Merida eONE-SIXTY 875 review

Merida’s eONE-SIXTY 875 is the brand’s latest eMTB, boasting a large 750Wh battery that powers Shimano’s EP-801 motor.

Its alloy frame is built with ebike-specific parts, resulting in a 26.34kg weight (mid-size, without pedals) weight. Headlining that spec is Shimano’s XT M8130 11-speed Linkglide drivetrain and a RockShox ZEB/Super Deluxe damper combo.

Mixed wheels (29in front, 27.5in rear) are matched with long-travel suspension: 170mm up front and 174mm out back that’s delivered using the brand’s P-FLEX flex-stay design. To boot, each size in the four-size line-up has bespoke kinematics.

A geometry-adjusting flip chip can be used to run a 29in rear wheel, but standout figures include a 64.4-degree head angle, 78.4-degree seat tube angle and reach figures ranging from 439mm to 499mm.

Merida hand-delivered a 'mid'-sized bike to me, rather than the ‘long’, which would have been closer to my geometry preferences. The brand’s bike size calculator recommends a ‘mid’ frame for my body weight, size and riding style.

Merida states that while the new eONE-SIXTY has “longer reach numbers… than the previous generation bike,” its geometry has been tweaked to ensure the “handling is dynamic, despite the increased chassis weight”.

Therefore, the size recommended by the brand is smaller than you’d expect. I’m not sure I agree entirely with that, though, as you’ll soon find out.

Hit gnarly downhill terrain befitting of its travel figures and you’ll be compensating for a shorter-than-average front end with overt rearward body movements, upsetting and limiting control.

Uphill, its diminutive size and steep seat tube angle help by boosting traction and rider comfort, but the Shimano motor doesn’t feel as powerful and isn’t as frugal as Bosch’s offering.

Spec-wise, there’s little to complain about. Standout performers include the supple and smooth ZEB fork and Shimano’s definitively shifting Linkglide drivetrain.

If you’re looking for an eONE-SIXTY, consider carefully which size is best for your needs before buying; it may be that you need to size up to get a better fit. Taller riders might struggle to find a size big enough; reach figures lift only to 499mm on the brand’s biggest extra-long size.

Merida eONE-SIXTY 875 frame, suspension and motor

The ONE-SIXTY’s aluminium frame has internal cable routing, via the headset. Within the front triangle are no fewer than three water bottle mounting points, which can be used for hydration, tools or the optional 360Wh range extender.

Elsewhere, there’s chunky chain-slap protection on the driveside stays, an integrated mudguard by the main pivot and SRAM’s Universal Derailleur Hanger at the rear dropout.

Merida’s FAST 174mm-travel suspension design, which uses P-FLEX flex stays instead of a chain-to-seatstay pivot, employs a rocker link to actuate the rear shock.

To increase room within the frame’s front triangle, the shock is mounted horizontally; its piggyback sits to the side rather than vertically.

Each frame size gets its own kinematics designed to tune feel for different riders. Those kinematics are also coil-shock compatible.

Shimano’s EP-801 electric bike motor has 85Nm of torque and 600W of power. It’s paired with a large, removable, 750Wh Simplo battery, mounted in the down tube. A 360Wh range extender ups total potential watt-hours to a massive 1,110.

Merida eONE-SIXTY 875 geometry

Merida’s Agilometer geometry increases the reach figures, but keeps standover heights and seat tube lengths relatively short.

Eschewing traditional sizing conventions, the short, mid, long and extra-long nomenclature means riders should be free to pick their preferred reach figure rather than being restricted by how tall the bike is.

The Merida website offers a four-step sizing guide where you input your height, leg and arm measurements, as well as your preferred seated position. This delivers a recommended size, although we’d take it with a pinch of salt.

Reach figures start at 439mm (short) and lift to 499mm (extra-long). The 64.6-degree head angle and 78.4-degree seat tube angle are shared across the size range, as is the 446mm chainstay figure.

Merida eONE-SIXTY 875 specifications

A 170mm-travel RockShox ZEB Select fork is matched with a Super Deluxe Select rear shock.

Shimano’s 11-speed, ebike-specific XT M8130 Linkglide drivetrain is fitted, along with XT M8120 brakes with 220mm front and 203mm rear rotors.

Merida-branded Expert TR II rims are laced to Shimano XT hubs and clad with Maxxis tyres. Up front, there’s a 29x2.5in Assegai EXO+ MaxxGrip and out back a 27.5x2.4in Minion DHR II DoubleDown MaxxTerra.

Merida’s Team TR II travel-adjust dropper’s clever design means owners can set it between 30mm and 230mm of drop, depending on their preferences.

The handlebar, stem, grips and saddle are all Merida-branded.

Lezyne’s E-Bike Power E115 front light is mounted to the bike’s stem with its own dedicated wiring and takes power from the bike’s main battery.

Without pedals, the mid-sized eONE-SIXTY 875 weighs 26.34kg.

Merida eONE-SIXTY 875 ride impressions

I tested the Merida eONE-SIXTY 875 on the enduro-focused trails of Scotland’s Tweed Valley, the perfect playground for this long-travel big-battery electric mountain bike.

Trail conditions ranged from fully frozen to early-spring hero dirt, with plenty of slop thrown in.

Technicality and speeds varied from flat-out to slow and gnarly, with every combination in between. The bike got a thorough workout.

Setup

Using Merida’s frame-size finding tool, for my 178cm height, shorter than average legs, longer than average arms and neutral riding stance, it recommended I ride the mid-sized bike, with a reach of 459mm.

This is significantly shorter than my 480mm sweet spot, and isn’t the size I would have chosen.

With reach figures topping out at 499mm (extra-long), taller riders may struggle to fit the largest eONE-SIXTY.

Getting the eONE-SIXTY 875 ready to ride was straightforward. I inflated the ZEB fork to 70psi and left the two factory-installed volume-reducer spacers. I fully opened the external rebound and compression adjusters.

At the back, I set the shock to 30 per cent sag (210psi) and fully opened the external damper adjustment. Satisfied, I left both the fork and shock set like this for the duration of the test period.

I inflated the tyres to my preferred pressures depending on conditions: 24-26psi up front and 27-29psi at the back.

At 633mm, the mid’s stack isn’t especially low, but I lifted the bars as high up the steerer tube as they would go, indicating the front end feels slammed.

Merida eONE-SIXTY 875 climbing performance

A steep seat tube angle, short top tube and relatively long chainstays make for a great, manoeuvrable and fun-to-ride climbing position.

When pointing the nose up seriously steep inclines, only small and deliberate forward weight shifts are needed to keep the front wheel in firm contact with the ground.

Steering control is impressive and constant, even when you’re navigating extreme gradient hairpins, boosted by the fairly low-feeling front end.

Dropping your elbows and pulling through the bar to power up the steeps doesn’t initiate front-wheel lift. Your effort can be exerted brazenly without the fear of control slipping from your grasp.

The Select-level ZEB fork and FAST rear suspension kinematics are well matched. Responsiveness to small bumps is exemplary – particularly from the fork – which helps improve comfort, but most importantly traction on wildly technical ascents.

You point and the bike shoots convincingly as it sticks your chosen line with impressive conviction.

The rear end’s traction isn’t a compromise in other areas. While the 26.34kg weight means it’s not the spriteliest ride, the rear end isn’t soggy and devoid of feedback. Neither does it sap energy; in fact, it remained taut when pedalling, barely bobbing at all.

Shimano’s Linkglide drivetrain can be abused without repercussions; banging through the gears while the motor delivers all of its 600W is handled like water off a duck’s back.

It’s consistent, too; each shift makes the same positive noise as the chain engages the next cassette sprocket.

Infrequent missed shifts were caused mostly by not pushing the shifter’s lever far enough to engage the next ratchet, rather than the system’s inability to cope with the rigours of full-power, wanton ebike riding.

But therein lies the problem with cable-operated gears compared to SRAM’s electronic, wireless Transmission. Transmission’s shift are patient, waiting for the cassette’s shift ramp to be in the right place before the derailleur moves, reducing the chances of missed or noisy shifts.

Of course, for the £6,000 asking price, you wouldn’t expect an electronic drivetrain to be fitted, but it certainly highlights the advantages of one.

The travel-adjusting dropper post proved to have an unreliably, sticky action; it didn’t return to full height as expected and was hard to compress. Merida assured us this issue has been rectified with a slight redesign on the production version, so purchasers of the eONE-SIXTY needn’t worry.

Motor performance and battery life

Shimano’s EP-801 is still one of the most natural-feeling motors on the market. The harder and faster you pedal, the more its assistance tapers off, mirroring the way your body works.

But this can be frustrating at times, especially if you want to race up steep, fast-paced inclines.

It doesn’t lack power and low-down grunt, however. Drop the cadence and sit at the motor’s sweet spot and it propels you forwards convincingly.

Battery life from the high-capacity 750Wh unit is unsurprisingly impressive. Using exclusively Boost, I managed to scrape more than 1,400m of ascent from a single charge. Drop down to Trail (when set to its default assistance) and its range increases to 1,600m.

Compared to Bosch’s Performance Line CX motor and 750Wh battery, the Shimano’s range isn’t quite as good, but the option to increase capacity to 1,110Wh will see the Merida ride for much longer than almost all its competition.

Merida eONE-SIXTY 875 descending performance

Despite the relatively short reach figure, its hands-to-feet relationship is well-balanced. It feels as compact as the geometry chart suggests it should.

In tight terrain, manoeuvrability is impeccable; switching, flicking and transferring lines feels intuitive and easy, and the bike’s heft is well masked by its geometry.

Its quick-to-respond character makes last-minute line choices and transferring from one side of the track to the other fun and engaging, and gives the impression of pace on otherwise dull trails.

By recommending a size that’s on the smaller side, Merida has successfully sped up the eONE-SIXTY’s handling, but when the terrain gets spicier, performance is negatively impacted.

Choppy, bump-strewn terrain destabilises the chassis more compared to bigger bikes. Front and rear-wheel seesawing – as each end hits sequential bumps – is exaggerated compared to longer bikes. It takes strength and skill to control it, and stopping the bike from getting sent off-line can be a challenge.

Pointing down particularly spicy, steep and technical trails, I found myself hanging off the back more than I wanted, compensating for the shorter front end.

While leaning back is the remedy to overloading the fork and tyre, doing so impacts control; with less weight over the bars, steering precision, traction and body position are out of whack.

This reduced my confidence in the bike’s ability to help rather than hinder me when the terrain got wild. The ultimate effect here is a reduction in speed and slightly more hesitation when hammering through the jank.

Neither ruin how much fun you can have, but if you’re focused on outright speed, the Merida-recommended size of eONE-SIXTY will be too small.

However, it’s not all bad.

As on the climbs, the RockShoz ZEB Select is seriously supple and smooth, almost performing better than its more advanced Ultimate brethren.

Likewise, the rear end is sensitive to small bumps, boosting traction over slick rocks, slimy roots and crazy cambers without feeling too soft and wallowy.

Pumping and pushing into the terrain is met with a corresponding resistance from the suspension. Travel isn’t used up needlessly and speed can be generated rather than sapped from the bike on flatter sections.

Bottom-out resistance is also good and can be fine-tuned for your specific needs with volume spacers.

Despite the fork’s smoothness, the front end felt harsh on longer descents. After swapping out parts, I narrowed this down to the bars and grips – both are an easy and relatively affordable upgrade.

The front end also felt low, especially with the stock 20mm-rise bar. A longer steerer tube – to increase stem height – would be welcome.

A higher-rise bar would be another option, and so would reducing fork sag by increasing spring pressure, but unlike the other methods this would have a negative effect on comfort and grip.

How does the Merida eONE-SIXTY 875 compare to Canyon’s Strive:ON CFR?

At £6,000, the eONE-SIXTY 875 represents good value, even compared to the £6,699 direct-to-consumer megalith Canyon Strive:ON CFR.

While the Merida isn’t fitted with top-spec dampers, the lower-tier RockShox kit performs beautifully on the trail, giving little to no reason for immediate upgrades. Equally, the Canyon’s kit isn’t top-spec in name, but you get almost identical adjustments on the Performance Elite Fox dampers compared to the Factory models.

I rode a medium Canyon. Here, the Strive:ON’s figures have been supersized – the medium’s reach is 475mm – while the Merida’s are more traditional, but the brand’s recommended fit is smaller than I’d usually run.

The Strive:ON’s Bosch motor feels more powerful. While the Simplo 750Wh battery matches the Bosch unit, the Bosch system has better range than the Merida’s Shimano; it’s a clear win here for the Canyon.

Both feel similar on the ascents, despite the Canyon’s more generous figures.

But it’s downhill where the roomier Strive:ON will blast past the Merida and then keep accelerating into the distance, no matter the terrain it’s on. At 24.19kg, it’s also much lighter and easier to ride.

I understand finances are tight for many, but if you can find the extra £699 the Canyon is a better bike. If you can’t, you won’t be disappointed with the Merida – as long as you pick the right size for your needs rather than following the brand’s recommendations.

Merida eONE-SIXTY 875 bottom line

While the eONE-SIXTY is great to ride on the ascents, thanks to its manoeuvrable feel, motor’s power and battery life, it’s crying out for a more stable feel on the descents.

Merida’s size recommendations are on the conservative side, but as long as you’re not especially tall, you should be able to size up. For example, I’d have preferred to ride the ‘long’ rather than ‘mid’-sized bike, and I think many riders will feel the same.

Despite the size, the newest eONE-SIXTY shows real potential on the trails; its suspension is grippy and supportive, the spec – while not fancy – performs exceptionally, and ignoring the size, the geometry is balanced.

If you’ve got your heart set on the eONE-SIXTY, I recommend studying its geometry carefully and treating the brand’s size suggestions with a hint of scepticism.