Specialized Turbo Levo Gen 4 Review: Does Super Meet Natural?

The Gen 3 Levo was a crowd favorite, won many ‘best eMTB’ awards, and is a bike that has held its own against new competition for the last 4 years. You can also still buy the Gen 3 levo at a great price. In fact, we did a recent video knowing the Generation 4 Levo was coming out because we still think the Gen 3 is a fantastic option for those looking for a deal.

If you have the extra $$, then our first impression is that the Gen 4 Levo from Specialized is worth it.

And hey, Specialized did us all a favor and cut the price of their S-works model to JUST $13,499. Given we were worried about a $15K+ price tag for their top-of-the-line spec, we’ll take that as a positive sign that we hope continues throughout the industry.

Specialized also dropped the price of the Comp version to $7,999. Yes, still a lot of money, but about $1,000 less than the Gen 3 Comp model.

In all, Specialized has the following four models:

Note: The pricing above is as of launch date. We have not heard anything official from Specialized on what will happen in the future if tariffs with supplier countries continue to increase.

We think the highlight of the new Levo is the motor. The previous Specialized 2.2 motor had some of the best results in our hill tests and is still one of the most responsive, natural riding motors we’ve ridden. The only downside we found with the 2.2 motor is that it tended to get louder over time. The motor was good enough that even 4 years in it still competed against the newer options from Bosch and Shimano.

However, it’s pretty clear that Specialized doesn’t want to lose to DJI when it comes to torque and power. They increased the torque to 101Nm on the Comp, Expert, and Pro models and unlocked the motor further for the S-works edition that comes with a whopping 111Nm of torque.

Again, we haven’t been able to put the bike through our hill tests yet, but I’m going to go out on a pretty sturdy limb and state that I expect it to perform incredibly well.

Of course, torque isn’t everything. Specialized also increased the watt output from 565W all the way to 720 watts. While this might not be the 1000 watts you get from DJI, we like this move because it doesn’t push the bike past the 750 watt limits allowed on single track trails in the USA.

For battery options, Specialized specs each bike with an 840wh battery that can be turbo charged up to 80% IN UNDER ONE HOUR thanks to a 5 amp, 200 watt charger. You can even get a 12 amp charger, which we have, and I’m dying to see how fast it charges the battery. I don’t think I’ve seen a 12 amp charger, and as someone who often forgets to charge his bike and ends up scrambling at the last minute, I can’t say how impressed I am with the fast charging capabilities of the new Gen 4 Levo.

Specialized will also have a 600 wh battery and a 250 wh battery extender you can purchase for those wanting to have a fairly modular battery system.

I’ll let you go directly to the Levo 4 product page to see all the specs of each model, but want to point out that Specialized did not pull the classic: “We made a super lightweight e-bike that has shitty tires, lightweight shock, and brakes that also need to be upgraded for anyone who rides hard”. It still drives me nuts to this day that I had to spend an extra $800 to get my $11,000 Orbea Rise up to snuff when I bought it in 2020.

Instead, Specialized focused on making sure that you don’t need to swap out parts and that they will hold up to the extra weight and usage of a full-power eMTB.

Our only gripe for now is that they don’t have the 2.4” tires in stock yet, so they are currently shipping the bike with 2.3” tires. However, they still have their gravity cast tires (Butcher, GRID GRAVITY casing, GRIPTON® T9 compound). For us, we’ll be swapping those out soon given the super rocky terrain we ride, but we think those riding more flow trails will be fine.

Another feature of the bike we want to highlight in this first ride review is the SWAT downtube. We ride a lot in 95-100-degree-plus weather and absolutely appreciate being able to store a spare tube and small electric pump on the bike so we don’t have to bring a pack when riding.

The compromise that Specialized had to make in order to fit the SWAT storage was to make the downtube larger. In our opinion, we think it’s a good compromise and well worth it.