The new Decoy SN is YT’s first foray into the diet e-bike segment. It’s also only the brand’s second e-bike, because although YT is extremely trendy when it comes to style, image, and marketing, it also takes a contrastingly slow and steady approach to product development. Preferring to place safe bets, rather than jumping on the latest trends just to be hot. It wants to elongate product cycles and spice up its offerings with cool special editions, fitted with left-field components, dressed in sharp paint jobs. Case in point; the full-fat YT Decoy with Shimano motor has remained essentially unchanged for five years. So bringing this Decoy SN (Supernatural) to market has been a long and considered process rather than a knee jerk reaction.

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The YT Decoy SN is a handsome machine, with this gold/blue paint job looking seriously lustrous.

YT Decoy SN need to know

• Fazua-equipped enduro bike
• 160mm travel rear paired with 170mm travel fork
• Carbon frame, four sizes, and an all-up weight from 20.4kg (Core 2)
• Fazua Ride 60 system gets 60Nm torque, as much as 450W peak power, and a 430Wh internal battery
• MX wheels on all models
• Flip chip gives regular and low geo settings

The recipe YT has settled on for the new Decoy SN is a burly frame, with ample travel, MX wheels and a Fazua Ride 60 motor – a unit that’s well endowed with power and torque, and some of the best range on the market. Sounds like a decent package, right? So let’s find out whether those ingredients come together to create a successful dish, and one worthy of inclusion in our guide to the best lightweight electric mountain bikes. For a full run down of the YT Decoy SN range, check out our news story here.

– Read my head-to-head test against the Mondraker Dune RR e-enduro bike here –

Almost hidden from view is the Fazua Ride 60 motor – a neat package.

Motor and battery

Choosing the right motor is one of the most crucial decisions to make during the development process of any new e-bike, and it’s one that’s arguably getting harder, not easier. Having just come back from Eurobike, new entries to the motor market from brands like automotive giant ZF, and drone manufacturer DJI, are putting the heat on established players such as Bosch, Shimano, TQ, and Fazua.

Speaking of which, YT has gone for the Fazua Ride 60 system for its new Decoy SN for several reasons. While not the most powerful, or the lightest, or the system with the biggest battery capacity, Fazua scores well in all those areas, to make a strong all-round package. Notably, in our range tests, it goes further than any other system – clocking up 1,200m climbing to the Bosch SX’s 860m.

The LED top tube display is a bit basic, but it does just enough.

It has enough torque to winch up a steep gradient, but takes up little real estate on the bike. It’s also relatively quiet in operation – certainly a lot more muted than the Bosch SX on the Mondraker Dune RR. And there’s no rattle on the descents.

My main concern with Fazua is reliability, as we’ve had a few test bikes where the motor has failed here at MBR, and from talking to dealers, the Ride 60 seems to suffer more issues than other systems. But I also wonder if YT is playing the long game. Fazua is mostly owned by Porsche. Porsche has committed to bring an e-bike motor to market in the next few years. And to be partnered with a brand like Porsche, long term, could be a shrewd move.

There’s space within the Decoy SN front triangle for a water bottle – or a range extender when/if Fazua releases one.

Frame and geometry

There are obvious shades of the full power Decoy in the new Decoy SN, but it also enjoys a more modern silhouette thanks to the steeper seat angle, lower top tube, and additional space that’s been massaged out of the front triangle. Specifically this has been helped by the smaller physical dimensions of the motor and battery, so even though the suspension layout is broadly unchanged, the Decoy SN design generates enough real estate to run a full size bottle – or potentially a range extender if Fazua ever gets round to making one – rather than the Decoy’s tiddly 475ml vessel.

Thanks to Rogate Bike Park – part of the B1KE network – for letting us use the trails for our photoshoot.

As you’d expect, YT has chosen carbon for the Decoy SN frame, specifically its Ultra Modulus weave, with the Fazua’s 430Wh internal battery fully sheathed to save additional weight along with sufficient stiffness. To remove it, you’ll have to take the motor out, so it’s not really an option to slam in another battery for further laps, or take the power pack into the house separately for charging. YT is certainly not alone in this camp, but with Fazua still lacking a range extender (and none on the immediate horizon) battery management will be an important skill set with the Decoy SN. Another option would have been to move the drive unit to the seat tube, and create enough room to slide out the battery – as Haibike has done on the Lyke – but this would have impeded dropper post insertion too much.

A 200mm drop post is standard on the Large YT Decoy SN, and it will insert all the way into the frame.

One development that could ease the worry about heading home for an early bath is the newly announced Fazua 480Wh battery. This uses high capacity cells to give an extra 10% range without adding extra weight or bulk. Slated to appear in 2025, it’s my hunch that YT will either offer it as a cost upgrade, or make a running change to the bike when they become available. YT’s official response when I asked them about it was: “we’re constantly developing and using the latest technologies available to us by our partners, as-long as it fits our vision for the product”.

Whoop! Proper internal cable routing on the YT Decoy SN, using ports rather than through the headset.

While the full-fat Decoy – shall we call it Unnatural? – with the Shimano motor and 720Wh battery, is restricted to four frame sizes, the new Decoy SN expands the range to five options. Seeing as the new small gets a similar reach to the old Decoy’s Medium, and the new XL is 20mm longer than the old XXL, it’s actually as much a comprehensive sizing realignment for YT as it is an enlargement of frame options.

Further modernisation of the geometry includes a steeper seat angle (around 78.4º effective), a slacker head angle (63.9º), and slashed seat tube lengths (30-35mm shorter). YT has also raised the stack a touch, and kept chainstays short and constant across the board at 442mm.

With a BB height of 333mm (with our control tyres) in the high position, the low setting is strictly bike park-only.

Limited adjustments to the geo are possible through a flip chip in the shock link. These are labelled regular and low, where the high position is designed to be as useful and usable as the low position. Indeed, the regular position is neither steep (at 64.2º) nor high. YT claims 344mm, but with my 2.5in Maxxis Assegai and 2.4in Minion DHR II tyres fitted, it measured at a heel-scraping 333mm. Fortunately the 160mm cranks kept excessive pedal strikes at bay.

YT is not a brand that goes in for superfluous bells and whistles, and the Decoy SN is no exception. Where the brand has added functionality to the frame includes a tool mount/strap from Crankbrothers bolted directly beneath the top tube, a bolt-on skid plate to shield the motor, and integrated rubber frame protection. Details matter, and YT has worked hard to design a single skid plate that works on all five frame sizes, aligning with multiple down tube angles, which reduces costs, and makes sourcing replacements simpler.

My test bike’s Fox DHX shock suffered from a wild top out.

Suspension

The Decoy SN uses a similar four-bar linkage configuration to the original Decoy, albeit with tweaked kinematics. This latest V4L design focusses on increasing the anti-squat over the Decoy full-fat – which is something common on on mid-power e-bikes – along with slightly less progression. That said, 29.5% is still pretty progressive.

I ran the compression adjusters on the latest Grip X2 damper all the way open.

This flagship Core 4 model gets a Fox DHX2 coil shock with four-way damping adjustment, allied to a Fox 38 Float Factory fork fitted with the latest Grip X2 damper and 170mm travel. It’s the only coil-sprung model in the range, and gets the lightweight SLS spring, and different spring rates for each frame size. Like any coil shock, setting sag is more difficult – both to adjust and measure – and it’s impossible to see how much travel you’re using during a run. At least the stock spring was spot-on for my rider weight (78kg), delivering 19.5mm sag with a quick tweak of the preload.

YT offers a useful set-up tool to help speed up the initial process. Just scan the QR code in the manual, select your bike, input your weight, and the app spits out all the necessary info. Its recommendations were not a million miles away for the shock, but I ran a lot less damping on the fork than YT suggested. The reasons for which I’ll get to in a moment.

Not everyone is a fan of those gold Helix cranks, but I like ’em.

Components

Short cranks are becoming a serious trend on e-bikes, but YT hasn’t pushed the boundaries to their limits on the Decoy SN. While Whyte has gone as short as 155mm on its E-Lyte, YT’s choice of gold E*thirteen Helix 160mm arms strike a more even balance between cadence, clearance, and leverage.

The SRAM GX Eagle AXS Transmission provides slick, robust shifting with the added advantage of a better protected battery than the more expensive SRAM mechs.

SRAM’s Maven brakes were strong and dependable in every situation.

One of my component highlights are the SRAM Maven silver brakes. Unflinchingly solid, no matter how hard I squeezed the lever, the power was never less than immediate and unrelenting. Yet it is always easy to control that power, and even on longer descents with lots of braking, the high breakaway force at the lever didn’t cause premature finger fatigue.

The lofty 40mm rise bar works perfectly with the low BB and shorter reach, but I would have preferred a bit more comfort from the grips.

On the other hand, the firm, narrow ODI Elite Motion grips and Renthal Fatbar 35 handlebar transmitted significant noise and vibration to my palms. If I was buying this bike, the only things that would go from the standard spec would be the bar and grips.

The YT Decoy SN encouraged me to play around wherever I rode it.

Performance

YT’s original Decoy was always a ridiculously dynamic e-bike, despite its 23kg weight. Subtract nearly 3kg from that figure, and add a motor with reduced friction, and I hoped that the Decoy SN would be a full-bore riot.

To find out, I tested the Decoy SN in the conjoined Austrian resorts of Saalbach, Hinterglemm, and Leogang, as well as against the similar Mondraker Dune RR in the Forest of Dean, at BikePark Wales, and on local trails in the Surrey Hills.

The Fazua motor doesn’t have the guts for really steep, punchy ramps, but will happily cruise up a fireroad.

Climbing

It was immediately clear that the updated geometry of the Decoy SN had reaped dividends when climbing, especially considering it doesn’t have the ultimate power and torque of the full-fat Decoy to fall back on. I had to keep the cranks spinning to keep the power flowing from the Fazua motor, so the steeper seat tube angle was invaluable for putting me in a more efficient position over the BB.

YT Decoy SN

YT has done a decent job of balancing crank length with BB height, so pedal clearance was acceptable on the steepest, chunkiest sections I was faced with. Clearly there’s less power on tap with the Fazua motor than the Bosch SX however. And I hit maximum support at a lower cadence, so there was little incentive to pedal harder. Boost mode (or Nitro as YT likes to call it) narrows the gap on mellow climbs, but it only lasts for 12 seconds or so.

The MX wheels and low BB make the Decoy SN a delight in the turns.

Descending

In Austria, the Decoy SN felt capable and composed, as well as highly agile given the extra few pounds it’s packing over the Mondraker. But it felt slightly wooden, like the suspension wasn’t quite firing on all cylinders.

Up front, the Fox 38 Float Factory fork, with the new Grip X damper, felt overdamped and underwhelming. I kept winding off the damping until there was nothing left to wind off, and yet it still felt a bit stodgy, transmitting more harshness to my hands than I would have liked, or expected.

It’s hard not to act like a small child on the Decoy SN.

At the back, the Fox DHX2 Factory shock felt much less restricted, but had an extremely fast rebound in the last 10% of travel that ended with a very slight knock that felt almost like a loose shock bolt. Bunny-hop the bike, or pull for a gap, and the shock would have control for most of the extension, then fire through the last few mil of travel into the top-out.

The Decoy’s rock-solid frame doesn’t flinch on landing.

Back in the UK, I swapped the shock, and YT fitted the correct 40mm rise bars and the whole bike came alive. Now I could run the shock faster because the top-out clunk was less obvious, which helped perk up the rear suspension, while the higher rise bars took some weight off the fork. After about ten hours of heavy-duty riding, the fork also seemed to finally bed-in. I wouldn’t call it plush, but it was defintely less jarring than it had been, and that helped improve the suspension balance front to rear.

As an enduro bike or a bike park plaything, the Decoy SN is seriously addictive.

Once it was dialled in, the Decoy SN proved to be one of the most exciting e-bikes I’ve had the pleasure of riding. For a (insert air quotes) diet e-bike, it’s not that light on the scales. But every jump I landed, and every berm I squared off demonstrated the impact of this extra heft. YT has forged a seriously stout chassis that didn’t flinch, no matter how hard I sent it. And that helped give me the confidence to hold the throttle wide-open whatever was coming at me down the trail.

The Fazua’s economical power delivery means plenty of laps are on tap.

There’s just so much room to move around on the Decoy SN, I had no trouble stretching and contorting my body into all sorts of positions in search of balance and grip. Getting out of them was more difficult, but that’s an age thing. In fact I didn’t even run the 190mm dropper post fully slammed, because I liked being able to use the saddle as a reference point with my thighs when descending. If riding the Mondraker was like sitting on a bar stool, the YT was like eating dinner on a tatami mat.

With a bit more comfort from the suspension, the Decoy SN would be even better

That zen-like state carries over to the silent ride. There’s no rattle from the motor, no clatter from the drivetrain, and no flutter from the cables inside the frame. A quiet bike is a fast bike, and the Decoy SN definitely reinforces that cliche.

Despite ending up above the 20kg unofficial cut-off for ‘lightweight e-bikes’, the Decoy SN is remarkably agile. I found it inspired creative riding, encouraging me to play with the trail, popping gaps, drifting turns, and manualling rollers. I’m no Dylan Stark, but even given my limited skills, the Decoy SN felt like putty in my hands.