The Reign’s motor is the Yamaha PW-X3 motor with custom tuning by Giant, using what they call Sync Drive technology. It has 250 nominal and 500 max watts and a nice 85Nm of torque. At 6.06 lbs, it gives you an 82.5 Watts per pound power-to-weight ratio, which is solid.
Yamaha designed it to output between 80-400% assistance, which we found very natural and powerful on the trails.
It is very useful, especially when starting – it has more power than most when pedaling at a lower cadence.
What’s the benefit of that? If you’ve slowed down a bit, coming out of a corner and going straight into a hill, you’ll find it has a great amount of push when starting the climb. It always helps to be in the appropriate gear, but it feels like this one is even a bit more forgiving since you don’t need a higher cadence to access higher power levels from the motor – it just starts with more.
By contrast, it feels a little less powerful than other motors when pedaling at a higher cadence or as you progress through a longer climb. Because of this, it took a little practice to find the necessary gear, but overall, once I learned how the motor worked, I still thought of it as a great climber.
It does have some noise/whine to it, but overall, we came away very impressed with what Giant has done with Yamaha here. We think that Yamaha deserves to be talked about more in the eMTB space.
The motor has five different power levels. Each felt fairly distinct from the others without making any adjustments, but there is an app that allows you to tailor each level’s power output.
One quirk of the setup we noticed was what I’d describe as twitchiness.
You notice it the most when track standing or if you push down on the pedals when you stop to rest on the side of the road or check your phone.
If you press the pedals at all, you sense the motor really wants to engage. It’s almost like a vibration when doing a track stand or a bit lurchy when at a standstill.
If this sounds like a big deal, it’s not. It will take some time to get used to, and you can play with the programming within the app to eliminate it if you’d like, so it’s just something to be aware of when you are starting out.
One of the few true issues we had with the whole system came down to the PAS controls. This isn’t our favorite interface, as the buttons were hard to hit accurately on the fly. I sometimes hit the middle one or hit up when I meant to hit down. It’s hard to distinguish without looking and especially difficult in gloves, so we’d welcome a different control panel with more distinct buttons.
On the battery slide, giant Reign models offer a few different sizes. This 2022 model comes standard with a 625Wh battery. There is also a 750Wh battery, and current-gen reigns start with massive 800Wh batteries.
Obviously, be aware of your own battery needs. Bigger isn’t always better since there is a weight penalty, but if you’re looking to maximize your ride time and take longer trips, it’s nice to know there are size options.
