Some additonal comments after reading your "Gain thread":
- Even if the SL motor sound should disturb you at the beginning, you will soon get used to it. The question is more, how will your friends/other riders without a motor react, will they accept it and if not, can you stand it? But as your friends know your history and your Gain they should accept also a hearable motor.
- Reliability of the SL drive is really good (so we bought a Vado SL for my wife 8 months ago). I had several Bosch ebikes before which had to see the dealer much more often. Even my Stromer was there more times than Creo+Vado SL yet (but the Stromer is still very reliable and much better than any Bosch).
- Creo and generally Specialized is more expensive than Gain/Orbea and value for money gets worse the higher the model you choose and there are no upgrade options like Orbea offers.
- Gears: If your preference is road cycling, you should definitely take a Creo road version, which has about 2 teeth more than the Evo version. You can also change to a front chainring with even more teeth I think, there are several threads here about it. But you can't use more than one front chainring. It's a pity that the Creo still doesn't have 1x12, what would be a real upgrade and what I really prefer on my new MTB. Is there any technical reason for this?
- I should add that I ride a German/European Creo limited to 25km/h. For me normally riding alone and mostly offroad/gravel and hilly it's perfect and the range almost endless (what's a range extender???). I did some bigger gravel tours with faster riders (without motor) in 2020 and still could stay in the group in the faster road parts over 25km/h. But these parts were usually only a few minutes/miles, I guess hours like this would have been different with my 25km/h limit.
- Even if the SL motor sound should disturb you at the beginning, you will soon get used to it. The question is more, how will your friends/other riders without a motor react, will they accept it and if not, can you stand it? But as your friends know your history and your Gain they should accept also a hearable motor.
- Reliability of the SL drive is really good (so we bought a Vado SL for my wife 8 months ago). I had several Bosch ebikes before which had to see the dealer much more often. Even my Stromer was there more times than Creo+Vado SL yet (but the Stromer is still very reliable and much better than any Bosch).
- Creo and generally Specialized is more expensive than Gain/Orbea and value for money gets worse the higher the model you choose and there are no upgrade options like Orbea offers.
- Gears: If your preference is road cycling, you should definitely take a Creo road version, which has about 2 teeth more than the Evo version. You can also change to a front chainring with even more teeth I think, there are several threads here about it. But you can't use more than one front chainring. It's a pity that the Creo still doesn't have 1x12, what would be a real upgrade and what I really prefer on my new MTB. Is there any technical reason for this?
- I should add that I ride a German/European Creo limited to 25km/h. For me normally riding alone and mostly offroad/gravel and hilly it's perfect and the range almost endless (what's a range extender???). I did some bigger gravel tours with faster riders (without motor) in 2020 and still could stay in the group in the faster road parts over 25km/h. But these parts were usually only a few minutes/miles, I guess hours like this would have been different with my 25km/h limit.
