Scott Sub Tour 20

The Sub Tour 20 sits in Scott's belt-drive family of assisted commuters, positioned between the Sub Tour 30 and Sub Tour 10, and it's built for riders who want to swap car or bus trips for a bike that shrugs off British weather and daily grind. What sets it apart from a typical electric commuter is the drivetrain: a Gates belt paired with an enclosed Shimano hub instead of an exposed chain and cassette, backed by a properly capable Bosch motor and a set of genuinely useful fitted extras that mean you can get on and ride rather than accessorising it yourself.

Assistance that suits hills and daily riding

Both UK builds use Bosch's Performance Line PX motor, a smart-system unit giving assistance up to 25km/h, the legal limit for pedal-assist e-bikes here. It's paired with a PowerTube battery holding 600Wh, a genuinely large capacity that should give you plenty of runway for longer commutes or weekend rides. Scott doesn't publish a fixed mileage figure for it, which makes sense: how far you get depends on hills, load and how much assistance you use, so treat the 600Wh figure as your planning number rather than a promised distance. Control comes from Bosch's Purion 200 display, a simple unit, with charging handled by the supplied 2A charger.

A belt and hub drivetrain that asks little of you

Instead of a derailleur, the Sub Tour 20 runs a Gates CDX belt to a Shimano Nexus Inter 5e five-speed internal-gear hub, with a 46-tooth front pulley and 32-tooth rear. In practice that means no chain to lube, no exposed cassette to collect road grit, and gears you can change even while stationary at the lights, handy on a stop-start commute. Five speeds is fewer than a typical derailleur setup, but the trade is consistency and less cleaning through the year rather than outright range of gears, which suits the everyday use this bike is aimed at.

Standard frame or Wave: two ways into the same bike

Scott offers this specification in two frame shapes at the same UK list price, so the choice is about how you live with the bike rather than what it costs. The standard frame has a side-extraction battery and an approximate claimed weight of 28.7kg. The Wave, with its low step-through shape, swaps to top-extraction for the battery and comes in a little heavier, at a claimed 30.1kg. If you're wheeling the bike through a hallway or lifting a leg over it daily, the easier mount of the Wave is worth weighing against that small weight increase. The Wave also gets a brighter rear light, specified as a Super Bright Lezyne unit rather than the standard build's Lezyne rear light, a small but genuine visibility upgrade if you're riding home in the dark often.

Built for carrying, not just riding

The fitted Racktime rear carrier is rated to 25kg and is SnapIt 2.0 compatible, so panniers or compatible bags clip on without extra hardware, and Scott also lists compatibility with an optional child seat if you need to carry a young passenger. Keep an eye on the bike's 160kg maximum system weight too, since that figure covers the bicycle itself plus rider, equipment and luggage together, not just what you strap to the rack. The lockout-equipped 100mm Suntour fork, wide 60-622 Schwalbe tyres and Shimano BR-MT200 disc brakes are all suited to rough tarmac and the moderate unpaved or gravel routes Scott's condition-2 rating covers, though that rating stops well short of technical mountain-bike terrain.

Choosing a size and avoiding a mismatched offer

Both frame variants are offered in S to XL sizes with 29-inch wheels throughout, and Scott directs buyers to its Smartfit tool, which uses body measurements rather than a simple published height or inseam chart, to help pick the right size. One thing worth being deliberate about when browsing offers: this specification, with its 600Wh battery and 25kg-rated rack, has also been listed alongside separately advertised builds carrying a 720Wh battery and a 30kg rack. Those figures belong to a different specification, so match the battery capacity and rack rating on any listing to the bike described here before assuming you're comparing like for like.

Owning a Sub Tour 20 means fewer trips to the workshop for chain wear and stretch, since the belt and enclosed hub are designed to need very little attention beyond routine checks, which suits anyone who'd rather spend that time riding than maintaining.