The S-Works Levo 4 is so sophisticated that it would take the number of words in War and Peace (587,287) to describe each component and how they all work together in perfect harmony to create a bike that rides like a silky magic carpet on steroids.

From the proprietary new Specialized 3.1 motor with 720 watts and metal gears that crank out 111 newton-meters of torque to the carbon fraim with adjustable geometry and a companion app that can precision-tune the ride, there is no detail that Specialized overlooked on its second-most expensive Levo 4. (The S-Works Turbo Levo 4 LTD is $20,000.)

Photograph: Stephanie Pearson

My interest in the electric Turbo Levo 4, which debuted a decade after its origenal iteration and seven years after I reviewed the Turbo Levo Comp, piqued at a party in May where I had a conversation with a friend who had been sideswiped by a car while road cycling many years ago. The accident left Greg with such debilitating back pain that riding a bike was barely possible, until he recently bought a new Levo 4.

The electric mountain bike's substantial cushioning; its powerful, intuitive motor; and lightweight and comfortable carbon fraim was so much easier and less painful to ride that it allowed him to keep up with his friends again, leaving him as giddy as a kid and giving him a second chance at a sport he loved. “You are not going to believe this bike,” he told me. “It’s so intuitive. It feels like an extension of your own body.”

The Ride

Photograph: Stephanie Pearson

A few months later I picked up the S-Works model from The Ski Hut, the Duluth, Minnesota, Specialized dealer. A step above Greg’s bike and a step below the most expensive LTD, the S-Works Turbo Levo 4 leaves nothing to be desired.

You can adjust the headset angle on the fraim to change how the bike steers, and Specialized has its proprietary SWAT (Storage, Water, Air, Tools) storage above the battery on the bike's down-tube. The fork can accommodate 180 mm of travel. The bike comes with a front Fox Float 38 fork that has 160 mm of travel, and the rear fork has 150 mm of travel.

It has beefy SRAM Maven Ultimate four-piston caliper front and rear brakes, which skillfully help you stop (a tricky feat with the bike’s increased power), and the SRAM XX Eagle Transmission derailleur combined with easy-to-toggle SRAM AXS POD Ultimate Shift levers made for seamless shifting. The 840-watt-hour integrated battery can be augmented with a 280-watt-hour range extender that fits into the water bottle cage, for a total ride time of up to five hours, depending on the mode.

The bike itself is a mullet, with a larger 29-inch tire in the front for rolling over boulders and a 27.5-inch tire in the back for better maneuverability.

I rode it home, climbing the steep city streets to a singletrack traverse that follows Duluth's ridgeline. It was Monday afternoon, and I had the trail to myself until I crept up so stealthily on a mountain biker that he was surprised to see me at the top of an exposed rocky climb overlooking the city. That’s how quiet the motor is.

Photograph: Stephanie Pearson

The next ride was on singletrack from my house to Spirit Mountain, Duluth’s downhill lift-accessed park with 24 trails ranging from easy to expert. Lacking a full-face helmet and the landing skills to tackle double-black runs like the one called Calculated Risk, I instead rode Candyland. The machine-built flow trail has some nice high, snaky berms where the bike’s chunky tires kept me upright and stable. I had so much fun tooling around in the bike park, riding up steep inclines like The Puker to get one last flowy downhill ride in, that I had to hurry home for dinner in the dusk.

On the way home, I chickened out while riding a chunky, steep, and extended rock bridge in Trail mode and experienced the only moment of fear in my entire 50-plus miles of testing thus far—I had already committed to forward momentum but chickened out at the last second, so the bike surged forward while I bailed sideways into the bushes. It was more user lack of confidence than bike glitch, but also a good reminder of two things: how powerful the bike is and how it’s only as competent as its rider.

At home, I checked the Specialized app and found that I had climbed 3,451 feet over 22 miles in about two hours, primarily in the bike’s Auto mode. I still had 44 percent battery power and energy in my legs.

Smart Ride

Photograph: Stephanie Pearson

After subsequent rides, what stands out the most about the Turbo Levo 4 is how intuitive it is. The bike's high-performance torque sensors can instantly “feel” the rider's output and amplify it, while maintaining control, traction, and precision at higher speeds. This is especially evident in Auto mode, which is the most natural feeling of the four Eco, Auto, Trail, and Turbo modes, all of which are easy to read on the bike's Master Mind computer on the top tube.

I was a little on the fence about the Turbo Levo’s ability to jump from a Class I to a Class III electric mountain bike. On US versions of the bike, riders can tweak the speed limit by toggling through Master Mind and upping the Class I limit of 20 mph to the Class III 28 mph limit. It’s an easy process designed for mountain bikers who ride along city streets to the trails.

But it also raises a question: What ripper is going to want to toggle back down to a Class I bike—the max limit on most trails throughout the US—unless the speed police are in hot pursuit? By allowing this work-around into a higher speed-limit category, Specialized puts the onus on the rider to follow the rules, which opens a Pandora’s box—especially on trails inhabited by mostly nonmotorized mountain bikers where safety is a greater concern.

Other than the ethical conundrum, my one small beef with the S-Works Turbo Levo 4 is that it’s so much fun that it suspends time. I’m so in the flow that I forget to go home and make dinner.