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The Merida eOne-Eighty is a full-fat, full-weight e-MTB with 180mm travel and an 800Wh battery. Its sole purpose is to be a hard-charging monster truck of a bike that can lap bike parks all day. Whilst the large battery allows for some big days and the weight gives a super stable ride, it also manages to disguise the heft with some clever geometry and its mullet wheel set-up. With a good spec and some well-tuned suspension, this bike remains unflustered in all but the tightest of tech.

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Merdia eOne-Eighty 900 – Technical Details

The eOne-Eighty is built around the Bosch Performance Line CX gen 5 motor, which puts out 85Nm of torque and is accompanied by a 600 or 800Wh battery with the option for an additional 250Wh ranger extender. The system is controlled using Bosch’s Purion display which gives a whole host of stats for your ride including battery percentage, assistance level and predicted range.

Merida E180_4.jpg, by Ty Rutherford

The battery is fully removable thanks to a cover down the length of the downtube. A Fidlock catch secures the cover in place, and you’ll need to use the provided key to release the battery from the frame.

Merida E180_6.jpg, by Ty Rutherford

The alloy frame delivers 180mm rear travel through the use of a traditional linkage-driven single pivot layout. Although, unlike the smaller e160SL sibling, it foregoes the use of flex-stays in favour of a more usual chain stay pivot. The bike is mullet (27.5” rear wheel with a 29in wheel at the front) only with a suspension platform specifically designed around the Rockshox Vivid Air shock. These kinematics have been designed to give a good pedalling platform around sag whilst remaining active deeper into the travel. Progression varies across frame sizes, with the smallest frame seeing less progression to allow lighter riders to reach full travel and vice versa for the X-long frame.

Love or hate it, Merida has used headset cable routing on the eOne-Eighty. Along with the internal frame routing, it does give a very clean look, and Merida has worked to better seal the headset, reducing maintenance in that fiddly area.

Merida E180_7.jpg, by Ty Rutherford

Four bolts at the bottom of the downtube keep the battery rail secure and double up as a bottle cage mount, two more bolts further up the downtube allow for a tool/accessory mount. There is plenty of rubber protection around the chain stay to keep chain slap noise to a minimum, and a handy little mud guard is tucked in front of the rear wheel to keep the swing arm pivot protected.

The eOne-Eighty is available in five sizes (XS-XL) and four colours (green, red, sand and black)

When it comes to geometry, the eOne-Eighty is right up to date with numbers that’ll provide a stable ride with some interesting decisions, which should help with the extra weight. Reach numbers start at 415mm and grow around 25mm per size, with the long sitting at 485mm, and that's right where I’d like it to be. A 64.5-degree head angle is a little steep for a 180mm bike designed to charge, I suspect this has been done to counteract the weight and maintain some manoeuvrability. The same can be said with the short 435mm chain stays and relatively generous stack height. I expect this will help when getting the front wheel off the ground.

Merida E180_1.jpg, by Ty Rutherford

A seat angle of 78.5 degrees is perhaps a little on the steep side, particularly for an e-bike where efficiency can be sacrificed in the name of comfort. On the plus side, a straight seat tube is great to see with plenty of room for a long dropper, and on that note, the bike is specified with an adjustable length dropper up to 230mm.

Merdia eOne-Eighty 900 – Componentry

The eOne-Eighty comes in four specifications: the 400, 500, 700 and 900, with prices starting at £4,900 and going up to £7,500 for the 900 model, which just so happens to be the one we've got on test.

For that money, the eOne-Eighty 900 comes with a RockShox Zeb Ultimate delivering the 180mm of travel up front while a RockShox Vivid Ultimate shock sorts out the rear 180mm. DT Swiss supplied the wheels with the HF 1700, and they're wrapped with a Maxxis Assegai up front,  with an EXO+ casing and MaxxGrip rubber, and that's paired with a Maxxis Minion DHR II at the rear with a Double Down Casing and MaxxGrip rubber.

Shimano handles the shifting with an XT Linkglide setup. A pair of Shimano XT brakes with a 220mm rotor up front and a 203mm rotor at the rear slow the bike.

As a handy little extra, a Merida multitool is included, mounted to the seat rails, and there is a 6mm hex key nestled into the rear axle. 

Merdia eOne-Eighty – Performance

Suspension set-up is always a bit of a faff, and although Merida does provide generic guidance on the website for setting sag, there are no specific settings for the eOne-Eighty. The Rockshox ZEB fork has a handy table on the fork leg, which gave me 90psi as a starter, but the rear shock took some more guesswork work eventually settling at 220psi for just shy of 30% sag. The rebound was set fast (wound all the way out) to my preference, and after a couple of car park bounces, I got the front and rear rebound feeling balanced.

Merida E180_2.jpg, by Ty Rutherford

The wheels come tubeless ready, but during the test, they had tubes fitted. With the relatively thin EXO+ casing on the front and Double Down rear casing, along with the extra e-bike weight, I opted to run slightly more pressure than usual, settling on 26psi in the rear and 24psi in the front.

The e-Bike Flow app is worth downloading to make changes to the setup of the motor, allowing you to adjust the different assistance modes.

I’ve been lucky enough to get some solid hours on the top-spec eOne-Eighty in a variety of situations, from local trails, Welsh off-piste and bike park jaunts. The bike has proven to be more versatile than I expected and less of an all-out brute than the 27kg suggests.

Merida E180_11.jpg, by Ty Rutherford

On the steepest descents, the extra weight is noticeable. Trying to stop or hold a sneaky off-cambered high-line is, of course, harder, but compared to other full-fat e-bikes, I don’t think the extra couple of kilos made too much difference. I did dial in some low-speed compression on the fork to keep the front end propped up a little more, but the generous stack height certainly helps give a strong position for riding steep descents.

When the bike is up to speed, it tracks the ground like nothing else I’ve ridden. Merida worked closely with Rockshox to tune the rear end to complement the Vivid Air shock, and you can really tell. The rear end has a very balanced ride, as with many e-bikes, the unsprung to sprung weight ratio allows the wheels to be active without unsettling the bike so much, resulting in a very stable ride. 

Merida E180_10.jpg, by Ty Rutherford

The shock gives plenty of support in the mid-stroke while remaining dynamic and able to chew through some chunky terrain, utilising all 180mm of travel. The temptation to plough through some nasty terrain does require you to pay close attention to tyre pressures and the thickness of the tyres' casings. If you ride a lot of pointy rock and square edges, I would consider running a DH casing on the rear and possibly a tyre insert as well to protect the rear rim from hitting the floor – all that weight does give the rear wheel a harder time.

The seat post requires a special mention, with adjustable travel between 30-230mm, kudos to Merida on fitting a seat post with an generous amount of drop.

The shock tune does a great job in masking the weight of the bike; you’re still going to need to work to get this bike off the floor for a sneaky mid-trail gap, but the shock gives up plenty of pop to help with this. Moving the bike around on slower technical terrain does require a lot of input, but the well-sorted geometry and supportive suspension really help keep things lively.

Merida E180_9.jpg, by Ty Rutherford

This support also helps fire the bike out of corners, much to my surprise. Thanks to the short chain stays and mullet set up, the eOne-Eighty tips into corners and changes direction surprisingly easily. Whilst I’m not usually an advocate of such short chain stays on analogue bikes, in this application with so much weight up front, they really do make sense, especially helping to get the front wheel in the air.

On the steepest climbs, those short chain stays can become a problem where the front starts to lift, but this is compensated somewhat by a steep seat angle, which keeps the rider’s weight forward. In general though, climbing on the eOne-Eighty is a fuss free affair, as there’s plenty of power from the Bosch CX motor and that well tuned rear end stays active enough to provide plenty of traction.

The 800Wh battery is a beast, it provides plenty of juice to get some really big rides. This bike was designed for lapping bike parks, and a day at Bike Park Wales saw 1800+ vertical metres and 40km from one charge, predominantly using Tour+ mode for the climbing.

Merida E180_12.jpg, by Ty Rutherford

With no frame protection, I found the paint to chip quite easily, so I recommend fitting a frame wrap or at least protection around the danger zones. On the test bike, the plastic motor guard fell foul to a rock strike however, a redesigned guard from Merida has since held up well, and this’ll come standard on the bikes.

Merdia eOne-Eighty – Verdict

The top spec 900 bike on test retails at £7,500, which is pretty sensible money for the spec and performance on offer. Of course, there are other options for alloy-framed, mixed-wheeled full-power e-bikes from the likes of Whyte and Marin.

Marin’s Alpine Trail E2 Bosch is 20mm shorter in the rear travel department at 160mm however it shares many similarities with the Merida. Using the Bosch CX motor with a slightly smaller 750Wh battery, it comes with good level Fox suspension and is great value at £6,400.

Whyte’s E180 Works comes in at £9000 using the Bosch CX motor and a slightly smaller 750Wh battery. While its intentions are similar to the Merida, the Whyte is more top-of-the-line with SRAM XX T-type wireless drivetrain and SRAM Code brakes, but all this is £1500 more expensive than the Merida.  

As you’d expect from a 27kg e-MTB, the Merida eOne-Eighty is a monster truck of a bike that handles rough trails at speed with ease. It’s a sure-footed and stable ride that begs not to be held back. To my surprise, it is more than just a plough, with some clever geometry decisions and the mullet wheel set-up, cornering and direction changes are more lively than you’d expect, making for a dynamic ride. There are, of course, situations where the weight hinders, but overall, the eOne-Eighty does exactly what it was designed to do, rip lap after lap on some rowdy trails.

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