This is Canyon’s new Spectral:ONFly Ltd, a lightweight, low-powered e-bike, but one that shares the same geometry and suspension travel as one of MBR’s most highly-rated e-bikes – the Canyon Spectral:ON. With its TQ HPR 50Nm motor and a 360wh battery, the support levels and run times are significantly less than the Spectral:ON’s 85Nm motor and 900Wh battery, but so too is the overall weight of the Spectral:ONFly. It’s like a stripped-down prize fighter, but can it go toe-to-toe with its heavy-hitting stablemate?

It takes a keen eye to spot the TQ motor integrated into the Canyon Spectral:ONFly frame.

Need to Know

• Lightweight e-bike with composite frame, full Fox Factory suspension, 160mm front and 150mm rear travel, and MX wheels
• Compact TQ HPR 50 motor and integrated HPR V01 360wh battery makes this almost indistinguishable from the conventional Spectral trail bike
• Sits between the conventional Spectral trail bike and the full power Spectral:ON e-bike, and above the shorter travel Neuron:ONFly e-bike
• Built-in Adjustable KIS steering stabiliser is tuneable and even removable
• Mullet configured with 29in front and 27.5in rear wheel, but identical 2.4in width tyres
• Reynolds Black Label carbon wheelset adds bling
• Canyon’s own adjustable 34.9mm cable-activated dropper post
• Four bike range starts at £5,199. For full details on the Spectral:ONFly range and specs, check out our news story.

TQ’s display is subtle and unobtrusive, while the Canyon KIS steering stabiliser has now been recessed into the top tube.

Frame and motor

When developing the Spectral:ONFly, Canyon set three key design parameters. First it wanted to make an e-bike that didn’t look like an e-bike. Nothing new about that, and given that there are still riders out there that see riding assisted bikes as cheating, maybe owning an e-bike that doesn’t look like one will give less of a guilt trip.

Side by side, the Canyon Spectral:ONFly (left) has a noticeably sleeker silhouette than the full bore Spectral:ON (right).

Canyon also wanted to combine the sweet handling and agility of the conventional Spectral, but with some of the support and assistance of the highly regarded Spectral:ON (our e-bike of the year in 2023). To that end, it opted for the ultra-compact TQ HPR50 motor and a fully integrated battery. The TQ motor has an incredibly small footprint, and you really can’t tell this an e-bike without getting really up close and personal. But then you could say the same about other bikes rocking this unit, such as the Mondraker Neat, Trek Fuel EXe and new Slash+, and Scott Voltage.

Room for a water bottle or range extender, but not both at the same time.

Unlike the Spectral:ON, there’s no removable battery cover at the bottom of the down tube. Instead, the battery is fixed permanently inside the Spectral:ONFly frame. As a result, Canyon hasn’t needed to overbuild the rest of the frame to accommodate this access point, and has saved a chunk of weight. And on our office scales this bike weighs 18.35kg making it one of the lightest out there (for comparison, the Mondraker Neat weighs 18.3kg in size medium, and the Specialized S-Works Turbo Levo SL a mere 17.65kg in S4).

Although the TQ HPR50 motor looks identical to the one we’ve seen fitted to other lightweight e-bikes, it has a few Canyon modifications. It has custom-tuned assistance settings in eco, mid and high, which are 60, 100 and 180% of your effort, respectively. Accessing the three modes is via a discreet bar-mounted control or top tube display. Toggling between various settings on the top tube screen let me access range (in the three modes) distance, cadence and even power output.

Charging port for the TQ 360Wh internal battery.

Canyon is claiming you can get around 1,000m of climbing out of the 360Wh internal battery, but that is with the optional 160Wh range extender fitted. Battery life for the range extender is displayed in parallel on the bike’s screen and it does deplete first, so you can potentially remove it mid-ride to save the 1,140g (or swap out for a water bottle). You can also charge both batteries at the same time through a port on the range extender. The caveat is the TQ range extender is going to cost you an additional £490 on top of the base price. To this end, I think Canyon should have included it with the bike, because you are definitely going to need it.

The added benefit of using the compact TQ motor is you free up space above the bottom-bracket for the range extender or Canyon’s new ergo 600ml water bottle. Both clip into the frame using a Fidlock interface, but the obvious problem is you can’t use both at the same time.

SRAM’s AXS Transmission keeps the shifting accurate and smooth, even under power.

Like its conventional stablemate, the Spectral ONFly has the K.I.S (Keep It Stable) system fitted as standard. This self-centring device helps keep the front wheel on the straight and narrow when smashing through rock gardens, loose turns, and climbs. It has five spring settings and can be tuned in seconds, even on the trail. And if you really don’t like the self-centring action, you can remove it completely and save a few grams. Canyon was also keen to highlight a couple of other details on the new Spectral:ONFly frame, including storage mounts for a multi-tool, the double-sealed bearings at all the pivot points, and the threaded inserts on the shock mount. If you strip them, the frame isn’t a write-off.

With less mass, the Canyon Spectral:ONFly is not quite as stable ploughing down chunky, rock-strewn tracks.

How it rides

I’ve spent a lot of time riding the full-powered Canyon Spectral:ON CFR over the last year, a bike that comes standard with a Shimano EP801 motor boasting 85Nm and a whopping 900Wh battery. So two questions were at the forefront of my mind when I jumped on the Spectral:ONFly for the first time – how much assistance would I get and for how long?

But it makes up for that by being more agile.

The first thing I noticed was that, even on the highest assistance level, the bike doesn’t pin your ears back under acceleration. There’s no surge or boost of power. What you get instead is like a drip feed of assistance – it’s more measured and controlled. I was able to work my way up some pretty steep climbs using the mid power setting, but it did require more effort on my part. The high setting does take more of the edge off my workload, but I reckon dropping down to eco is something you’d only do as a last resort.

We needed to work harder on the climbs than we would with a full-fat motor, and eco mode is to be used only as a very last resort.

On those first few rides, I’d get around two hours of run time out of the bike with the range extender attached. To get more you’ll need to either power down to a lower mode, or have a second range extender waiting in the wings. Which begs the question, why didn’t Canyon fit the bigger 580Wh battery currently available from TQ that was launched recently on the new Trek Slash+? This has new cell technology, so only adds 800g for an extra 60% range. The fact that you can’t upgrade the battery in the Spectral:ONFly does make this decision to limit battery size even more questionable.

With less resistance, and less mass to accelerate, it was easier to pedal into jumps at speeds above the limiter.

You could argue that careful management of the battery is the price you pay for having a bike this agile. And the Spectral:ONFly does ride light, and I found it easy to throw around and pop the front up. There was more feedback when I was descending rough tracks than the full power Spectral:ON – (possibly compounded by the carbon wheels) but that doesn’t necessarily make it any quicker.

Agile and rewarding, the Canyon Spectral:ONFly left us wanting more than the battery could supply.

The best thing about the Spectral:ONFly is when you get to the speed where the motor cuts out (15.5mph), I could actually keep pedalling without it hitting an imaginary brick wall. And I found that really helps when sprinting into a jump or series of turns. Having to work a little bit harder does explain a few of the spec choices, notably the lighter 36 Fox fork, thinner rims, 170mm crank arms and the narrower 2.4inch tyres. And because it’s necessary to use all the gears regularly, the Spectral:ONFly Ltd does come with a full SRAM XX electric drivetrain. I made good use of it – changing gear a lot more often compared to my Spectral:ON. I also tended to keep a higher cadence on this bike, just because the TQ motor doesn’t surge or whirr if you suddenly increase the revs.