My wife @CyclingGirl has a (2019?) Specialized Turbo Levo. She lets me ride it when I’m out doing trailwork, or the occasional fun ride when she’s not out with me.
She absolutely loves it. After a hard work day at the end of the trail system, the ride back to the trailhead is a joy, not an at-the-end-of-your-physical-limits ordeal. It allows her to keep up with me on rides (except for some technical stuff), and now I chase her up hills, rather than wait for her to catch up at the top. It was relatively expensive, but for her totally worth every penny.
I’ve ridden it on a couple group rides, and I’m often the slowest rider off the back on my non-emtb Stumpjumper, but the Levo allowed me to hang with the group.
For trail work, it’s awesome. I carry tools, gear, and sometimes rocks and gravel in my backpack barrel, and it helps a lot to move stuff.
When I’m out solo, coming back from trail work, I have overspeeded our trail. On many of our trails not designed to be ridden at speed, you need to restrain your enthusiasm and not crash into someone around a corner.
The Levo has three levels of power assist - Econ, Trail, and Turbo. I’m hardly ever out of Econ when I ride it. Sometimes I’ll go to Trail coming up the Big Hill at Nine Mile if I’m tired after a work day, or maybe going through the rooty slog that is the Hemlock Cathedral loop. The only time I think I ever switched to Turbo was climbing up the hill to the outhouse at Irishman’s Trail.
We typically only ride for a couple of hours. The Levo only drops 3-4 battery gauge bars of 10 in that time.
I test rode a Fuel emtb, but only a parking lot ride, and the small hill in the parking lot at Dartmouth Cyclesmith. The Fuel is quieter than the Levo. The power application was different - maybe less smooth than the Levo? I think the Fuel is a lower-power emtb, more equivalent to a Levo SL, than @CyclingGirl 's full power Levo. Most people I’ve read on the Levo FB groups prefer the full power Levo to the SL.
