- Electric motors are in pretty much everything these days
from cars to bikes to scooters.
But one of the most fun things to ride
with an electric motor in it is an electric skateboard.
Believe it or not, the markets actually grown enough
over the last few years that some of them
are pretty useful now.
Especially in cities, you can even use some of these
to replace other transportation options.
A good electric skateboard should have
more than just a few miles of range.
It should also be fast, not just because that's fun
but because you need the speed to be able
to get around obstacles and avoid danger.
It should also be able to stop really well, too.
And it'd be nice if it was cheap
but most of the best ones are still pretty expensive
so you want to make sure you're getting
the most for your money.
Unfortunately, it's not that easy to find one
that takes all those boxes
but if you choose carefully, you can find something
that gets you really close and still
lets you have a lot of fun.
(upbeat music)
Big surprise, the best electric skateboard
comes from a company called Boosted.
The best one that Boosted makes is
its new Boosted Plus which ticks almost
every box on the list.
The Plus has an advertised 14 mile range
which his really more about 10 to 12
depending on how you ride.
But that's enough to cover most trips without charging.
I can make it all the way to work
and back to my apartment in Brooklyn
without charging in between and that's about
a 12 mile round trip.
More casual rides, you basically never
have to worry about charging.
Boosted's boards are also super durable.
The Plus, like its predecessors,
is really flexible, you can basically jump on it
and never worry about it breaking.
You can even ride the board through water.
It's also fast, with a top speed of about 20 miles an hour,
which is, frankly, as fast as I ever want to go
on an electric skateboard.
But, more importantly, it has really good braking,
which is something you really need
when you're going 20 miles an hour.
I also find Boosted's longboard the easiest to ride
out of all the other options.
It has really bit wheels which grip the road really well,
it has four different ride modes
so you can start off slow.
Maybe most importantly, Boosted just makes the best remote.
It uses a spring loaded wheel to accelerate
and brake and there's just the right mix
of tension and play in that wheel
so that the movements are too sudden
so you go flying off the board.
Boosted also makes the best app
of any other electric skateboard company out there
which shows you stats like range,
has an odometer for how many miles you've traveled.
It's just the most robust look
at all the stats that you've generated
while riding its boards.
The Plus' size makes it easy and fun to ride
but it's also one of the boards biggest draw backs.
At 16 pounds, this thing is just not
that easy to carry around when you're not riding it.
The charger it comes with is also pretty unwieldy,
though the longer range means you hopefully
won't have to carry that around as much.
Another place where the Boosted Plus
loses points is its price.
Even though it's cheaper than the last model
it still costs $1,400 but so much of the competition
is at or over that $1,000 price point
that I'd argue this is where your money goes the farthest.
For a completely different kind of ride,
Boosted's new shortboard, the Mini,
is a smaller counterpart to the Plus.
It's a stiffer board so the ride comfort
isn't quite the same and it weighs about the same,
about 15 pounds.
But I'm fine with those trade offs for the price.
The base level Mini starts at $800
and has about seven miles of range.
Boosted sells an extend range option
that goes up to 14 miles for $1,000.
They're the smallest and cheapest boards
Boosted has ever made but they offer
so much what I love about the big boards,
the durability, the app, the ease and speed of the ride
in a smaller package that's hundreds of dollars cheaper.
One of the only drawbacks about the Boosted Mini
is the ride comfort.
Everything feels like it rattles around a bit more
because of the smaller wheels, the stiffer deck,
and the shorter wheelbase.
This just ultimately means you have to be
a lot more careful on the Mini with bumps
and cracks in the road.
While it might be able to match the Boosted Plus
on range when you have the extended range option,
I didn't necessarily want to ride it
on the same kinds of commutes that I was doing
with the longboard because you
just have to be way more careful.
So if you want the quality of the Boosted longboard
experience but in something that is cheaper
and definitely easier to carry around,
the Mini is basically better than any other
electric shortboard out there.
Or, let's put it another way, Boosted isn't
the only company around making electric skateboards
but based on our experience,
they're definitely the farthest ahead.
One of the only other start-ups
to generate as much buzz about their
electric skateboards as Boosted
is a company called Inboard.
Their M1 skateboard is really
the next best option out there.
At $1,000 it's cheaper than the Boosted Plus
but it only has a seven mile range.
What's cool about the M1 though
is that it has easily swapable batteries
and Inboard sells spares for $200 a pop,
so you can effectively double
or triple your range depending on
how much you want to spend.
The M1 has a stiff deck like the Boosted Mini,
though it's almost as long as the Boosted Plus.
I actually like the flexible Boosted deck better
but the M1 is pretty smooth
and some people prefer the stiffer deck,
especially at higher speeds.
It also has motors integrated into the wheels
which means you probably you won't have to worry about
maintenance on things like belts as much.
It means that M1 actually coasts pretty smoothly, too.
Inboard does a lot of little things right, too.
They have a really good app that shows you stats
and helps you update the board's firmware.
It has a pretty good remote, not as good as Boosted's
but still one of the better ones out there.
And there's also taillights and headlights
on the board, which is good
because it just helps you stay noticed on the street.
Overall it's a really impressive first try
from what's still a relatively new company
and it's not a bad option in place of what Boosted makes.
One of the few boards that actually matches
the Boosted and the Inboard on performance right now
is the Acton Blink Qu4tro.
It uses motors in all four wheels
for a top speed of 23 miles an hour
and it has range of 22 miles.
But the Qu4tro is a nightmarish product.
First off the braking is just really bad,
there's basically no way not to stop suddenly
which is basically a safety hazard.
It weighs 25 pounds which means
it's the worst to carry around.
The remote is really bad and it costs $1,700.
Acton's made a name for itself
making some weird electric rideables
and even a smaller electric skateboard before
but the Qu4tro is just nowhere near the quality
of these other boards that we've been talking about.
There are a lot of other options
for electric skateboards and longboards
on the market now.
There's modular versions, there's off-road version,
there's some with really crazy range
but the problem is a lot of them are still
really expensive and also, a lot of them
are just kinda junk.
The truth is there's still no great and cheap option here.
So if you want to make sure your money goes the furthest
with great range, impressive reliability
and awesome performance, there's nothing that beats
what Boosted has to offer.
Hey, thanks for watching.
I know there are a lot of other
electric skateboards out there,
so let us know in the comments
which one you like the best
and make sure that you subscribe to
the New Verge Science YouTube channel.
(laughing)
Bye Phil.