It’s those times that we find ourselves getting kicked out of the building to finish the story outside, that we know we have something fun to talk about. Various topics from drones to the autonomous, certain things cause a little more commotion inside the office than some would prefer. Mostly because they raise the potential of one of us damaging something or crashing a drone into the printer outside of the boss’ office (yep, that has happened).
In this scenario, we have the E Prime Electric Scooter by Razor. A great way of getting from point A to point B–as long as it isn’t your desk to the bathrooms apparently. Sadly, we were forced to take this one outside and it was probably for good reason. Of course it won’t be long before we work at softening this rule, but for now we have the cards that have been dealt, and you, have a story.
The E Prime scooter is pretty much Razor’s (current) flagship electric scooter. Capable of taking its rider up to 15 mph for up to 40 minutes on a single charge (depending on various details like weight and the grade of the surface you are riding on), this scooter has a lot of pep to it and makes flying around on it a lot of fun. It launched late 2018 (just a number of months ago) and will more than likely take the spotlight in their inventory for a while.
The entire build features an aluminum design that feels sturdy enough to last someone quite a long time. There is some plastic here and there, but nothing that feels like it will wear too quickly or at all, assuming it is treated well.
Wheels are a solid rubber (no air inside), which does create a drawback (which we will discuss in a moment), with metal support on the back tire (front tire rim is plastic). They seem to be able to take a decent beating, although I wouldn’t pack a lot of weight and go 4-wheeling with it as I am sure you will start dinging those tires up eventually.
Like most scooters or skateboards, it features a layer of textured grip (sticker) across the board to keep your feet from sliding around (the material that looks and feels a slight bit like fine sandpaper. It of course has a kickstand for when you want to take a break or store it without folding it.
It folds down making it easy to pack it away into the back of a vehicle or store it at home. Folding it or taking it back out for a ride is as easy as slightly untightening a small bolt and lifting up on it (latch style) to open or close it.
You find that the packaging claims there is some assembly required, but really that’s just the handlebar to the upper steering column. They do give you a small hex tool to do this. You might want to keep that with you as part of a repair piece in case you need to tinker with the handlebar later on.
The steering column (leading to the handlebar) raises up and clicks into place with a small locking pin. You can then secure it further with the clamp that grips it around the same area. Once these three steps have been checked off (attach handlebar, unfold, and raise bar to lock in the height), it is ready to go! Well, actually you are ready to charge it as you want to make sure it is fully charged before you start depleting the battery. This way you can maximize the life of it.
Before anything, you have to turn it on for any of it to work. At the front of your feet, there is a black power button you press and hold to turn it on (or off). Above it are 5 LED lights that show you the current charge of the battery, This way you always know how much juice you still have so that there aren’t any surprises.
There are two variable thumb paddle switches on the handlebar. The one on the left side (red) controls your powered brake, and the one on the right (black) controls your throttle (acceleration). Your acceleration is quite dependant on how hard you are pushing the throttle. So if you hold it down just half way, you will only accelerate at half the speed of the motor. Hold it all the way down and off you go.
It does require you to already be moving at (at least) 3 mph before the throttle will work. This is a safety feature to make sure it only takes off when you want it to.
The brake doesn’t have the same effect really as you just simply hold it all the way down to be effective. It works regardless of how fast you are moving.
The rear fender brake causes the powered brake to kick in as well, when you step down on it. It doesn’t take much effort to trigger it, and it seems to brake more efficiently than the trigger on the handle. The one on the handlebar takes a while to slow down, so if you are looking to come to a full stop fast, think again. The rear control is your best hope and even that requires some stopping distance. Maybe it’s a good thing we haven’t been flying around the office (outside of a few dares) with it.
Performance
The scooter is a ton of fun. It doesn’t take much to get up and going with it. It does take a while to charge this puppy, so you will be charging it by the end of the day or while you hang out at your destination for a while. Surprisingly, it doesn’t offer any kind of quick charge capabilities like you’d find with modern mobile devices, but once it does finish charging it does get you a long ways.
It lasts as long as it promises for the most part. This of course is in perfect conditions like flat leveled ground or included downhill portions. If you find yourself going up hill a lot, you will be getting a little less battery life. Clearly, it is going to tax the motor a bit and cause some extra battery drain. Beyond that, you do get a lot of life out of it. We found that we got around 25-30+ minutes on average. The box does say 40, but the website states 30, so we were finding it hard to determine where we based our scoring of it in this category. So we chose to find the middle and go with 35 for our expectations.
You get a decent amount of speed even with the weight of an adult–although not as quick as their beastly “EXR” model that is coming out sometime later this year, which so far I think is our favorite electric scooter (we have only had a few moments with it, but hopefully we will see more of it when it launches). For now, this is the only thing that comes close to it and does it quite well doing so for its size. We couldn’t tell you how fast we were going exactly since it doesn’t have a speedometer, but it felt like we always had a solid speed for all flat surfaces. The less weight of the person the better of course. Since we are all adults, none of us guys had much of an advantage there. Still though, we got a lot of speed out of it. It does slow down as the battery begins to die, but that’s no surprise.
There isn’t the perfect amount of space on the board for the feet of an adult, but then again, these are made for teens before anyone else. However, once you become adjusted to it, those with larger feet can find ways of coping just fine with where/how they position themselves. For kids and teens, there is a perfect amount of space.
As mentioned, the brake on the handlebar doesn’t bring you to a quick stop. It is a very soft braking motion, so you have to plan out a decent amount of distance to come to a full stop in. The rear trigger option seems to work a little faster, but once again, you need to plan out some distance. For everything else, you have your shoe to do the rest I guess.
The brake is not regenerative like you’d find on electric carts and other products both small and large. So you are actually expending additional energy to use the brakes, which is a surprise. You’d think that they’d want to tap into that a little to gain a few minutes of battery life instead (or at least minimize or prevent the drain caused by the brakes in general).
Of course, if you are experienced with riding a scooter, you are probably more than used to using your shoe to slow down once in a while anyway. It would have been nice though to have a non-powered brake on the back though. I think it might have done a bit better at stopping distance.
Smoothness of the ride in terms of acceleration is fantastic. It isn’t jerky in any way and you maintain total control over it the whole way. It feels no different from going downhill on a normal non-electric scooter. The grip on the board keeps your feet in place and you feel like it’s time to start flipping tricks in no time just out of the pure confidence it gives you.
If we were to strike any anything major (cons), it would simply be the comfort of the ride. The brakes are one thing, and you will survive that just fine. However, it gets uncomfortable after a while during the ride. Without pneumatic tires (air-filled), you do feel every bump in the road or sidewalk. After a while that does get a little tiring and either half your body becomes a little numb or you start to build a headache from your head rattling around on the journey. You feel everything, which doesn’t quite compliment the price. Definitely better for loads of a smaller weight (kids and teens). If this had pneumatic tires, it would be solid gold since you will more than likely spend all of your time on sidewalks and roads (preferably roads if you have well-kept streets in your neighborhood, as those gaps in the sidewalks…).
If you do plan on riding it around inside (not that we are recommending that!), you will find the ride is perfect. Here we have a lot of cement flooring without lines, gaps or cracks running around. The portions where we have carpet are few but these feature flat/packed carpet. So the few attempts we made indoors were great. Too bad the outside world doesn’t offer such a perfect surface. Given, some parks offer neat running paths that are unique and typically offer a smooth running surface with no breaks.
Thankfully, Razor does have a number of new models coming out later this year that will touch on exactly this. Two of these will be the new E Prime Air and the E Prime Plus, which bring pneumatic tires to this model, making it all the better. You can learn a little bit more about what’s to come in the interview we had with Razor back in January (video available below, under the conclusion).
Our Conclusion
This scooter can really haul (censored). It has so much speed to it for how small it feels, and feels so durable. It looks great and everyone you pass will notice you and wonder how they can get their hands on something like this (at least, that’s what we hear in our head when we try to read their mind). You get a decent amount of battery life out of it, allowing you to go up to 6 miles before having to recharge it. Makes you wonder where all that energy is stored in such a small space. It is so much fun and you will wish it lasted hours. Is it perfect? Well, for us, faster + pneumatic tires would be perfect, but for the moment, I guess this is good enough. The brakes do need a little work it seems and there should at least be some kind of suspension to it since the tires are solid. The jerkiness of feeling everything you pass over will be the only thing that prevents you from spending too much time all at once on it. Unless of course you are a kid or teen carrying much less weight than our adult bodies. Since it is missing this though, that was the only thing we could complain about, making it feel like it is missing something (price-wise). Comfort caused a 2-star loss in the score, but it nailed it just about everywhere else, and they have new models coming this year that will solve everything.
| Buy from Best Buy | |
Our Rating | Average Price* $379.99 |
*Average price is based on the time this article was published
Videos:
Unboxing
Interview
Additional Images:
Specifications:
Speed: Up to 15 mph (24 km/h)
Run Time: Up to 30 minutes of continuous use
Motor: Kick-to-start, high-torque, brushless, hub-driven
Throttle: Electronic, thumb-activated, variable-speed, paddle controlled
Brake: Electronic, thumb-activated paddle and rear-fender controlled
Frame: Aluminum
Fork: One-piece billet, aluminum
Grips: Prism-shaped design, molded in soft rubber
Downtube: Aluminum, featuring patent-pending, anti-rattle, folding mechanism
Clamp: Double-stacked
Deck: Length 16.75” (425 mm), width 5.5” (140 mm)
Tires: Extra large, 8” (200 mm), airless rubber
Handlebars: Adjustable-height
Kickstand: Retractable
Battery: 36V lithium-ion pack, rechargeable (UL2271)
Includes: 5-stage LED battery indicator display and battery charger
Age: 14+
Max Rider Weight: 176 lb (80 kg)
Some assembly required
Assembled Product Dimensions: 40.16” x 18.19” x 40.55” (1020 mm x 462 mm x 1030 mm)
Product Weight: 21.56 lb (9.8 kg)
Color: Gunmetal
Co-Author: James Hrenak
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