 to 100 rotations per minute, versus a recreational cyclist’s 60 rpm.

Mission Control can also record your rides, although bafflingly it does not let you upload prerecorded routes and help you navigate, in contrast to pretty much every other ride app on the planet. It does let you diagnose possible bike problems, though, and bring a history to your bike doctor (mechanic, whatever). Finally, the bike has all the commuter components, like a rear rack, a front rack mount, sturdy steel fenders, a bike bell, and blisteringly bright lights.

Photograph: Specialized

What does it mean to be comfortable and secure on a bike? For me, I don’t feel great on a bike with big plushy seats and curved handlebars. I don’t ride bikes primarily on smooth paths by the beach, but to commute and occasionally on weekend trails. I want to feel secure—like I can maneuver it where I need to go, at speeds I want to travel, and not fall down or slide into traffic.

On a recent ride to the beach, I was clipping along nicely at over 20 mph (the bike has a top speed of 28 mph) when I saw a huge crack in the bike lane that had formed an enormous jump. It had been spray-painted neon pink with the words “DANGER” all over it. I was going downhill and too fast to stop, so I just … stood up on my pedals and jumped it. Because I was on what was basically a mountain bike, I stuck the landing and went on with my life, which I might not have if I’d been on a cruiser bike.

I have a few quibbles, though. It weighs a bit over 58 pounds, it’s a little long, and the 27.5-inch wheels don’t help that much. That’s not wildly heavy or big for an electric bike, but I did struggle to get it into my Honda Element and to move it while doing random things that you might expect to have to do as a commuter, like lifting it up a small flight of stairs to get into a building.

The biggest obstacle for many will be the price. The electric Turbo Tero comes in several editions. I was riding the Turbo Tero X 4.0, which is the premium bike with the first trim level (the 5.0 and 6.0 versions have a bigger battery, among other upgraded features). The base model Turbo Tero starts at $4,500. This is not quite as ridiculous as it sounds. Bikes are expensive, hard-riding mountain bikes are even more so, and even premium ones that have full suspension without an electric motor can retail for $5,000 or more. But just because die-hard bike people are willing to go to extremes does not mean the rest of us have to be.

Most cyclists know the popular n+1 rule, where the minimum number of bikes one should own is three (in this household, that means my acoustic commuter bike, my electric cargo bike, and my mountain bike). This is your baseline. But the proper number is n+1, where n = the number of bikes you currently own. No matter how many bikes you own, you should probably own one more. 

The best way to describe the Turbo Tero X is that it could finally be some folks’ n=1 bike. This bike ticks all the boxes and is generally great while doing it. It’s an all-purpose gravel/mountain/commuter bike that can tackle anything you throw at it. If you belong to the subset that is willing to buy one bike to rule them all, then $6,500 might actually be a bargain (and save you a little garage space).