Ninebot MAX G30 | The HIGHEST RATED Electric Scooter on Amazon | Comprehensive Review

[Music] oh [Music] hey everybody it's ginger on wheels here again today i've got the 9bot max kickscooter this is a generation 2 scooter and it is arguably one of the most well-equipped commuter scooters under a thousand dollars today i want you to sit down grab a drink buckle up and get ready for the full ginger on wheels review of what makes this scooter one of the best selling scooters of all [Music] time [Music] so this scooter the 9bot max has potential to be the best commuter scooter in its price range so i covered everything as thoroughly as i could i've had this scooter for a long time and i have a lot to say so i've divided this review up into 18 easy to digest sections for you to review here you can also find hyperlinks to these sections in the video description and i know there's a lot of viewers here looking for information on just one part of the scooter and if that's you you can feel free to skip to that section otherwise stay tuned for the whole colossal thing alright well i guess i'll start by saying that the scooter has two different generations that look identical and the only way to tell them apart is by the serial number on the motor of the scooter if it starts with a six then you have a first generation scooter and if it starts with a nine then your scooter is the latest second generation model everything i say in this video related to battery and speed is going to be referencing the second generation scooter because that's the model that rev rides provided me with huge shout out to rev rides by the way thank you so much for providing me with this scooter for a review but for the record the only differences that i could find between the two generations of scooter is that the first generation of scooter will begin to lose top speed when the battery drops below about 50 percent or so and the top speed will then decrease with the battery level but the second generation scooter the one i have will push along with the 18 mile per hour top speed all the way down to about 15 battery before you start to lose any top speed decrease even with my 190 pound body on it [Music] now as you may or may not know i've ridden this scooter for months in hot weather cold weather day night dry and even pouring rain i've put hundreds of miles on this thing i've taken it apart and put it back together and i found out some important tidbits along the way to cover them more thoroughly let's first check out each of the scooter's components [Music] okay well here it is as you can see it's got nice rubber grips with a diamond texture to them so you don't have to worry about losing your grip even if your hands are wet and i like that they're slightly larger in diameter than other scooters too it gives me reassurance that i'm not holding onto a toy for the record each grip is 1.5 inches wide and 4.5 inches long now one of my main gripes about scooters under a thousand dollars is that the handlebar grips are usually too close together which makes the scooter feel unruly and unstable but that is not a problem on the 9 bot max as you can see the handlebars are fairly wide coming in at 19 inches across and this adds some serious stability in the scooter world as a general rule the wider the bars are the more stable you'll be at top speed it's important to note that these bars did not fold down the stem like other scooters you might see but the less moving parts the better if you ask me you really have to consider if you need that perk when buying this scooter and i bet that most people don't okay you'll notice that the throttle assembly on this scooter is different when compared to most it uses a thumb throttle instead of the little plastic trigger assembly that most scooters use i personally am pretty impartial to the thumb throttle versus plastic trigger but i feel like most inexperienced riders would probably want the thumb throttle because it allows you to have more surface area of your hand on the grip while you're moving up here by the throttle is a little plastic clip that's in place to assist with the folding of the scooter but we'll get there in a minute also up here you'll see the brake lever which is actuated by your left hand and controls the electronic brake and the front drum brake but more on that later too the lever sticks off the bar by about three inches and the lever itself is three and three quarter inches long it has minimal up and down wiggle and it feels really solid so no complaints here for me if you're interested in breaking performance you can take a minute and watch this short companion video that i made on braking for the 9bot max scooter and i'll link that above here okay next to the brakes we have this fantastic little built-in bell while there's no electronic horn on this scooter you have one thirty second of a rotation of this little grippy gray part and you'll activate the bell which is perfect for warning other trail goers that you're coming up behind them it's not too loud and not too quiet the cobble wolf warrior scooter has an electronic horn that pisses everyone off the second you hit it because it's basically a car horn that's uncovered but on this little nine bot the bell isn't too loud or intrusive and it's quite optimistic and happy sounding too so people are generally really happy to get out of your way i did notice that on at high speeds the little plastic collar around the bell can vibrate against the bell housing on really rough patches of road or over bumps and you'll hear that a tiny bit but it didn't bother me much it's worth mentioning though at the top of the scooter here you'll see a very unique looking dashboard with only one button you can push and hold the button to turn the scooter on and off you can tap it once while the scooter is on to turn on the headlight or tap it twice to change speed modes the display will show your current speed the current speed mode if your lights are on or off if you're connected to bluetooth or if the scooter is currently in pedestrian mode if there's any error the scooter is experiencing it'll show the error codes here too and the error codes are really rare but they do happen on this scooter mostly on the first generation from what i've seen but for your reference you can feel free to pause the video now and get a full low resolution list of the error codes that i could find now you might be sitting there wondering how do i adjust other functions of the scooter like regen braking level or cruise control most scooters have that built into the cockpit somehow with a little button right but on this scooter that's where the app comes in see once you've downloaded the segway 9 bot app and you open it it'll immediately scan for nearby devices and when your scooter is found you simply tap on it and the app will connect to your scooter now once you're connected you can see more detailed specs on the scooter like total mileage remaining vehicle temperature total miles traveled and if you're moving you can mount your phone to the handlebars and the app also acts as a large speedometer there's also a couple other cool features in there like you can enable the pedestrian mode which limits the speed of your scooter so you can safely scoot around people on walking paths and you also have the ability to lock and unlock the scooter by simply tapping on the big lock icon in the middle of the app you'll hear the scooter beep once and at that point it's completely disabled until you unlock it again with the app so no one can drive off with it but they can still push it away so keep that in mind there is another in-app feature that allows for breaking adjustment and that's for the regen braking it has three modes weak medium and strong and there is a really big difference between the three modes so you probably have to do some testing when you first get the scooter and feel which one is the most comfortable for you basically the modes adjust the amount that the scooter will decelerate on its own once you're not holding the throttle down so on the stronger regen braking mode it'll feel like you're hitting the brakes every time you let off the throttle but on the weak mode if you let off the throttle the scooter will just sort of coast the regen braking is also amplified when you touch and hold the brake lever though the first couple inches of travel in the brake lever will only engage the regen electronic brake and it isn't until you overpower the regen braking that the scooter will actually use the front drum brake which is the only mechanical brake that it has i did a couple quick tests trying to figure out how well the bridge end braking actually worked how much energy it fully recovered and the best results i got were down a half a mile long hill i had the regen braking and strong and i was lightly feathering the brake lever down the whole hill and i gained two percent battery so for me that equates to somewhere between a half a mile or a mile of scooting with the cruise control on if you scoot around with the regen braking mode on the strong for the whole battery you can squeeze a couple extra miles of range out of it which is pretty cool i think regen braking features that actually work are usually reserved for higher end scooters and also i can't prove this because i didn't do any official testing but i think the scooter has built-in abs i noticed that no matter how hard i squeezed the rear brake lever the tire would never fully lock up it would only skid for a tiny little section at a time so that's pretty cool okay so moving on the stem of the scooter is nice and solid we got no creaking or cracking but it is worth saying that over the course of my time with the scooter i did find that the six bolts at the top of the stem had come loose and those are the bolts that you're supposed to tighten in to mount the handlebars when you first get the scooter i think that the manufacturer should put a small dab of blue loctite on these screws but i suggest that you just get a tube of your own and apply it to the screws before installation just to be safe screws love to rattle loose on every scooter but especially those six okay so coming down the stem you'll notice that the cables are tucked into the entire length of the stem on this scooter and that adds to the scooter's sleek aesthetic although the cable for the front brake bends a little bit as it goes in and out of the bars it didn't seem to affect the amount of force required to actually pull the brake lever which is more than i can say about the turbo wheel dart that i had i really liked the extra step that ninebot took here to make them more waterproof too they added these little rubber bushings into the cable holes which have not popped out and do in fact seem very watertight for the record the exact deck to handlebar height is 40.5 inches [Music] [Music] okay coming down to the bottom of the stem we get to the latching mechanism which i have a true love hate relationship with i do love how easy it is to fold we simply slide back this black safety clip and flip the latch arm down then your scooter folds this is where the plastic safety clip up by the throttle assembly comes into play that'll latch onto the fender in the rear with a little spring and you can pick up the scooter and walk around with it as one folded unit the dimensions of the scooter while folded are about 45 inches long 22 inches high and 19 inches wide at the handlebars but only 8 inches wide if you don't include the handlebars just the kickstand anyway concerning the latch mechanism you can't have something that's that easy to use on an area of the scooter that sees the highest amount of force unless you really reinforce it but alas two of the main latch bolts on my scooter came loose during my time with it granted i'm just 30 pounds under the max weight limit of the scooter and i was riding it really hard but this long hex shaped screw bolt which i was able to tighten with a crescent wrench and this small hex screw here which is a size five they both came loose and needed to be tightened there's also a small 2.5 hex screw here that i removed and added loctite to just to be sure that my latch was extra secure i'm not exactly sure what the problem is and it was really rare from what i found on the internet and it was seemed to be exclusive to the heavier riders out there but i did see some people online with the same issue i personally haven't had any issues with it since i tightened it all down with loctite but i still feel like this is an area where the manufacturer needs to step it up and add some real thread locker or just some qc to the manufacturing process to ensure that those bolts are on there real tight before they all go in the box [Music] now one thing that segway did do right on this scooter is the tires they opted for narrow 10-inch pneumatic tires with high sidewalls and they did this instead of adding the usual tiny spring suspension that you'll see on a lot of other mid-range scooters like the es2 believe it or not i think that these airfield tires actually absorb the impact and tiny handlebar rattles better than most scooters with solid tires and the tiny spring suspension they have pretty impressive grip too with the water wicking design for traction and small grippy bumps on the side if you need that extra grip for off-road turns as a sort of substitute for suspension you can adjust the psi level in the tires to add more or less cushion somewhere between 55 psi for harder tires and that's actually the max recommended for the psi on these tires or 40 psi for softer tires that can handle bumps better be careful though too low and you'll get a flat softer tires also decrease the range on the scooter too so keep that in [Music] mind in this scooter the motor is located in the rear wheel so the only thing you'll find in the front wheel is the drum brake which is a little weak but combined with the strong regen braking it does work pretty well here if you're interested you can check out this brake test video i did on this scooter above and on the deck here we see a textured rubber pattern similar to the handlebar grips it's very durable and very resistant the usable deck space is about 20 inches by six and three quarter inches it's got rounded corners that you can't actually stand on i wear a size 13 shoes and i did find the deck to be a little cramped feeling at times i'm just so used to other higher end scooters where you got that metal foot brace on the back to rest your foot on but if you do that on this scooter you'll break the plastic fender right off the battery is located in the deck of this scooter and it's a pretty big 36 volt 551 watt hour battery it gave me a real world range of 27 miles and you can check out this full range test video i did by clicking on the pop-up here now the built-in quick charger is a pretty cool feature no big brick charger required just plug in the little cable and you get a 3 amp charge bringing the scooter from zero to 100 in around five or five and a half hours toward the rear of the deck that's where the charge port is and i love how they included the rear spring cover with these little rubber grommets to fit right in the charging holes when you push it closed it gives the whole thing a really water resistant secure feel the clearance of the deck is just over three inches which does make rolling down curbs or stairs pretty impossible without bottoming out the scooter unless you're prepared to do a little workout of constantly popping up the front wheel off the ground to avoid bottoming out the scooter then you really can't ride this thing on extreme terrain and one last thing about the deck the kickstand is attached here it's relatively small and nondescript and i haven't had any issues with it my scooter has never fallen over and the thing seems to work is designed so a plus there [Music] now above the rear wheel we've got the fender which does function as designed and does a great job of deflecting the water due to its longer curve around the back of the tire but as i mentioned earlier i wish it were made out of a more durable material at the base it's a bit wobbly and i'm sure if you stomped on it you could get it to break off i did see some people online who had theirs break off for reasons unknown and i tried pretty hard to get mine to bust off believe it or not but under normal use i could not do it so take that for what it's worth the rear brake light is also located here in the fender it'll flash if you hit the brakes and it'll stay illuminated if you turn on the front headlight there's also a feature in the app called always on rear light which sounds pretty straightforward and it does exactly that for safety purposes i assume okay also the front headlight deserves way more attention than i've given it so far it's a 2.5 watt led up here near the top of the handlebars and with the simple push of a mode button up top it'll turn the light on and it's very bright it's one of the few scooters out there along with my cobble wolf warrior that actually has a headlight that works it's very bright and has a nice non-offensive angle and a good throw distance they did a great job with the headlight on this scooter a plus again [Music] okay now all this brings me to the final aspect of the scooter it's the rear wheel it's identical to the front wheel but this is where the hub motor lives it's a motor that runs at 350 watts but it actually peaks closer to 800 watts the motor's noisier than other scooters at these speeds gives an audible hum noise at top speed but like i mentioned earlier it's got three modes which allow the scooter to push you to three max speeds for eco mode it's around 10 miles per hour and d mode is around 15 miles per hour and s mode that has the full 18.6 mile per hour top speed and significantly more torque the scooter can maintain these speeds with a one to two mile per hour variation all the way down to about 15 percent battery i'm a heavier guy and it has no problems getting me up to the 18.6 mile per hour top speed but i did need to switch it into sport mode to make it up even medium hills and on steep hills the scooter just needs a push assist unless you're under 150 pounds that's just the price you pay for having a single motor scooter that's under a thousand watts you're sacrificing performance for economy but one thing that's unique about this scooter is that the firmware actually seems to adjust the acceleration curve in the three modes you can check out this video here that i did on acceleration testing now or in the description below later on other scooters like my cabo wolf warrior modes 1 2 and 3 have different top speeds but the acceleration and the throttle sensitivity is the same in every mode it's ludicrous on this scooter however in eco mode the acceleration is very gentle but in sport mode it's got significantly more giddy up [Music] alright now that you've made it near the end i'm going to let you in on a little secret this scooter can be hacked wrong way did an excellent demonstration of how you can hack the scooter using just your phone and i'll put that video in the description below you can adjust the parameters of how the motor functions to push close to 800 watts of nominal power and i have ridden this scooter in the hacked form and i will say it's significantly quicker than the stock scooter and even both speeds up closer to 22 miles per hour and i got it up to 25 on a slight downhill this does reduce the range significantly though if i do say so myself and the range test i did with the hacked scooter i got just 14.6 miles of range and even then that's longer than other scooters i've tested in this price range but it's still a significant decrease from the unhacked versions one of the best parts about hacking this scooter which brings me to my last small gripe is that in the hacked form you can disable the kickstart feature but that's right unless you hack the scooter you're stuck with this kickstart feature turned on so you have to push the scooter with your feet up to three miles per hour before the throttle even works it's super annoying if you're trying to start on a really steep hill and i'd even argue that it's more dangerous if you're a smaller rider my girlfriend was trying to ride this thing in sport mode and she's pretty tiny she brought up a good point when you're pushing it off the ground and you don't have both feet on the deck securely planted when the scooter's acceleration kicks in you're left trying to swing one of your pushing feet back up onto the scooter deck while the scooter is accelerating and that can throw you off combine that with the taller handlebar height and it's just really not a good combination for novice riders so i'm glad there's a drive mode and an eco mode but i do wish there was a way to disable the kickstart feature without having to hack the scooter it seems kind of silly [Music] [Music] [Music] do [Music] so [Music] [Music] well everybody you made it to the end of the video those are my thoughts on the technical aspects of the components on the 9bot max scooter but i don't think you came to my youtube channel for that i think you came from my opinion on the scooter as a whole and i approve as someone who already owns much more extreme scooters and unicycles i thought i'd have a really hard time getting on board with this 18 mile per hour scooter that cost this much especially when you compare it to something like a zero eight scooter which goes a couple miles an hour faster and costs around the same price but honestly after riding the 9 bot max around for a couple months i do see the appeal ninebot set out with a mission to check all the boxes for the perfect long-range commuter scooter and i actually think they did it aside from manufacturing faults that are found in some latches which you can easily fix by tightening and adding loctite yourself the scooter is solid and more or less weatherproof for science i can tell that this is a scooter whose purpose and design was well set out beforehand even down to the little reflective stickers that come over the screw holes for the wheels for comparison the zero eight is a really high maintenance beauty with a lot more breakable parts and five or six miles less real-world range and to be honest it just doesn't look as sleek it does go faster out of the box but for someone looking for a commuter scooter that isn't really a huge advantage as you saw earlier i rode the max in the pouring rain even through long ankle deep puddles for science and it still works just fine and i don't see that happening on a lot of zero scooters some people online claim that riding in water ruined the front wheel bearings on the ninebot max but that never happened to me the scooter being water resistant is a huge perk right there but when you combine it with the portability aspect the built-in fast charger the headlight that actually works the hackability it just checks all the boxes for someone looking for a solid long-range commuter that's capable of drumming up a little fun on the weekends too well that's it for me if you enjoyed this review make sure to check out jingeronwheels.com for more scooter reviews and links to any discount codes as they become available if there's any active discounts for this scooter i'll put them down in the description below along with all the other links as always subscribe to the channel like the video and i'll see you all next time oh hey what's that you wanted to buy an electric scooter well maybe you should consider this one it's the 9 bot max kickstarter it's got an advertised 40 mile range and it's arguably one of the well [Music] [Music] let's get ready to do some reviewing [Music] you

Channel: Ginger On Wheels

Views: 216,012

Rating: 4.89782 out of 5

Keywords:

Id: EH3-c9g3aKM

Length: 24min 40sec (1480 seconds)

Published: Sun Jul 26 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/Supah007]

This is the best Ninebo Max G30 review.

Great job mate!

[u/SteakTree]

Great job on the review, been waiting for this to drop.

[u/grygrx]

LOL - "18 easy to digest sections"

[u/toddfri]

Excellent vid. Thanks for taking the time to create and posting!

[u/Zrzatore]

Great video 14:40 massive scooter on left and right side Ninebot looks like a toy

[u/eridanx]

Excellent information keep the good work !!

[u/krismoellegaard]

Grait review

Tho i do wish you dit som metriks too i found my self having to google all the imperial joust to understand it