Rating:
Quick n dirty sum­ma­ry: This elec­tric scoot­er will turn heads every­where you go with its dev­il­ish good looks and smooth performance.
Pros:	Cons:
Beau­ti­ful­ly designed	Can get uncom­fort­able with extend­ed use
Dif­fer­ent set­tings for all lev­els of skill and use	High cost upfront
Com­pact form makes it easy to stow when not in use

Sto­ry time: I received an E450 Elec­tric scoot­er for free in exchange for a review on this blog. I get offers from a lot of dif­fer­ent com­pa­nies to review their prod­ucts and turn them down as I feel they don’t jive with me and my life phi­los­o­phy. This one, how­ev­er, did!

Despite being an obvi­ous Mil­len­ni­al in many ways, I do devi­ate from the stan­dard in a few ways. One of those deviances is in the total num­ber of elec­tric scoot­er rides tak­en. I have friends that hop on and off elec­tric scoot­ers as though it’s sec­ond nature. Me? Not so much. I’ve been on an elec­tric scoot­er once, with friends on our way to the Lin­coln Memo­r­i­al down the Nation­al Mall. I have fond mem­o­ries of reg­u­lar scoot­ers, but the cost of rid­ing the elec­tric scoot­ers always deterred me.

Even if I haven’t rid­den a ton of elec­tric scoot­ers in the last year, scoot­ers and I go way back. I grew up on an old pow­der blue scoot­er with per­pet­u­al­ly flat tires that must’ve weighed 50 pounds. I then got bit bad­ly by the Razor scoot­er fad in the ear­ly 2000’s and begged to have one. My wish was grant­ed one Christ­mas and I hap­pi­ly zoomed around the neigh­bor­hood for a few years. (It made a reap­pear­ance for a semes­ter in col­lege and every­one I passed was mad jel­ly. It was bet­ter than roller skates!) That Razor scoot­er has since been passed down to my niece, leav­ing me to get around by car, bike, or foot.

That is.… until Una­gi reached out to me and asked me if I’d be inter­est­ed in review­ing their scoot­er. I jumped at the chance! Rid­ing their scoot­er brings me back to the care­free days of zoom­ing around my neigh­bor­hood with my best friend. In this review, I’ll go over the stats, the look, the feel, and my over­all impres­sions of the scooter.

The Stats

Una­gi cur­rent­ly has 2 mod­els, 250W and 450W. The 450W mod­el is dual motor where the 250W is sin­gle motor. The extra motor real­ly adds some zip! There are 3 lev­els of pow­er, rang­ing from mosey­ing along to SEEYA! The max speed is around 15.5 mph which is equal­ly parts excit­ing and ter­ri­fy­ing. I have got­ten it to go faster than that going down a hill which I def­i­nite­ly would­n’t rec­om­mend. The range varies based on the weight of the rid­er. My range was prob­a­bly a lit­tle fur­ther at 16 or so miles as my 5′5″ frame clocks in at 130 lbs. The max weight is 220 lbs. I feel like the han­dle­bars are at a good height com­pared to some of the oth­er scoot­ers I’ve played around with. The run­ning board is grip­py and fit my size 8 shoes com­fort­ably. Speak­ing of weight, the scoot­er weighs in at a mere 24.24 pounds. The han­dle­bars fold down over the base, mak­ing it easy to car­ry around when you can’t ride it. The weight makes it fair­ly easy to do so, as well. If you have to ride at night, there is a bright LED light that effort­less­ly lights your way. There’s no need to wor­ry about get­ting a flat tire like my first scoot­er as they are made of a hard rubber.

Gettin’ My Scoot On

Una­gi elec­tric scoot­ers are sleek and sexy look­ing. I lit­er­al­ly made heads turn while rid­ing in the city and have had more than a few con­ver­sa­tions about them with peo­ple on the Metro, neigh­bors, and ran­dom passer­by on the street. I feel like this is what an elec­tric scoot­er made by Tes­la would look like if Una­gi had­n’t beat them to the punch with their styl­ish design.

I’ve rid­den the scoot­er around in a vari­ety of sit­u­a­tions and feel like it was the best option for many of them. I’ve dis­cov­ered the scoot­er can take up more space than I’m used to when fold­ed up on the Metro. Space is at a pre­mi­um when the Metro is crowd­ed, so I would hes­i­tate at tak­ing it on pub­lic trans­port at rush hour. I rode the scoot­er to the Nation­als vs Car­di­nals game, which was an excel­lent idea on the way there. On the way home, I had more than one grumpy per­son snip at me for squeez­ing it on the train with me. I’ve found it works best if I leave it unfold­ed and stick the base under my seat with the stem in between my legs. Then again, that only works if you can get a seat in the first place so it’s a bit of a gamble.

The elec­tric scoot­ers are best rid­den in bike lanes or on the street, as they go real­ly fast com­pared to peo­ple on side­walks. It’s hard to weave in and around peo­ple on the side­walk with­out run­ning over some­one, and I def­i­nite­ly did­n’t want to be that per­son. The con­trols are easy to use, with your right hand con­trol­ling the accel­er­a­tion and your left hand con­trol­ling the brakes. I real­ly enjoyed feel­ing the wind go through my hair as I whizzed past normies walk­ing so slow­ly on the sidewalk.

My Hon­est Opinion

I would 100% rec­om­mend Una­gi Elec­tric scoot­ers to any­one that asks. They’re sexy, super fast, light­weight, and plain fun to ride.

That being said.… I do need to talk about some of the oth­er things I experienced.

The rid­ing expe­ri­ence, while zip­py, is only as smooth as the pave­ment you’re rid­ing on. You’ll feel every crack, bump and pot­hole in the rid­ing sur­face. I found your wrists take the brunt of the sus­pen­sion effort and get quite tired from try­ing to min­i­mize the bumps after an extend­ed ride. I also would­n’t rec­om­mend rid­ing the scoot­ers in cold or wet weath­er, which rather lim­its their usabil­i­ty depend­ing on your loca­tion. You need some seri­ous ear pro­tec­tion against the cold breeze, and the tires sim­ply aren’t good at stop­ping on wet pave­ment with the drum brakes.

I also strug­gle with where to put the scoot­er when I arrive at my des­ti­na­tion. I rode it to a job inter­view in DC, and was able to leave it by the office man­ag­er (who asked me a bunch of ques­tions about it and thought it was super cool). When I rode it to the Nation­als game, I stashed it in my friend’s apart­ment as he lives right across the street from the sta­di­um. There isn’t a great way to lock it up with a bike lock and it’s so pret­ty I have no doubt it would get stolen in a heart­beat if I did­n’t leave it well secured. DC is great for that kin­da thing.

The last down­side about the scoot­er is the price. The 450W mod­el clocks in at a cool $990. As I was giv­en mine by the com­pa­ny, I did­n’t have to pay that, but it would take a ton of rides around town to make up for the ini­tial cash out­lay. I would real­ly only rec­om­mend some­one buy one if they had paid off all their debt, were invest­ing for their retire­ment, and were look­ing for envi­ron­men­tal­ly friend­ly ways to commute.

Oth­er­wise, I love it and will be hap­py to rep it around my new city while I explore!