The front lifting on steep climbs is mostly geometry, not power. Your 2021 Spectral:ON runs a slacker seat angle and shorter reach than the current crop, which pushes your weight rearward exactly when you need it forward. Any modern bike with a steeper effective seat angle (76.5°+) and a longer front-centre will keep that wheel planted without you hanging over the bars — so the fix is real, and it's the single biggest thing to shop for.
You want three things that usually fight each other:
climbs steep, descends chunk, stays playful. Here's the pick that threads it.
Let me pull the ranked shortlist rather than guess from memory.
Based on what you've described, the strongest fit is a lighter full-power or punchy mid-power bike with steep seat geometry. A couple of directions worth weighing:
The playful-but-capable route — DJI Avinox bikes. The Avinox M1 (105–120Nm, 800Wh) is the current darling for exactly your brief: strong on steep tech climbs and light enough to stay flickable.
@Plummet found the Bosch Gen5 100Nm and Avinox roughly matched on steep rooty climbs, so you're not sacrificing climbing grunt for the lower weight. Bikes like the Forestal e-Siryon V2 (21.5kg, 64° HA) or Crestline RS 181 sit right in the playful-yet-steep-capable zone.
The composed-descender route — Norco Range VLT CX. @Blownoutrides reckons the 2026 Range rides "composed and playful simultaneously" and handles jumps and cornering better than the previous generation — and it took a 30mph flat-case without damage. It's 25.4kg and 63.5° HA, so more descending bias, slightly less flick than the Avinox lightweights.
Before I hand you a proper data-backed shortlist with the actual ride-feel scores, one thing shapes it hard:
What's your budget, and roughly how heavy/tall are you? That decides whether we're pointing you at a £4k Radon Render or a £13k Forestal — and it lets me size the front-centre so the climbing geometry actually works for
your reach, not a generic size L.
Give me those two numbers and I'll run the ranked list and name the bike, the trim, and the size.
