Charger5 Gearing Compared: Touring vs Vario vs Rohloff vs Pinion
I have this conversation in the showroom more than almost any other. Someone has done their research; they have settled on the Charger5, and the R&M configurator then presents them with Touring, Vario, Rohloff, and Pinion versions of what looks like the same bike, with a £2,300 spread between them. The frame is the same. The Charger5 gearing is the decision, and it changes how the bike feels, what it costs to live with, and how it climbs the sort of hills we have here in Devon.
The short answer, the one I give standing next to the bikes: the Charger5 Touring is the efficient all-rounder for riders happy to oil a chain, and its new Di2 electronic sibling is the most tempting thing in the 2027 range. The Vario is the zero-effort option, a stepless belt-drive hub you never think about, at the cost of some range and some climbing gears. The Pinion is the sealed-gearbox flagship for riders who like being early adopters. And the Rohloff is the one nobody ever regrets, which is why I own one. The rest of this post is the reasoning, the same four questions I ask every buyer.
What changed for the 2027 model year?
New for 2027
Riese & Müller has restructured the Charger5 range for the 2027 model year, with deliveries from August 2026. The headline is a new Touring Pro with Shimano Di2 electronic shifting, a first for the Charger5. The Touring CORE, Vario CORE and Automatic versions have gone, and a Silent CORE special model becomes the value entry point. Prices below are Riese & Müller's new model-year pricing; our own launch prices go live on the site in August.
The line-up now runs: Touring (£5,589), the new Touring Pro (£6,049), Vario (£6,049), Rohloff (£7,889) and Pinion (£7,159), plus speed-pedelec (HS) versions of the Vario and Pinion, and the Silent CORE special model at £4,209 with a simple 5-speed hub, the cheapest way into a Charger5 but not the bike this comparison is about. The Touring, Touring Pro, Vario and Rohloff all run the Bosch Performance Line CX with the Performance Upgrade 2.0, which means 120 Nm of torque and 750 W peak power, and they gain a Fox AWL 34 fork this year too. The Silent CORE runs the quieter, gentler Performance Line motor, and the HS versions run the Performance Line Speed, which is a different bike again.
And one more 2027 note, because we have been rude about Riese & Müller's colour choices often enough: the new colours are better! Both the Charger5 and the Mixte gain a deep maroon and a lavender, and there is a dark red in the palette as well. If a grey bike has been the one thing putting you off, that excuse has gone. Maroon and lavender deliveries start in September; the rest of the range starts in August.
Charger5 gearing side by side
| Touring | Touring Pro (new) | Vario | Pinion | Rohloff | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Gearing | Shimano XT LinkGlide 11-speed, chain | Shimano Di2 XT LinkGlide 11-speed electronic, chain | Enviolo Utility stepless hub, belt | Pinion MGU E1.12 gearbox, 12-speed, belt | Rohloff E-14 hub, 14-speed, belt |
| Gear range | approx. 455% (11-50 cassette) | approx. 455% (11-50 cassette) | 400% | 600% | 526% |
| Shifting | manual, cable | electronic, with automatic function | stepless twist grip | electronic | electronic (E-14) |
| Motor | Bosch CX, 120 Nm | Bosch CX, 120 Nm | Bosch CX, 120 Nm | Pinion MGU, 600 W peak | Bosch CX, 120 Nm |
| Battery | Bosch PowerTube 800 | Bosch PowerTube 800 | Bosch PowerTube 800 | FIT TubePack 800 | Bosch PowerTube 800 |
| Range extender option | PowerMore 250, £387 | PowerMore 250, £387 | PowerMore 250, £387 | FIT BuddyPack 240, £461 (new) | PowerMore 250, £387 |
| Maintenance | chain: regular oiling and indexing | chain: regular oiling | belt: near zero | belt: near zero | belt: near zero |
| Price (MY2027) | £5,589 | £6,049 | £6,049 | £7,159 | £7,889 |
Choosing your Charger5 gearing: the four questions I ask
There is no single best Charger5. There are four questions, and by the end of them the bike has usually chosen itself.
First, budget, and whether it is the driver. If it is, stop and check you are on the right bike before you argue about drivetrains; the Silent CORE exists, and so do other bikes in the range. The Charger5 proper starts at £5,589, and it is a superb all-rounder, but it comes at a price.
Second, and most important: how much time do you want to spend looking after it? If the answer is none at all, if you want to take the bike out of the garage and have it just work, every time, then you want a sealed drivetrain: the Vario, or the Rohloff. If you are a happy tinkerer who does not mind oiling a chain regularly and knowing the gears need indexing now and again, the derailleur versions reward you for it.
Third, efficiency. This is the bit most buyers have never had explained. A well-maintained chain, cassette and derailleur is the most efficient transmission you can put on a bike; indexed and oiled, remarkably little of the motor's effort is lost between the crank and the rear wheel. The Rohloff gives up a little to its internal gearbox but remains very efficient. The Enviolo hub on the Vario gives up the most: there is inherent drag in a stepless hub, some of the motor's power goes into turning the gearbox itself, and you feel it as reduced range. If you want to know what that costs you in real miles, our range estimator will tell you in a couple of minutes. Our Enviolo vs Rohloff comparison covers this trade-off in depth.
Fourth, your hills. Around here that question answers itself: Dartmouth drops to the river and climbs straight back out, all day. Big hills call for a wide gear spread with a low bottom ratio. The Pinion MGU gearbox has the widest range of the lot at 600%, the Rohloff next at 526%, then the derailleur versions at roughly 455% on their 11-50 cassette. The Vario's 400% is the narrowest, and, more to the point, its gears sit towards the higher speeds, which is exactly where steep-hill riders do not want them. On flatter ground the Vario's range is plenty; on serious gradients it is the first reason I steer people elsewhere.
Take those four answers, mash them together, and the right version is usually obvious. How heavy you are, what you carry, how far you go: everybody's individual story matters, which is why we do this standing next to the bikes rather than over email. If you want the full gearing-systems primer first, which gears should I choose for my Riese & Müller walks through every system in the range.
The Touring Pro and Di2, explained
The new Touring Pro deserves its own section, because "electronic shifting" gets muddled with "automatic shifting" and it is worth being precise. Di2 is not new: road riders have had it for years, and it has taken this long to arrive on a bike like this. Here is what it means on the Charger5.
Di2 is push-button shifting: a motor moves the derailleur, there are no cables to stretch, and every shift lands exactly. On the Touring Pro it pairs with the Bosch system to add an automatic function with three ways of working: fully manual, where you press and it shifts; a halfway mode where it only shifts for you while you freewheel; and a fully automatic mode that holds whatever cadence you set in the Bosch Flow app. The clever bit is that it can change gear while you coast, because the motor briefly turns the chainring for you, and as you slow for a junction it drops down the cassette so you pull away in an easy gear. It cannot shift at a dead standstill (no derailleur can, whatever brand is on the motor), but in practice you stop fussing about gears entirely. The derailleur is wired into the main battery, so there is no separate shifting battery to forget to charge, and the system softens motor power for a fraction of a second during each shift, which keeps changes quiet and kind to the chain.
The caveat is the one from question two: it is still a chain drivetrain, and 120 Nm through a chain and cassette wears them faster than a gentle pedal-only bike ever would. The Di2 makes the shifting effortless; it does not make the oiling optional.
The Charger5 Vario: zero maintenance, narrower gears
The Vario is the bike for the rider who answered "none at all" to the maintenance question but cannot stretch to the Rohloff. A Gates belt instead of a chain, no oiling, and the Enviolo Utility hub is stepless: you twist, the ratio changes smoothly, there are no gears to be in. For the 2027 model year it runs Enviolo's newer Utility hub, built because Bosch's 120 Nm update outgrew what the old trekking hub was rated for; the Utility version is certified for the full 120 Nm and for heavy loads. It is a lovely thing around town and on rolling ground.
You pay for that serenity twice, though: once in efficiency (the drag means less range from the same 800 Wh battery) and once in gear range, the 400% spread with its gears sitting high. Mid-Devon hills with luggage will find its limits. Flat commutes and estuary lanes will not.
The Charger5 Rohloff: buy once, stop thinking about it
I should declare an interest here: I bought one with my own money. My own Superdelite5 runs a Rohloff, and I have written up a year and 850 miles with it if you want the long version.
Fourteen gears, 526% of range, all of it sealed inside the rear hub and driven by a belt. It gives up a little efficiency to its internal gearbox, but only a little, and what you buy is a spread of gears wide enough for anything Devon throws at you with none of the upkeep. The E-14 shifting is electronic, and here is the party trick the derailleur cannot match at any price: because the gears are inside the hub, it will change gear while you are standing still. Roll up to a junction in top, stop, and it drops to your starting gear while you wait. No chain has ever done that.
It is £7,889. That is £2,300 more than a Touring and £1,840 more than a Vario, and it is the hardest number in this post to say out loud in a showroom. The next section is why I keep saying it anyway.
The Charger5 Pinion: clever, but early
I will be straight about Pinion, because customers ask me straight. The engineering is genuinely clever: motor and 12-speed gearbox sealed in one unit, 600% gear range (the widest here), a belt drive, and nothing exposed to wear but the belt itself. Our Pinion MGU explainer covers how it works. If you are the rider who is going to be off-road, smashing through gears under load and not caring about noise, it is a proper tool, and for 2027 it finally gets a range-extender option, the FIT BuddyPack 240.
Two cautions from the workshop side of the counter. It is a young system: we have only had them two years, so nobody can tell you how year five looks the way we can with Bosch, which has been refined in front of us for a decade. And our experience of Pinion as a company, getting parts and getting answers, has been patchier than what we are used to from Bosch; that matters more on an e-bike than people think. The system also has a growl to it where the Bosch is near silent, and its assistance software is rawer, with updates few and far between, while Bosch's system keeps gaining features at pace. If you are weighing the two motors properly, our Bosch CX vs Pinion MGU comparison goes deeper than I can here.
Dan says
"Plenty of customers come in with the budget for the Pinion and get excited by it. But they know Bosch and they know Rohloff, and if someone is not willing to be an early adopter, I will talk them out of it. If you want maximum power, refinement and a system that is quiet, go Bosch."
Which one do buyers regret?
Nobody has ever sat in the workshop and told me they wished they had bought less gearing. The regret runs one way: riders who talked themselves out of the Rohloff at purchase, then find eighteen months later that swapping a Vario for a Rohloff bike means taking the loss on one bike and paying full price for another. That conversation is far more expensive than the original price gap ever was.
Here is the thing our 5-year cost of ownership breakdown makes clear: over the life of the bike the drivetrains cost roughly the same. The derailleur is cheap to buy and needs consumables; the Rohloff costs more upfront and then barely anything. You are choosing when to pay, not whether. So if the Rohloff is the bike your riding actually calls for, find the money at the start, not in year two.
Charger5 prices in full (MY2027)
Riese & Müller's 2027 model-year pricing, deliveries from August 2026. Our launch prices go live on the site in August; ask us for a quotation meanwhile.
| Version | Gearing | Price (MY2027) |
|---|---|---|
| Silent CORE (special model) | Shimano Nexus 5-speed, belt | £4,209 |
| Touring | XT LinkGlide 11-speed, chain | £5,589 |
| Touring Pro (new) | Di2 XT LinkGlide 11-speed electronic, chain | £6,049 |
| Vario | Enviolo Utility stepless, belt | £6,049 |
| Vario HS (45 km/h) | Enviolo Utility stepless, belt | £6,599 |
| Pinion | Pinion MGU E1.12, 12-speed, belt | £7,159 |
| Pinion HS (45 km/h) | Pinion MGU E1.12 S, belt | £7,529 |
| Rohloff | Rohloff E-14, 14-speed, belt | £7,889 |
Every 25 km/h version is available on Cycle to Work and 0% finance at no extra cost.
Who should buy which?
The Touring suits you if: you want the most efficient, best-value Charger5, you are happy oiling a chain, and you would rather put £460 towards panniers than push-button shifting.
The Touring Pro suits you if: everything above, plus you want shifting you never think about, an automatic mode for town, and the lightest-feeling drivetrain here.
The Vario suits you if: you want zero maintenance at the friendliest price, your ground is rolling rather than mountainous, and range matters less than simplicity.
The Rohloff suits you if: you want zero maintenance with no compromise on gear range or efficiency, you are keeping the bike for years, your hills are serious, and you would rather pay once than wonder. The one I bought.
The Pinion suits you if: you are off-road regularly, you push hard through gear changes, you like being early to new engineering, and you accept the rough edges that come with it.
The verdict
Two bikes win this, and the maintenance question decides which one is yours.
If you want to buy once and stop thinking about it, buy the Rohloff. It is the bike nobody comes back and regrets, the gear range handles anything Devon has, the belt asks nothing of you, and it will still be shifting cleanly long after the newer ideas have been superseded. It is £7,889 and I have never met the owner who wished they had spent less.
If you are genuinely happy to oil a chain, the Touring Pro is the most interesting thing Riese & Müller have put in this range for years, and the value pick at £6,049: derailleur efficiency, the full 120 Nm, and electronic shifting that removes the one fiddly part of running a chain. It has tempted me, and I own a Rohloff.
The Vario is the right answer when maintenance is off the table but the Rohloff is out of reach, and your ground is rolling rather than mountainous. The Pinion I reserve for the riders it was actually built for: early adopters heading off-road, eyes open.
Quick questions
What is the difference between the Charger5 Touring and Touring Pro?
The drivetrain. Both run a Shimano XT LinkGlide 11-speed with a chain; the Touring Pro (£6,049) adds Di2 electronic shifting with an automatic function, powered from the main battery. The Touring (£5,589) shifts by cable.
Is the Charger5 Vario good for hills?
Rolling hills, yes. Its stepless Enviolo Utility hub has a 400% gear range with ratios that sit towards higher speeds, so on long, steep climbs with luggage it runs out of low gears sooner than the Pinion (600%), the Rohloff (526%) or the derailleur versions (about 455%). For serious, repeated climbing we usually point riders elsewhere.
Does the new Di2 shifting work automatically?
It can. There are three modes: manual push-button shifting, a coasting mode where it shifts for you only while you freewheel, and a fully automatic mode that holds a cadence you set in the Bosch Flow app. It also drops to an easier gear as you slow to a stop. No derailleur system can shift at a complete standstill.
Which Charger5 needs the least maintenance?
The Vario and the Rohloff. Both use a Gates belt instead of a chain (no oiling) and sealed gearing. The Rohloff adds a wider gear range and better efficiency, at £7,889 against the Vario's £6,049.
Can I test ride the different Charger5 versions?
Yes, by appointment at our Little Dartmouth showroom, on real coastal hills rather than a car park. That is the fastest way to feel the difference between a stepless hub, a gearbox and a derailleur.
Ride the difference before you decide
Spec tables get you to a shortlist; hills make the decision. We are ebikeist, the Riese & Müller and Moustache dealer in Dartmouth, Devon, and every one of these drivetrains behaves differently on our test loop's climbs. Book a test ride, or call us on 03330 151 979 and tell us your hills, your luggage and your appetite for maintenance; ten minutes on the phone usually narrows four versions to two. If you are starting from scratch, our bike finder sorts the whole range in five minutes.
