Jump to content

Starter Wheel


Henrik Olsen

Recommended Posts

Posted

Seems there is a lot of good premium wheels around.. but they are all pretty expensive...

What would be a really good reliable and cheap starter wheel... something you will buy to test out the technology and your skills and later upgrade from...

Range 10-15km
Speed 15-20km/t

Thanks 

/Henrik

 

 

 

 

 

Posted

A cheap starter wheel, is a bit a waist of money, and cheap means you're more likely to get a face plant and all kinds of technical issues.

As a beginner a solid built and stable wheel is preferable, ake a look at the IPS T series or Lhotz with 260 (chinese batt) or 340Wh (jap batt; highly preferable)

 

 

Posted
47 minutes ago, Henrik Olsen said:

Seems there is a lot of good premium wheels around.. but they are all pretty expensive...

What would be a really good reliable and cheap starter wheel... something you will buy to test out the technology and your skills and later upgrade from...

Range 10-15km
Speed 15-20km/t

To be honest it is hard to put "good", "reliable" and "cheap" into the same sentence when discussing an EUC as @Jurgen has just said and I would agree IPS are solid and reasonably priced wheel that are well documented on this forum.

Just like with Hoverboards, there are a such a number of cheap but unknown brands that it is difficult to find trustable reviews of them. The one cheap wheel I'm aware of on this site that looks promising is the Freeman A4, check out this thread and particularly @Sidestreet Reny's videos. He did blow it up eventually but it took a lot of punishment and certainly seemed to handle well:

A better bet may well be to look if anything is available second hand, then check it out before buying on this site and elsewhere that will have the advantage of not waiting for it to come from China and probably not losing much money if you sell it again. I don't know about in Denmark, but Airwheels get promoted a lot and "impulse" bought so they come up regularly second hand. Not the best wheel but fine as a beginners wheel if cheap enough. 

Posted
15 minutes ago, Henrik Olsen said:

Airwheel x3 could be a candidate, they are boring as hell, but reliable it seems... 

Airwheel X3 does the bms cutoff trick. 

Posted
19 minutes ago, Henrik Olsen said:

Airwheel x3 could be a candidate, they are boring as hell, but reliable it seems... 

As @SlowMo has just said Airwheels do have the ability to cut out due to the Battery Management System (BMS) protecting the battery at the expense of the rider.

The thing is that all cheap wheels may do that. 

Bottom line with the Airwheel is that is is every bit as good as a cheap generic wheel but, because it is heavily promoted, is (or was) sold at a premium price. In the UK a big electrical chain was selling them at £800 or more, for which you can by a top quality KingSong, Gotway or Ninebot. Price has halved now on their website. It is that price versus performance that results in the negative views on that wheel on his site. It also isn't helped by what looks to be at least 3 Airwheel staff or resellers pretending they are satisfied customers on this forum and state how good they are!

hence, why I said it is worth buying if you can get one cheaply enough. Bottom line, the Airwheels have known faults, some of which can be improved, see the below thread. If you buy a cheap unknown make than the faults will also be unknown.

 

Posted

The best starter wheel might be a second-hand one from somebody who has upgraded. The problem with that at the moment is that there aren't enough people riding EUCs to provide a decent group of second-hand sales.

Posted

I agree with @dmethvin if the price of a new one is too steep, or you have too many doubts, a good second-hand is an option.

Problem is getting it to Denmark, as airline companies ban big li batts.

I don't know if anybody followed the discussion on the Egyptian airplane that went down in the Med,  but an airline safety expert re-iterated the risk of batteries on board, and the important increase of fires on board the last couple of years.

Importing directly from the factory also gets the price down at the expense of after sales support (for IPS: runrui.meng@iamips.com).

good luck

Posted

As mentioned elsewhere on the forums, I believe that the Ninebot One E+ would be an excellent starter wheel if you don't want to fork over $1,000+ right off the bat. I know that in the US it's possible to get it for as little as $550 + tax. If you can find similar prices where you are, definitely give it consideration.

Another reliable low cost wheel would be the no frills MCM3 with a 30+ km/s top speed. If you can find it for around $500 like I did, then go for it. However this  model is no longer being manufactured, and it was only produced in limited quantity, so it's fairly hard to find. The newer more expensive MCM4 has a lot of improvements made over the MCM3, yet the core system remains nearly identical. 

Posted
20 hours ago, Keith said:

To be honest it is hard to put "good", "reliable" and "cheap" into the same sentence when discussing an EUC as @Jurgen has just said and I would agree IPS are solid and reasonably priced wheel that are well documented on this forum.

Just like with Hoverboards, there are a such a number of cheap but unknown brands that it is difficult to find trustable reviews of them. The one cheap wheel I'm aware of on this site that looks promising is the Freeman A4, check out this thread and particularly @Sidestreet Reny's videos. He did blow it up eventually but it took a lot of punishment and certainly seemed to handle well:

A better bet may well be to look if anything is available second hand, then check it out before buying on this site and elsewhere that will have the advantage of not waiting for it to come from China and probably not losing much money if you sell it again. I don't know about in Denmark, but Airwheels get promoted a lot and "impulse" bought so they come up regularly second hand. Not the best wheel but fine as a beginners wheel if cheap enough. 

Hey "cheap" is such a harsh word...how about affordable? lol. Now "safe" and "reliable" those are good words. One thing I do know is that there are $1000 wheels out there throwing people off everyday. So I don't know.

Posted
13 minutes ago, Sidestreet Reny said:

Hey "cheap" is such a harsh word...how about affordable? lol. Now "safe" and "reliable" those are good words. One thing I do know is that there are $1000 wheels out there throwing people off everyday. So I don't know.

How much is the price of the Freeman A4 and at what battery capacity for us to compare with other brands?

Posted

I have a TG-T3, and it cost me $220 USD at Christmastime in the US. The battery at 132kwh lasts about 35-40min for a 215lb guy like me.

The BMS kicked in only twice on me - a) down to one light and going up a steep hill (too much energy for what was left) and b ) trying to accelerate too fast with low battery remaining.  Basically, the wheel is more apt to shut off on you when the battery is low and you're pushing it.

It survived a lot of beating while I was learning.  I'd say it's a cheap starter, and I wanted to upgrade lately because I wanted more battery life and speed.  Luckily someone on this board was nice enough to sell me his external 156wh that I use in parallel and it's awesome enough to wait off on upgrading since it goes really far now.

Posted

TG-T3 is a great starter wheel. Banggood has it on sale once in a while for around $186. I also like the TG-F3, which has double the battery capacity (264 wh vs. 132 wh in the T3). This one is on sale sometimes at Banggood for around $300. At the beginning you'll be falling and crashing a lot, and you won't mind as much scratching and banging an inexpensive wheel. Yet it still provides 90% of the fun that an expensive wheel gives.

Posted
On ‎22‎/‎05‎/‎2016 at 11:47 AM, Henrik Olsen said:

What would be a really good reliable and cheap starter wheel... something you will buy to test out the technology and your skills and later upgrade from...

Range 10-15km
Speed 15-20km/t

 

 

Just last week there was re-branded JKing wheel (F150) sold at teknikmagasinet in Sweden for 1999 SEK (normal price 2999) under name ORB WheeL X2. It's a 132Wh low spec wheel with not so much references around however with two benefits - 2 years warranty from local physical store plus at that price you'd not feel that much sorry to have it bounce around a bit while learning to ride. It has even training wheels and belt included. However as it have only 350W motor you need to consider weight of the rider and avoid any "extreme" situations like big overleaning, too fast accelerations or steep slopes. Also if you try to lookup some reference to JKing products (they seems to produce mainly "hoverboards") they're not that much favourable ...

  • 2 weeks later...
Posted
On May 22, 2016 at 6:28 AM, Jurgen said:

A cheap starter wheel, is a bit a waist of money, and cheap means you're more likely to get a face plant and all kinds of technical issues.

As a beginner a solid built and stable wheel is preferable, ake a look at the IPS T series or Lhotz with 260 (chinese batt) or 340Wh (jap batt; highly preferable)

 

 

I agree Jurgen. Stay away from cheap wheels. There is enough to concentrate on during the initial training phase without having momentary thoughts bouncing around in your head of a possible shut down while riding resulting in a face plant.

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.

×
×
  • Create New...