Forme’s Peak Trail 1 ELS is a well considered trekking/city bike with a good motor system and dependable spec. The fork isn’t great, and in terms of value it stacks up a bit expensive compared to some of its direct competitors. Overall it’s a decent bike but not one that stands above its peers.

“Exploring the stunning countryside or riding the distance to a quintessential little café can become a reality, regardless of your fitness level”, says Forme of the Peak Trail. “Suitable for multi-purpose adventures with the stability of a mountain bike and the larger wheel/narrower tyre benefits of a road bike. A Bosch drive system and powerful battery is built into a frame capable of taking mud guards to keep you dry and pannier racks to help with luggage on longer adventures.”

Available in either a low-step (the bike tested) or a diamond frame, the Peak Trail 1 is a pretty standard trekking hybrid. It has a fairly upright position, a Bosch Performance Line motor with a 400Wh downtube-mounted battery, a front suspension fork and 700c road wheels with tough Schwalbe Marathon Mondial tyres that can cope with a wider range of surfaces. The bike is available in two sizes in both frame designs, with the diamond-framed bikes sizing up a bit larger.

From the off the Peak Trail feels like a well-designed bike and it’s easy to ride. The upright position is great for giving you a good view of your surroundings; you can use the adjustable stem to fine-tune it. The position means most of your weight is on your rear rather than your hands. The saddle does a good job of soaking up lumps and bumps and it’s comfy enough for longer rides. It’s a sensible shape: not too wide, but still well padded.

Doing the bump-taming at the front is a Suntour NVX, and that’s less impressive. There’s a lot of fore-aft flex in the fork which is very noticeable under braking, and the suspension is not well damped at all, topping out with a clunk over speed bumps and jumping the front of the bike into the air. It has a lock out on the fork leg, which I was glad of; mostly I kept it locked. It’s not like it really adds much, as most of your weight is over the back wheel.

Gearing is courtesy of a 9-speed Shimano Deore mountain bike transmission, which uses a RapidFire trigger shifter for gear changes. It’s a simple and hugely effective system that was pretty much faultless, performance-wise. The 11-34 tooth cassette doesn’t give the widest range of gears out there but that won’t be a problem, because the 63Nm Performance Line motor has tons of power, more than you’re likely to need. On my benchmark hill (1.5km at 5%, with a 12% section) it was entirely untroubled, I didn’t even need to go up into the top Turbo mode, even in Sport mode (the third of four) it was almost comically easy. That prompted me to seek out harder challenges, and the Peak Trail is barely troubled until the gradient is in the late teens.

If you’re wandering about in a leisurely fashion in Tour or Eco mode, the 400Wh battery will last for a good stint. Forme claim a 30-75 mile range for the bike; you’d have to be very careful indeed (and live somewhere flat) to get near that top number, but in general use the bike was quite happy doing 40 miles on one charge on rolling terrain, mostly in Tour mode which is kind of the default setting on a Bosch system. The centrally-mounted Intuvia display is my favourite of the Bosch units, giving plenty of easy-to-read information and simple mode changes from the bar-mounted remote. I haven’t tried the new Kiox though: we probably won’t be seeing it on production bikes until 2019.

If you’re heading for anything other than tarmac then you’ll want a bit of help from your tyres, and the Schwalbe Marathon Mondial tyres used on the Peak Trail are excellent. The 40mm chamber gives a bit of cushioning and allows you to run the tyres at a slightly lower pressure for extra comfort, and Schwalbe’s Double Defense puncture protection is one I’ve always found to be very effective. The tyres are good on the road too: they’re not the fastest rolling rubber out there but they don’t have the leaden fee of some multi-surface tyres. There’s plenty of grip from the compound too, which means it’s easy to haul the bike to a stop with the excellent Shimano hydraulic disc brakes.

So the bike rides very well and the spec spec, so far as it goes, is fine, fork notwithstanding. The ‘trekking’ build is one that I have to confess I don’t fully understand. This isn’t a bike designed for technical trail use: the roughest terrain it’s likely to see is probably an unsurfaced, well-graded trail similar to the one that it’s named after, the High Peak Trail in Derbyshire. There’s nothing in that sort of riding that poses a problem with mudguards, so why wouldn’t you fit them? And if you’re heading for terrain that’s challenging enough that mudguards would be an issue, you’d be much better off spending your money on a proper e-MTB that’s designed to cope with some abuse. For this kind of money you could get something like a Diamondback Corvus 1.0 that’s fully trail capable. Forme are a long way from being the only company to offer a build like this, and I see plenty of people riding them, but I can’t help thinking you’d be better served either going for a full city build, or getting a proper trail bike. If you want to go full spec here, then there’s all the fitting points you need for mudguards and rear rack.

Partly it’s a price thing: if you’re not fitting racks and mudguards and plumbing in lights then the bike as a whole can be cheaper at the point of sale. In terms of value, though, you wouldn’t say that the Forme is right at the top of the pile. Comparing it to others in the market, the Cube Cross Hybrid Pro 400 is pretty much identical in terms of spec, except it has the more powerful CX motor and a better fork, and it’s very similar in geometry terms too, but comes in nearly £300 cheaper than the Forme. As such you’d probably be pushing your bike shop for a bit of a discount here.

Overall the Forme is a likeable bike with a sensible spec, but it doesn’t really do anything to stand out from the crowd. The fork is underwhelming, as they often are, but other than that the bike performs very well. The ‘trekking’ spec is one I always find a touch confusing, but it might suit your riding.

https://formebikes.co.uk/