Category: Sofu Reviews

Posted on by Sophia Tung

Exway X1 – The New Golden Standard of the East?

Follow the discussion on Reddit here

If you want the TL;DR, see end of review

So What’s The Rub?

Many recreational vehicular hobbies follow a similar pattern of development. They almost always start out with a small group of super passionate people who manage to shoehorn something together that’s fun and exciting and gets the adrenaline going. Then, more of the same sort of DIY minded people come together, sharing expertise and experience, until there’s a sizable community.

Now a problem arises, where the DIY vehicles look and feel very DIY, with gotchas and wacky issues and weird configurations. So, inevitably, somebody starts making and selling parts that solve these issues. Pretty soon, manufacturing becomes serious business and companies start springing up providing ready-made parts. Reliability and consistency increases.

With the beginnings of market saturation taking place, the race to drive down the price while upping the quality starts. The main drivers in the beginning are usually boutique manufacturers who make high quality but expensive vehicles. Then as soon as there’s a market for such gear, the manufacturing wheels begin to turn in the East. Low budget, cheap products begin to pour in, saturating the market with wares. It usually takes the target audience a little bit to adapt. Those who will settle for the cheap products do, and those who want high quality and have a big budget continue to purchase expensive, quality products, or simply DIY.

But what about the people in the middle? What about the ones who are willing to spend a bit more for great quality but are unable to spend a lot for their gear?

I believe this is the stage at which electric skateboarding as a hobby is currently. At the high performance, high price end, we have Evolve Skateboards, Boosted Boards, Metroboard, and similar. At the low performance, low price end, we have the Meepos and Teemos of the eskate world. However, there’s a slowly emerging middle class that combines a sub $1k cost with performance, versatility, and quality. These boards are aiming to appeal to the section of the rider demographic who are willing to spend for more quality than one would get with cheap stuff but won’t cross the $1k line. Right now, there are very few players in this space. But manufacturers have been making moves, and already, Boosted Boards has all but cornered the market segment with their Mini series, with Backfire also trying to carve out their chunk of this space. But do they have a new challenger with Exway? Is the X1 a winning formula against the established heavyweights?

Hardware

The hardware on the X1 is seriously nice. America sourced Seismic Aeon downhill trucks, 90A Seismic bushing, and a contoured, stiff multilayered (bamboo, CA maple, fiberglass, carbon fiber) deck layup makes riding at speed controllable and responsive. The dual electronic speed controller or ESC, a collaborative effort between Exway R&D and Hobbywing (A long time player in the hobby hardware category), is directly configurable, updatable, and capable of pushing 110 amps peak in “Variable Frequency Soft-start” mode, or what we typically call “FOC” mode. The dual 1000 watt hub motors are developed in house and feature easily replaceable urethane (comes with both 80mm and 83mm sleeves standard). All this is driven by a 12S li-ion polymer battery that’s integrated into the deck, allowing for a deceptively thin profile. It’s really quite an impressive package.

 

Remote

The Exway remote is really my favorite remote by far. It’s ergonomic, solidly built, extremely responsive, and finished in a nice, matte, soft touch material that’s just amazing to run your hand over. It also features a bright OLED display that displays live updating telemetry for both the board and the remote, and is easily viewable in direct sunlight. In addition to all that, Exway also built in nice details, such as the ability to automatically turn on the board when you turn on the remote, ability to display the charge level of the board while the board is plugged in, and a whole settings panel that allows for fine grain adjustment of throttle min and maxes, pairing with different boards, and some other stuff regular users probably shouldn’t mess with to be honest. The remote also features a vibration motor that alerts you to speed mode changes, low battery, and a variety of other things you should be aware of while riding.

The user experience of the remote is great. There’s no lag at all, and control is precise and unfailing. Despite my best efforts, I was never able to make the remote disconnect no matter how many times I rode through areas that would usually make Evolve and Boosted remotes disconnect. This is the standard manufacturers should adhere to.

Technical Testing

Testride route:

Rider specs: 125lb, 5’6″

As part of my reviews, I perform a series of measured, purely technical tests on review units. These tests are meant to push the units to the extreme that their electronics can handle and reveal any problems that may have not been revealed by simple riding tests. Technical tests are done under the most favorable conditions possible.

Acceleration

It’s great. Deceptively quick, insanely smooth, and outruns a Boosted Stealth in casual testing. However, it’s worth noting that by default, the X1 actually comes with the highest speed mode, mode 4, set at only 80% power. This can be remedied by simply connecting to the board via the app and pushing the acceleration and braking sliders all the way to 100%. At 100%, I was very surprised at how mean the ramp-up gets. It’s still insanely smooth, but if you’re not careful you might slip off the back. Don’t ask me how I know this. Suffice to say, you will pretty much never want for torque.

Worth mentioning is the fact that as of mid-August, Exway has pushed out a firmware update for the board and remote that ups the max possible acceleration rampup. 100% acceleration is now even meaner.

Top Speed

Measured, my speedometer says 25mph going up a 5% hill grade. This is in line with Exway’s figures. It’s also notable that a friend who weights significantly more than I do (185 lbs) gets the same speed going up the same hill. In the same mid-August update I mentioned above, Exway has increased top speed to 27mph. That’s some speed.

Range

When I leave the X1 at its “recommended max settings”, or how it’s set up out of the box, I get around 9-10 miles of heavy riding in a very hilly city (San Francisco) with a bit to spare. In my opinion, this makes it a good mid range board. If you’re looking for something long range that will take you 20 miles on a charge, this is not it.

Braking

The brakes are pretty great. As with acceleration, control is precise and smooth. This is very important, as braking is paramount to rider safety. Strong, predictable brakes means a safer ride, and the X1’s brakes certainly make me feel safe. As of the same software update mid-August, the brakes are now even better. Braking distance is now significantly reduced and max braking power has been increased.

Stress Handling

As part of my acceleration tests, I do a series of full accelerating and full braking to test responsiveness, acceleration/braking curve, and power delivery. The X1 passes with no issues, and it still consistently impresses me with how nicely it handles this test.

Turning Radius

Unlike most boards available at retail, the X1 comes with quality hardware. Seismic’s bushings produce no slop and stay self lubricated, which means predictable maneuvering at both max and min speeds. All Seismic Aeon bushings will work here, which means you can dial your trucks exactly how you like. Personally, I prefer Seismic’s 86A bushings since I’m lighter, but the stock 90A Seismic bushing the X1 comes with are likely the way to go if you’re heavier.

Ride & User Experience

There’s really no debate here. The X1 is a great board to ride if you like speed and power. However, it’s also a great board if you want a thoughtful user experience. So many manufacturers ignore the user experience to their detriment, but here is where the X1 really shines. If you’ll allow me, I’m going to list a few things I really like about the X1’s UX:

  • Magnetic charge port with magnetic cover means that I can pull the board off my rack, have the charge port cover automatically snap back into place, and not have to worry about water ingress running through puddles.
  • Turning on the remote turns on the board as well. I never have to fumble around for the on button.
  • I can easily see the charge level down to the percentage when the board is plugged in and charging just by turning on the remote.
  • The remote’s display runs at 30fps, providing smooth animations and responsive feedback.
  • There’s a cruise control option as well as a reverse braking option, which enables the Exway to have a mode similar to Mellow’s Endless mode as well as Boosted’s braking reverse control scheme.

As an aside, I’d like to mention that for the initial review unit, Exway USA asked me to abuse the daylights out of it to see if it would break. It didn’t break and I never had a problem with it.

A Word On Customer Service

Historically, Chinese manufacturers have not been great with foreign customer service. It can often be a huge headache getting support, especially for a product category like electric skateboards, which tend to break down more often due to the nature of the sport. I personally have seen and heard many horror stories from various people of unanswered emails, unintelligible “Engrish”, and even refusal of support. However, I’m happy to report that I’ve had no such problems with Exway USA. They’ve been prompt in their communications and interactions with me (not that they’ve needed to take any significant action) and have a retail presence in many local skate shops on both the East and West coast, meaning getting help could be as easy as hitting up your local skate shop.

Verdict

So how does it stack up?

Well, I’ve had months of experience with the board now, and it’s performed admirably and held up exceedingly well to abuse. Since I’ve begun testing it, it’s gotten speed and control upgrades and new accessories (Exway now makes a shock absorbing grip tape for the X1). It’s become my go to board for running errands around the city. It’s slim, easy to handle, and easy to stow in tight spaces. It’s water resistant, easy to use, and even scratch resistant. I’m already chomping at the bit for a proper long range board from Exway with the same electronics and UX as the X1. But for $888 USD, what more do you want?

Posted on by Sophia Tung

Riptide R1 Elite. So what’s the verdict?

Follow the discussion on Reddit here

Early last week on a sunny Sunday, full of chocolate from the SF Chocolate Salon, I headed over to Pier 48 to take delivery of a loaner production Riptide R1 Elite. I’d previously ridden the Riptide when it was still in prototype phase and had some thoughts about it at the time, so was excited to try the production version and see how much further along Eric and company had gotten on their flagship product.

If you want the TL;DR, see end of review

Testride route: (Unavailable due to tracker issue… I’m sorry…)

Rider specs: 125lb, 5’6″

Hardware

The base hardware has not changed since the prototype. The same fun kicktailed deck is present, with all the same maneuverability and agility as the prototype. It’s important to note that there is no concave on the deck so it’s not as comfortable as it could have been, but it’s still very serviceable and not a bad ride overall. As usual with inexpensive boards, skate hardware is somewhat lacking as the stock bushings left me wanting. However, it’s trivial to replace them with something much more conducive to your own riding style. I did not get a chance to try the wheels on the standard version of the Riptide, so I can’t comment on that, but the ABEC 11 wheels that came with the Elite performed admirably. Oh, did I mention I love the kicktail?

Make no mistake, I quite like the look of the board as a whole. It’s small, cute, and dorky. Just my thing!

The electronics that are in the Riptide, however, are very obviously geared towards the casual rider. The thing is, the Riptide Elite is just… OK. Acceleration is just OK, braking is just OK, and remote responsiveness is, unfortunately, just OK as well. You won’t find any performance here, so if you’re looking for a shortboard with power, you should be looking elsewhere.

Remote

Now we must talk about the remote. The remote is the same generic nano remote you can find almost everywhere. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, as it’s a tried and true remote commonly used by manufacturers and DIYers alike all. Not fancy, but definitely gets the job done. However, for whatever reason, the Riptide’s setup has somehow unintentionally introduced latency to the control scheme. On other boards I’ve tried with similar remotes, latency has not been an issue. Response has been immediate. On the Riptide however, it performs OK most of the time, but sometimes, when releasing the throttle, the board will keep accelerating a little bit more before actually stopping acceleration. This happens just often enough for me to be concerned. I’m not the only one concerned about it either, as other experienced riders corroborate my findings. I’ve mentioned it to Eric so he’s at least aware of the issue, but I haven’t been able to reproduce it reliably. The same thing happens when braking as well. It’s very curious.

Technical Testing

As part of my reviews, I perform a series of measured, purely technical tests on review units. These tests are meant to push the units to the extreme that their electronics can handle and reveal any problems that may have not been revealed by simple riding tests. Technical tests are done under the most favorable conditions possible.

Acceleration

Takeoff on smooth, flat ground on all modes was pretty normal and nothing special. However, once in a while, the curve is slightly different. It’ll take longer to get up to top speed or take shorter, suprising you and making you lose your balance slightly. Takeoff up a hill past around 5% grade, however, induces something I call “cogging motor syndrome”. This really just means that you will have a bit of a lurchy start. The issue is easily remedied by kickpushing to start up a hill, but should be noted anyways.

Top Speed

My speedometer said around 19MPH when full battery and 17MPH when not, which is close to the advertised top speed for the Elite. Riptide states that the top speed of the Elite should be 20MPH. Close enough.

Braking

In my prototype review, I’d mentioned that I thought the brakes were pretty good. Unfortunately, at the time, I was not able to see how it handled for heavier folks. I’m hereby correcting my previous statement to “Braking is pretty good… If you’re not on the heavier side.” It’s adequate for me, if a bit soft, though it will *not* stop you down a hill if you’re heavier. A friend of mine got on it in the middle of a downhill section of my test route, and actually accelerated while on full brake. He did not stay on it for very long. This is unfortunate for any board as braking is of huge important at the speeds electric skateboards usually travel at, and the lack of strong braking is usual detrimental to safety. I recommend purchasers of this board to practice foot braking as your life might depend on it one day. I was able to talk to Eric about the braking, and here’s what he has to say about it:

“Ahh I’m glad you got to spend some time with it! That’s funny you ask that, a lot of people say the brakes are too hard and take getting used to. We picked a level that could be used by a first time esk8er rather than making than as hard as we would prefer”

I would tend to agree that softer brakes are easier to get used to. However, I’m not too sure if softer brakes should be the norm. Most beginners trust their lives to the brakes, assuming that they can always rely on them to stop properly. Soft brakes such as the ones found on the Riptide might not perform how those beginner riders expect…

Stress Handling

As part of my acceleration tests, I do a series of full accelerating and full braking to test responsiveness, acceleration/braking curve, and power delivery. Unfortunately, the curve issues I highlighted in my prototype review still exists. Fortunately, if you’re used to bracing for acceleration and braking, it should mostly be a none issue.

Turning Radius

There are wheel wells on the bottom of the deck that allow for sharp turns. The kicktail helps immensely as well as you can put weight on it to bring the nose around sharply. Very nice!

Ride & User Experience

Riptide meant for their first line of boards to boil down to two things: safe and convenient. Here’s what Eric, Riptide’s founder as well as founder of Shredlights, says about them:

“It’s really meant to be a utility board for getting around. I was riding the Boosted everywhere (class, groceries etc.) and I noticed that almost 50% of the time I had the Boosted, I was actually carrying it. Then I always wanted a kicktail for quicker maneuvering. I bought one of the first Arc Boards and the carbon fiber deck was wayy to [sic] flexible and the wheelbase was too short so it was sketchy to ride at 20 mph; which is why the R1 has a longer wheel base and wide deck”

It’s true. The Riptide is a great board to carry around due to its built in handles, small form factor, and relatively light weight profile. Maneuverability is great, with the kicktail providing the ability to sort of lever the nose around. Eric is also correct in saying shorter wheelbases tend to make sketchier riding at higher speeds. The Riptide line has a nice wheel base, not too long and not too short.

Where it falls flat is user experience. It’s the little things, the small niggles, that prevent me from fully liking this board. Braking is ok, but should be stronger. Acceleration curve is OK, but should be more consistent. The remote handles OK, but the lag that happens once in a while puts just the slightest damper on the experience.

It’s a shame because it’s otherwise a good product.

Verdict

So what’s my verdict? Are you going to be traveling short distances with minimal hills in environments that require maneuverability? If so, this is the board for you. If you want top notch UX and peak safety, the Boosted Mini might be a better bet.

Posted on by Sophia Tung

Riptide R1 Prototype Preview (09/21/2017)

This review was originally published on February 5th, 2018 and reflects my honest opinions at the time of publication. No part of this review has been redacted in any way. It has only been corrected for grammar and spelling.

Follow the discussion on Reddit here

If you want the TL;DR, see end of review

Introduction

Yesterday (09/30/17) I rolled myself down to the Embarcadero in San Francisco at 2PM to attend the Riptide Ridealong, which was an event that /u/spooky_ghost, someone who I frequently skate with, set up in conjunction with the Riptide folks. I’d been looking forward to this event, as I really wanted to try out the Riptide R1, which was one of the extremely few recent boards that list realistic specs and set seemingly realistic expectations.

During the ridealong, I was able to get a huge amount of unfiltered access to the board. I’d swapped boards with Eric, CEO of Riptide/Shredlights, so was able to ride the R1 about 4.5 miles through all types of terrain, especially significant hills and extremely rough roads. My deepest apologies to Eric, I hope you weren’t freaking out too much when us in the back disappeared… We headed to Last Mile SF as stated on the schedule after we lost you guys in front!

Notice

Please keep in mind that what I tested was a prototype and that this review should not be construed as condoning of condemning the final product.

Impressions

Notes

Hardware

This is a fun board. There’s no other way to describe it. It’s clear that Eric and co. know their target demographic, and know them well. The board itself has this stout, chubby build and look, which makes it really endearing and feel really sturdy. The deck length is about 31″ so it’s not really the most comfortable board for long rides (my legs were completely numb three miles into my long ride), but if you’re looking to bang up and down some waterside paths or a park path, it will do just fine. The dual motor setup is adequately powerful for something this small, and is actually quite torquey. Although it’s not going to beat anything else off the line, during my times riding I’ve actually been thrown off the back a couple of times due to the acceleration, though this is also in part due to another issue which I will highlight later. Throughout my ride, up and down hills, I was constantly worried that the board would not be able to make it up or brake properly going down, but those worries were unfounded as the board performed admirably even when the road got extremely potholey and rough.

I think it will be great having a board this small. You can take it anywhere, and I do mean anywhere, as it comes in under airline battery restrictions. I’m a frequent traveler, and while I don’t plan on bringing any boards with me anytime soon, I can imagine other people would want to. It’s easy to throw this board in a variety of places.

Throw it:

  • Under a strap on your backpack
  • In your carry on
  • In your trunk
  • Down a halfpipe
  • Down on the boardwalk
  • Up in NYC
  • Off a curb

Don’t throw it:

  • To the sharks
  • Off a bridge
  • On your junk

The options for where to throw this thing is endless.

Kicktail

Having a proper kicktail means that you can now do so much more due to the increased maneuverability. Turning a tight corner is now not a problem. If you’re strong and heavy enough, you can also try and do ollies, or hit up skate parks. Eric said that one of the goals for the bottom electronics enclosure was for it to be strong enough to take regular beatings, so I can imagine people more skilled than I pulling off proper tricks on this thing.

Remote

The remote is the same as the Meepo remote, that is to say it’s nothing special. It works. There’s a thumbwheel for acceleration and deceleration. Right under that is the switch for low/high power mode. At the bottom of the remote is the on/off switch. Holding the remote in your right hand, on the left surface you’ll find your battery indicator and forward/reverse button. It’s worth noting that the battery indicator here has three dots, while the indicator on the board itself has four bars. It’s an odd inconsistency, and made it confusing for me to gauge just how much power the board actually had at a given time. At one point, I saw one dot on the remote but two dots on the board, which made it really confusing for me to plan my route to the next destination. Eric did make it clear that they were using off the shelf parts, so I imagine there’s not that much leeway in what he gets to customize.

Another issue with the remote, and I think the biggest one, was responsiveness. There is extremely noticeable lag-time between action and response, which is not a good thing when you’re on a board like this. Since balancing is paramount on a smaller deck, you’re constantly shifting your weight to get the best footing for every situation. Because you’re doing so much work to keep yourself upright, you trust the board to help you. But in the case of the laggy remote, it becomes very hard to trust the remote to provide the correct amount of power at the correct time when it’s unpredictable when the remote will lag and when it won’t. I believe this inconsistent power delivery is the issue at the heart of why I got thrown off those couple of times, and Riptide does need to fix this as a high priority issue.

Technical Testing

Testride route: 

Rider specs: 125lb at 5’6″

As much as I was able to, I tried to do as scientific of tests as possible. I was only able to measure extremely limited measurements, but I’ll do my best to describe to you results of my tests as best I can. It is worth noting that I did these tests when the battery was at around 50-60%.

Acceleration

On normal mode, acceleration was slow and easy. Nothing to see here. On pro mode, acceleration was still nice, but there were some weird starting judders. It felt like grinding gears a bit. I’m not sure what it was, but it only manifested sometimes. It’s a little bit disturbing, especially when going uphill as you don’t feel that power delivery when the grinding happens, but I’ll chalk it up to prototype weirdness.

I did my 0 to full speed acceleration test eight times in quick succession. About three times out of those eight, I encountered different acceleration curves because the remote lagged when I gunned it from a full stop. This further highlights the remote/power delivery issue. I *really* hope they fix it.

Top Speed

My speedometer said 17. That’s close enough to their advertised 18mph top speed that I believe their claims. Maybe the board would have had just slightly enough power to hit 18 on full charge. Of course this isn’t the fastest board out there, but it’s quite fast for a small board.

Braking

Braking is pretty good. There doesn’t seem to be a perceivable different between normal mode braking and pro mode braking. Both bring you to a stop from top speed at a reasonable distance, and is gentle enough that you won’t get thrown off the board. It does not have a short braking distance though, so definitely keep that in mind in relation to your speed when navigating through areas with dense traffic.

One aspect of braking that I did not test was braking at 100% battery. Eric informed me that they do not yet have a solution for braking at 100% battery, but are working with their manufacturer to come up with one. I believe braking is one of the paramount issues to eskate safety today, so the fact that it was not part of the design from the get go worries me a bit. However, since I don’t have visibility into Riptide’s design process, I can’t comment very much on that. I just hope they are able to fix the issue in the final production boards because they really are risking injury to the rider.

Stress Handling

Stress handling tests involve continuously taking the board to full throttle immediately from a completely standstill, immediately braking, then immediately accelerating again in a loop. I did the cycle 10 times each on flat ground in a parking lot and 10 times on slightly sloped ground going down and up. I’m happy to report that the R1 exhibited no problems during any of these situations except for the issues I illustrated above.

Turning Radius

The R1 is capable of performing some sharp turns. There are wheel wells on the underside of the deck to facilitate really deep carves, which is great. Personally, I wasn’t a huge fan of the bushings they used, which seemed rather stiff to me, but that’s not really an issue since bushing can be swapped out easily depending on personal preference. No problems here!

Drag Race

I didn’t get to race the R1 directly against a boosted board, but having ridden both V1 and V2 BBs, I think the R1 would pretty much match the capabilities. There’s no point pitting it against any higher powered boards because that’s not their market. Eric specifically stated that he imagined the R1 to be people’s secondary board for shorter rides where large boards are overkill, and I respect that. I will say however, having owned a Blink S, this is much better.

A Comment On Parts

One major thing to note is that Riptide is using off the shelf parts for almost all parts of this board. This means that Riptide is relying on the parts themselves to be tested and proven durable instead of the board as a whole, though I’m sure they’ve done durability tests on the board itself. This also means that you won’t be finding anything new here in terms of performance and hardware. While the deck may change the riding characteristics of the board, if you’re not new to the eboard industry and have tested many boards, this board will feel like the many that have come before. *This is not a bad thing*, and indeed may be a good thing for some. This means the board is predictable, and you’ll be able to find documentation and replacements for nearly all parts found on the board for cheap when your warranty runs out. This also means that many of you might call this board another “China Board” and while you are not wrong, I don’t think you’re entirely right either. Yes, there are many horrible mass production “boards” out there. However, there are some good or even great mass production boards that use some of the same parts. Does that mean that the great boards should be lumped in with the other bad ones that share the same parts? I don’t really think so.

I’m not trying to defend Riptide here. I too would rather see something that’s purpose designed and built with custom parts. That’s just not feasible for a small company, unfortunately, and I don’t blame Riptide for using resources at their disposal. At the end of the day, what they’re playing here is a mix and match game, and I think they’ve hit on a pretty great match.

That’s it

Feel free to ask me any questions in the comments. I’ll try my best to answer!

Posted on by Sophia Tung

Acton Blink Qu4tro Prototype Preview (09/21/2017)

This review was originally published on September 22, 2017 and reflects my honest opinions at the time of publication. No part of this review has been redacted in any way. It has only been corrected for grammar and spelling.

Follow the discussion on Reddit here

If you want the TL;DR, see end of review

Introduction

Today (09/21/2017) I went over to Acton’s Headquarters in Santa Clara, California, and tested the Blink Qu4tro. I was invited the previous day via email, and the person I corresponded with was extremely nice and extremely prompt when responding. I’m writing this review for future Qu4tro owners as well as Acton engineers, who I’m also linking to this review.

When I got there, there were two other people there, as well as a huge number of engineers gathered around. We were taken to the back through their prototyping garage, which contained all sorts of boards in half built states, including another Qu4tro with its internals spilling out.

  • What we were allowed to test ride:
    Blink Qu4tro with “Avenue collaboration trucks” (these are a HUGE deal, I’ll come to that later)
  • Blink S2 with “Avenue collaboration trucks” (not as big a deal on the S2, but still big)
  • Blink Lite (original)

Let’s get the unimportant stuff out of the way first. Blink Lite was same old. The interesting stuff starts with the Blink S2.

S2

What they basically did was put the “Avenue collaboration trucks” that were meant for the Qu4tro on the S2. Peter allowed us to ride this S2 while they were trying to fix the Qu4tro. More on this later. I’d previously ridden a production S2 and owned an S for half a year so I know what the originals are like. This was nothing like the original. While everything electronic stayed the same, the ride quality was completely changed by the spring suspension. I won’t say it was ruined, but these trucks the way Acton has them currently configured are not meant to go on such a light board. You become completely disconnected from the road because you feel like it’s all you can do to hang on. Turning radius was also ruined, but more on that later. Bottom line, suspension trucks on the Blink S2 will only appeal to extremely select people and will ruin the board for the vast majority. I have a feeling this won’t make it to production.

Blink Qu4tro

Please keep in mind that what I tested was a prototype and that this review should not be construed as condoning of condemning the final product.

Hardware

The deck itself is constructed with three distinct sections. The front and back load bearing sections are constructed from cast aluminum. The mid section is constructed from seemingly the same material as the Blink extrusions. The deck itself is durable, but I don’t think anybody doubted that, but just for anecdotal evidence, I’m a 125lb girl and jumping as hard as I could on the deck felt like I was jumping on the floor. That is to say, it’s incredibly stiff. Some people will like that, some people won’t. In the end, it’ll be up to preference, but I don’t think it’s a huge deal. Compared alongside the Carbon GT’s 40″ deck, it seemed around 3″ shorter, so I’d say the deck is around 36-37″ in length.

What is a huge deal, however, is the weight. Due to the materials used, battery density due to power required, and just overall design decisions, the deck is heavy. Extremely heavy. And dense. Picking up the prototype feels like picking up one and a half Evolve Bamboo GTXs. If you imagine the weight of 1.5 GTXs but squeezed into a denser package, you’ll get the Qu4tro. I even struggled a bit to pick one end of it up to turn around. It’s that heavy. Peter says that they’re still attempting to make the whole package lighter, and that they’re using a different material than cast aluminum for the front and rear load bearing sections (he neglected to tell me what they’re switching to) so hopefully production models will be lighter.

Avenue “Collaboration” Trucks

Now you might be thinking that weight doesn’t matter if you’re never picking it up. You’d be wrong. Part of what makes a board good overall, especially for eskates, is weight and trucks, which brings me to my next point. This is a huge point. The new suspension trucks. These trucks… boy… where to start…

Let me start by saying that they’re not the same as the current Avenue longboard trucks that you can pick up from Avenue’s online store. The trucks on the prototype boards that we got to ride were actually hand made prototypes based on the Avenue trucks. They rode extremely high, and did not really play well with the hangars. This by itself probably wouldn’t have been too much of an issue, but combined with the weight of the deck and high center of gravity it forced, the board became basically uncarvable and unturnable. If you tried to carve, the bounce back from the springs would try to throw you off. If you tried to turn, the trucks would try to bounce back and you wouldn’t be able to turn. It wasn’t until I loosened the kingpin to basically unridable levels that I could turn 180 on a decently wide road, and even then, I could just barely do it. Basically, Acton needs to serious work on these trucks.

It’s not all bad. I was assured by the engineering team that the spring curvature would resemble the Avenue ones more, which should mean less ridiculous spring and lower center of gravity, which in turn should help with reducing the effects of the weight which again in turn enables better carving and turning. I’ll believe it when I see (ride) the production trucks.

Remote

The remote was surprisingly nice. It uses a thumbwheel system with **no** deadman trigger, and was not sensitive at all. The version of the remote I tested was definitely 3D printed, but it had a nice feel and heft to it. There’s an indicator light on the bottom top facing side of the remote that blinks to indicate battery life and board status. It’s akin to the status indicator of the Yuneec E-go remotes, which is to say that getting your current status while riding by reading colors and counting blinks will get annoying. Right underneath the indicator light is the on/off switch. Connection, as with the other Blink series boards, is instantaneous. There’s no mode switching on the controller *still*. Mode switching has to be done from the app.

Ergonomics of the remote is mostly ace, or at least the part you grip is ace. I’m not sure why they’re keeping the top and bottom portions that stick out if the controller doesn’t act as a pull handle anymore, as all it does now is look weird and keep the controller from comfortably fitting in my pocket or purse. There were no controller related cutouts while I was riding the board hard. (There were definitely points where I lost control completely but I’ll get to that later)

Technical Testing

As much as I was able to, I tried to do as scientific of tests as possible. I was only able to measure extremely limited measurements, but I’ll do my best to describe to you results of my tests as best I can.

Acceleration

Acceleration curves on Normal mode was nice and easy. Acceleration on Pro mode was still nice, definitely feels more like the Raptor 2 acceleration curve and not the “Extreme G-Force” acceleration on the GT modes on Evolve boards. I think Acton nailed this aspect of the board’s UX, but I could see myself missing the exhilaration of the GT mode’s full power at 0 seconds. Peter says that’s not the market they’re targeting, so I’m not going to argue with that.

The dozens of times I went from full standstill to max speed, there were only a couple of times where it felt like the acceleration curve was uneven. I could chalk it up to prototypes not having the fully completed power delivery system, but that and other issues I’ll describe later makes me worried.

Top Speed

My speedometer said 22mph. That’s on the 88mms Acton had on the demo board. Compared to the 27mph measured on my CGT with 97mms on the same exact course. 3 repeated tests produce the same results. It’s “fast enough” for most people, but definitely not the fastest.

Braking

In normal mode, braking was fine. It slows you down to a complete stop pretty gradually, so you don’t have to worry about being thrown off. At the same time, don’t expect the braking to save you from oncoming traffic if you’re trying to stop at an intersection and you don’t know how to footbrake. In pro mode, braking **at full charge** will **shut down the board**. This happened twice. Once before the Facebook live stream, and once during the Facebook live stream. If you were watching, I was all the way at the end of the road near the turnaround and an engineer had to run and fetch the board. As I explained to both Peter and the engineers, this happens on the Blink S and Blink S2 and can *easily* be fixed with an overcharge resistor. The resistor would convert energy into heat which you can pipe into the all metal frame of the Qu4tro. This issue is even more crucial with the Qu4tro because instead of two motors pumping regen charge into the system, there’s now four. Twice the amount of power, twice the likelyhood of shutdown. I stressed this point to Peter and the engineering team there multiple times since there’s such a huge increase in risk of death. **They said they’d fix it**. If they don’t by launch time, y’all know it’s not because I didn’t try.

Stress Handling

After the shutdown incidents, they didn’t let me back onto Pro mode, so I ran the rest of the tests in Normal mode. Stress handling, where you accelerate to full speed then brake to a complete stop, is often used to test systems such as eskates where large amounts of power is transferred to and from various parts of the system. Doing this in Normal mode revealed no problems, but of course our concern here is Pro mode.

Turning Radius

Please see my thoughts above on the truck setup. No accurate tests could be performed.

Drag Race

I didn’t get to directly race the two boards against each other, but I did let the Acton engineers try the CGT. I’m not sure if they knew that Mandarin was my native language, but they were talking amongst themselves after trying the CGT and the phrases “insane acceleration”, “way faster”, and “crazy” got thrown around a lot so I’m going to assume they were reasonably impressed. I did find it strange that they apparently had no idea companies like Evolve or Enertion even existed. It seems to me that if you’re going to build a product that’s supposed to compete in this kind of market, you’d at least try stuff from other companies… Anyways, from my personal testing, there’s really no comparison. Both acceleration and top speed on the CGT blows the Qu4tro away.

Suspension Trucks

See my earlier section on this. I will add though that they were actually quite stable at high speeds. Might have to do with the weight of the board though.

That’s it

Feel free to ask me any questions in the comments and I’ll try my best to answer.