Review: Scott’s Patron 900 eMTB is an easy-riding generalist that struggles when the terrain gets wild

Scott Patron 900 climbing performance

Hoofing uphill, the Patron feels marvellously balanced.

The steep seat tube angle places your hips centrally over the bottom bracket, which improves pedalling efficiency, rider comfort and overall control.

When you’re tugging on the bar to lift the front wheel over rocks and roots, or to winch up vertical steps, it doesn’t try to buck you off and gallop off into the distance.

Sitting on the fulcrum of control – balancing rear-wheel grip and steering accuracy – is second nature rather than a convoluted task of careful nurture. Calm, measured consistency is always firmly within your grasp.

Likewise, hoick yourself over the front of the bike to lift the back wheel up steps and the rear wheel doesn’t instantly spin and spit dirt. Forward drive is easy to master and manage, even with overt weight shifts.

Further still, it’s possible to keep on climbing when the gradient goes from tame to torturous.

The rear suspension delivers bucket-loads of smooth, controlled grip as it tracks the ground’s imperfections with stencil-like accuracy.

But that doesn’t limit the performance benefits to techy climbs.

Long days in the saddle with seemingly never-ending, laboriously gruelling climbs were also dispatched with relatively little suffering, but only once I’d replaced the heinously uncomfortable Tofino saddle with a plusher model.

It’s especially sensitive on the smallest of bumps; Scott’s shock tune is spot-on.

But only a fraction of this performance can be accessed with the stock Forekaster tyre, and I can't recommend making an immediate upgrade highly enough – unless you’re only riding gravelly double track.

Motor performance and battery life

Bosch’s newest fifth-generation Performance Line CX motor balances power with battery life well, especially when it’s combined with the larger 800Wh battery.

Using solely Tour+ mode, I frequently exceeded 2,000m of ascent and nearly 40km of riding on a single charge.

True to Bosch’s word, the downhill freewheel rattle has been eliminated, making the Patron one of the quietest bikes going.

Scott Patron 900 descending performance

The average mountain biker – one who rides the widest gamut of terrain types, from double tracks to bridleways, trail-centre loops to singletrack ribbons and the occasional enduro downhill – is going to love the Patron.

At lower speeds or on tamer trails, it’s hugely smooth and comfortable, ironing out chatter without breaking a sweat.

Descending a line littered with embedded rocks isn’t a bone-rattling affair. Instead, it’s grippy and control is handed out generously, thanks to the smooth suspension.

Picking your line and sticking to it is intuitive. Working overtime beneath you, the front and rear dampers enable the wheels to move up and down smoothly and seamlessly.

They track the trail’s surface to gloss over any unpredictable and destabilising punches delivered by the ground.

Your focus can remain fully on choosing lines rather than compensating for inadequate suspension performance.

A lot of that smoothness is handed out by the fork’s GRIP damper. Although it’s the cheapest, least technologically advanced in Fox’s line-up, it’s by far and away the supplest feeling.

Ramping it up

There’s plenty of ramp-up at the rear end.

Wang yourself at speed around a berm – generating G-forces a jet fighter pilot would be jealous of – and the bike’s dynamic geometry is stable, its suspension resisting the handling-changing over-compression less competent machines suffer from.

There’s plenty of pop to boost its 24kg weight skyward, whether that’s off a jump’s take-off or by hitting an undulation or bump on the trail’s surface.

Once again, keep the terrain’s ferocity tempered and the bike’s speed down, and there’s plenty of fun to be hand wrangling the Patron about.

In-built limiter

While upping the ante is possible and way less fraught than you’d expect it to be for a bike with a 65.5-degree head tube angle and chunky weight, it’s still easy to push the Patron to its limits.

The generous 484.7mm reach combines with the long 454mm chainstays to boost stability – to an extent. Your body sits as centrally as it can between the wheels, but steepen the gradient and there’s little you can do to make up for the head angle.

Pummel down a steep straight into a tight turn and it’s easy to overwhelm the front end with your body’s weight.

You’ll instinctively move backwards to compensate for an over-loaded front, but this reduces steering control and upsets overall balance.

In extreme terrain, you’ll end up shifting your weight back and forth constantly, making continuous micro-adjustments to the bike’s balance to keep it on its best behaviour.

This is tiring and makes it feel like a monster a couple of minutes down a tricky descent, especially once your hands and forearms start to burn.

Only the strongest or most adept riders will have the gusto to keep it from breaking free; the respectable 24kg weight works against you rather than with you, and more often than not, you’re compensating for the bike’s wrongdoing, rather than the bike’s weight helping to pull you through technical sections unscathed.

ABS Pro only by name

This is designed to improve braking control and power, while not letting the wheels lock up.

I’ll dispel that myth: it is still possible to lock your wheels up.

Pull the rear brake hard enough and the back wheel skids. Locking the front wheel is harder, but still possible, especially when you're going slower.

This is a good thing – plenty of steering control can be derived from locking the back end, and pros use it as a tactic to change direction or set up before turns.

Depending on your skill level, this riding technique is possible even with ABS. But the way it works is more complicated than that.

Hammering down a steep section of trail or treating myself to some adrenaline-inducing late braking, the front wheel’s ABS performance left me wide-eyed and my heart racing.

The brake feel is good; the initial bite is grabby but modulated, yet squeezing the lever harder doesn’t correspond to the usual increase in braking forces.

In fact, there were times when I was squeezing the front brake lever as hard as I could to get the bike to slow down as quickly as I wanted it to, but the ABS was interfering.

Here, it appeared to be working as intended; indicated by a light pulse through the lever, identical to the feel through your feet when your car's ABS is engaged.

Riding aggressively, the front wheel couldn’t be locked up no matter how hard I pulled the lever.

Wail on the brakes and the bike simply doesn’t slow as quickly as it should.

This removed the intuitive connection between bike and rider – my inputs weren’t resulting in expected outputs from the bike.

The impression I got was a feeling of a reduction in braking force; I couldn’t slow down as quickly or brake as late with ABS activated, compared to when it was off.

Pro riders – or even confidently competent ones – aren’t going to derive any benefits from the ABS Trail Pro or Race modes; neither of which offered a useable compromise between traction and power usually fostered by intuitive and perfectly balanced rider inputs.

But for less experienced riders, or maybe those who struggle to modulate their brakes, this could be helpful – not locking up the front wheel means the steering control is maintained, and potentially reduces the chance of you flipping over the bar.