2023 Orbea Wild FS Review

Orbea have made a massive impact with their lightweight Rise Electric Mountain Bike, this bike is famed for its lightweight, natural feeling approach to being a full suspension electric mountain bike. The Wild takes the opposite approach, this is a big hitting electric mountain bike, with big suspension and a big power pack to match. In this post, we look at the 2023 Orbea Wild in greater detail.

Orbea Wild Battery & Motor

The motor & battery on the Orbea Wild is the beating heart of the bike. Predictably, and with good reason - this motor uses the Bosch Performance CX motor. This motor is well proven, and provides an excellent range of 750Wh. There’s a battery charger indicator on the top tube, and there’s also a mode selector on the top tube. There’s also a small remote on the handlebar for those looking for the quickest changes, whilst on the move.

The top spec of the Orbea Wild is fitted with the race Bosch motor. The race motor is 150g lighter than the standard model - and it also has an overun feature, which keeps the motor in play for a short time after you have stopped pedalling. This overboost feature is designed to get you over obstacles when you have a break from pedalling, it’s not as intrusive as it sounds - and works really well on the trails.

Orbea Wild Frame

The biggest change to the frame is the removal of the door in the tube which gave access to the battery. To now remove the battery, the motor needs to be removed first, which is relatively easily done with a set of Allen keys. Although this requires more work, it’s been done for good reason - with a massive increase in frame stiffness. There's also weight saving benefits, shaving 900g of weight off, compared to the older bike. This brings the weight of the bike under 21kg (on the carbon versions of the bike) meaning gates & obstacles can be dealt with.

As with many other modern bikes, the cables now run through the headset of the bike - but this has been carefully done, meaning that there is no extra work to change cables, stems or handlebars. On the subject of the headset of this bike, the headset and stem acts as a limiter when steering, meaning that the forks and controls cannot hit the frame in the event of a crash.

Orbea Wild Suspension

The suspension remains pretty much unchanged compared to the previous models of this bike, which is no bad thing. All of the Wild Models are equipped with an Air Shock, but Orbea do claim that all models can be fitted with a coil shock, depending on riding requirements and preferences.

Orbea Wild Specification

The specification on the Wild varies depending on your budget and model choice. You can expect to see components and suspenison from Bosch, Shimano and SRAM across the range - so reliable, high performance components are guaranteed.

Orbea Wild Wheels

The Wild range runs on 29 inch wheels only.

Orbea Wild Conclusion

We have had a chance now to put a few Orbea Wild models through their paces, and none of them have disappointed. These bikes sound well equipped on paper, and this is obvious when you take them out on the trails. They handle all trails well, climb well - and as with most electric mountain bikes, they allow you to push on for longer distances and carry greater speed than before.