First Look: Cube AMS Hybrid One44
Cube has not shortage of bike models in their lineup, electric or otherwise, with offerings for nearly every travel number and discipline. Add to that the newest model, the AMS Hybrid ONE44, that fits squarely into the middle of their eMTB lineup. The ONE44 is optimized to keep weight low, while still offering fairly high power.
There are four distinct build kits, with two built as light as possible, and two with more serious trail intentions. All sport unique builds and impressively low build weights for their given components.
AMS ONE44 Details
• Carbon frame
• 29" wheels
• 140mm travel, 140mm fork
• 65.4° head angle
• 76.5° seat angle
• Battery: 400Wh, 250Wh boost pack available
• Power: up to 55Nm
• Price: €5999 - €8999
• cube.eu
• Carbon frame
• 29" wheels
• 140mm travel, 140mm fork
• 65.4° head angle
• 76.5° seat angle
• Battery: 400Wh, 250Wh boost pack available
• Power: up to 55Nm
• Price: €5999 - €8999
• cube.eu
Clean carbon finish.
Baby Bosch.
Geometry
The ONE44 is a lightweight trail eMTB, and the geometry numbers reinforce that classification. Things are modern enough, but the head angle is fairly conservative relative to other options out there. The Acros headset has a built-in angle adjustment, allowing you to swap between 66° and 65.4°. Every size in the range gets 450mm chainstays, meaning the rear center is longer than the reach for both the Small and Medium bikes. Things should be a bit more balanced for the larger two sizes, where reach numbers are still in line with typical sizing. The bottom bracket is rather low on the bikes, which should make for solid cornering - helped in flatter terrain by that steep head angle.
Unnecessary evil - the through-headset routing is clean, but irritating to live with.
The graphics are clean though, in classic Cube fashion.
Frame Features
The ONE44 frame is built around Bosch's SX motor system, which has slightly different packaging and performance to their more full-power alternatives. The weight seems like the core tenet of this bike, as dictated by the ~2100g carbon frame. Part of that low overall frame weight comes down to the minimalistic battery integration, which relies on a fixed-position battery that cannot be removed.
Other details include the head tube angle adjustment that comes alongside the otherwise unfortunate Acros cable-gulping headset, which offers a little more than half agree of tweaking to the end user.
The core statistics are the 400Wh battery and 55Nm motor, which both feature on every build in the lineup.
3-pack of mounts for bottle adjustment or a battery boost pack.
Simple arrangement.
Suspension Design
Cube declined to provide any kinematic information on the ONE44, so there's little to do here but speculate. The bike does have a shock layout shared with the ONE55 all-mountain eMTB, with a parallel mount to the top tube as opposed to the vertical orientation most of Cube's bike use.
The only kinematic reference made is in their Efficient Trail Control brief, which describes "A low leverage ratio and linear compression rate are the technical way of saying that these bikes are very sensitive to trail obstacles, whilst remaining insensitive to pedal-induced bob and giving a full range of travel."
Build Kits
There are four build kits in the ONE44 lienup, with an even split between lightweight-focused and more capable builds. The former two (SLX and SLT) sport lighter components for a given category, and are meant to reduce overall weight and keep the bike zippy. The latter two (TM and SUPER TM) are meant to increase the descending capability of the bikes, with less. attention paid to build weight.
All four come in at fairly reasonable prices, relative to the lightweight eMTB market as a whole.
ONE44 SLX // €5999 17.3kg | 38.1lbs
ONE44 TM // €6499 18.4kg | 40.6lbs
ONE44 SLT // €7999 16.2kg | 35.7lbs
ONE44 SUPER TM // €8999 17.7kg | 39.0lbs
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I don't much care for it either, but I also don't think that anyone is making bikes for this demographic you've described. Not that it doesn't exist, but I can't imagine it's informing development decisions.
To each their own in terms of aesthetics and servicing simplicity but I don't see it being such a problem compared to the dropbar market where you do have to disconnect the hoses every time you want to service the headset.
Hoses routed thru the stem a la Focus should be killed with fire immediately
I don't find them fantastic at all, I actually couldn't care less TBO... I was a mechanic in a bike shop a decade ago and I have fished my fair share of cables thru tiny downtube and chainstay ports, some of them required the removal of the then trendy PF30BB, BB865,etc. In early to mid 2010's lots of bike still had a front derailleur and a remote lock-out for the shock, while continuis cable guiding was completely non-existent. You can imagine the hours of fun for just one bike.
In comparison passing a SRAM brake without its clamp thru a 40mm bearing for the one time you will service your headset doesn't seems so atrocious... If you hate it, buy something else, this is just my personnal view
Some really good options out there. I love my regular MTB's but its gonna be hard to make time for them when the KSL is so fun.
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