“Whilst the scooter itself is overall fantastic, provides a great ride experience - especially in rough terrain, and 99 Bikes are always fantastic to deal with - there’s a couple of issues with the scooter and manufacturer that have somewhat soured my experience.
1) Handlebar screws for stem: The screw holes show a slightly poor machining quality, with poor tolerances. This means one or more of the screws will be quite hard to insert, and you risk stripping the screw head with the supplied tool.
2) Bluetooth stability: In less than four weeks of ownership, the Bluetooth pairing has failed twice, once whilst during a long ride. Segway does not provide any self-help instructions on their website or the product manual, meaning you’ll need to reach out to support. And the instructions provided to address the issue will create further risks for stripping the poor screw heads already described. Nobody wants to carry the provided Allen key just so they can get Bluetooth working again during a ride.
3) Find My setup: Now; this is a great feature and works well, the setup process for it isn’t as smooth as claimed. The instructions in both the app and documentation lack the exacting clarity for non-Mandarin/Cantonese speakers, that will make the initial discovery process very difficult for non-technical people. And for the technical ones like myself, it took no less than five goes to successfully discover and link the device to my Apple account.
4) App, documentation and customer support: Simply put, Segway-Ninebot has significant room for improvement in this area. Firstly, their product manuals and user support do not provide device specific instructions to sort common issues (like loss of Bluetooth pairing). Second, it’s apparent that the documentation is not checked and validated by English first language speakers with user experience backgrounds. Third, support staff will take three days to respond to support requests - which is a poor experience when you’ve only just purchased an expensive scooter. Forth, their support staff are not equipped to provide troubleshooting steps and documentation directly relevant to the specific model of scooter, and will instead provide steps for other models and not make clear these will work for your device, or how to handle any differences in the process for your device. This made their customer support experience beyond frustrating.
Pros:
- Great ride quality
- Comfortable
- Shock absorbers
- Ability to mount a decent mobile phone holder to the handlebars
- Wide availability of genuine repair parts, and likely ease of self repair
Cons:
- Inexcusable poor machining tolerances, and low quality of stem screws
- Repeat Bluetooth failures
- Customer support, including poor quality documentation and timeliness of support response
- Accessories not available at release (storage bag, seat, baskets, etc)”
“What a great machine, excellent power and great battery life. The suspension system takes away any jarring and the App works really well. The dash has a great display of info and all of the controls are easy to operate. Very impressive.”
