Aventon Current ADV Electric Mountain Bike Review: Feels Just Like the Real Thing | WIRED

$4,599 at Aventon

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Rating:7/10

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WIRED

Looks just like a real mountain bike! Bomber on downhills. Can switch from Class 1 to Class 3 levels of assistance. Excellent components for the price. Boost mode is super fun.

TIRED

Relatively long wheelbase is hard on technical trails. A handlebar-mounted display would feel safer.

Bombing down hills.

That’s where the Aventon Current ADV—the new full-suspension electric mountain bike from the popular electric bike brand—really shines. The bike’s heft gives it mass and stability. And its super-long wheelbase (on the XL-size model) distributes all that weight across a wider swath than is typical for a mountain bike.

Whatever it is, the Current ADV felt like it was on rails whenever I descended any of the dozens of trails I tested it on over the course of a week and a half.

Easily Replaceable

Photograph: Michael Venutolo-Mantovani

When it comes to riding bikes, going down is usually the easy part. Climbing tends to be a bit trickier. However, thanks to the Current ADV’s Aventon Ultro X mid-drive motor, which produces as much as 850 watts and 120 nm of torque, getting almost 300-plus pounds of bike and Mike up the hill was never really an issue. The only time I noticed that the Current ADV is nearly 60 pounds is when it came time to load it onto my car’s rack.

While Aventon is known first and foremost as an ebike brand, the company started by making fixies in 2013. That gives it some bona fides when it comes to making enjoyable rides for experienced cyclists. (In addition to the Current ADV, there's also a higher-end model, the Current EXP, with a more expensive carbon frame and better components.) Since its first venture into e-MTBs with the Ramblas in 2024, the company has continued to develop very nicely specced electric mountain bikes for the price.

The designers behind the newest iterations did a masterful job. The Current ADV looks 100 percent the part of contemporary mountain bike. With its 6061 aluminum frame, SRAM Eagle groupset, tubeless-ready Maxxis Minion tires wrapping a pair of double-walled 29-inch wheels, a 170-mm X Fusion Manic dropper post, a Rockshox Psylo Gold front suspension that boasts 150 mm of travel, and a Rockshox Deluxe Select+, it’d be easy to confuse the Current ADV for a traditional analog mountain bike.

Photograph: Michael Venutolo-Mantovani

It's worth noting that while the motor is proprietary to Aventon, the components are not. It might be difficult to get your local bike shop to look at the battery and motor, but assuming those are fine, it won't be hard to swap anything else out should you need to repair it.

Despite its design and ride feel, all of which can make you easily forget you’re riding electric, the Current ADV is a class 1 e-MTB (which can be toggled to a class 3 via the brand’s app), and one that gives hours and hours of riding on a single charge.

The 800-watt-hour battery is tucked neatly into the bike’s relatively small downtube, giving a claimed range of up to 105 miles. Of course, I didn’t get nearly that, as I was constantly switching through any of the Current ADV’s five power modes (Auto, Eco, Trail, Turbo, and a new, 30-second Boost Mode for extra torque on big hills). Still, the longest day I spent in the bike’s super-comfy Selle Royal SRX saddle was about three hours. In that time, the battery dropped only about 20 percent.

Eyes Up

The biggest flaw I found in the Current is small and seemingly simple, but it nonetheless had a major impact on my rides. That is the fact that, when clicking through power settings, the bike beeps, and all those beeps sound the same.

When I’m mountain biking (and probably when you're mountain biking, too), the last thing I want to do is to take my eyes off the trail. Having those beeps be the exact same tone meant I instinctively kept looking down at the top-tube-mounted display to see which mode I was in.

Photograph: Michael Venutolo-Mantovani

Speaking of that top-tube-mounted computer monitor, I didn’t love that I had to take my eyes completely off the trail if I wanted to check the computer while riding. Granted, it’s pretty rad that, like most contemporary bike computers, it is a touchscreen. However, looking all the way down while doing anything on a mountain bike means risking going end over end a lot of the time.

This is also a gripe that reviewer Steph Pearson had with the display on the older Ramblas. It seems like it would be a simple change to just differentiate between the beeps, telling me that I’m going up or down and when I’ve reached the top or bottom range of the bike’s power-assist options.

On the other hand, the Current ADV’s computer has tons of amazing and super-useful telemetry, including speed, power mode, a real-time compass, and even an air-time tracker that tells you how long you spent airborne (I’m stil