TurboAnt V8 review: two batteries is a better idea than one big one

The insight everyone else missed

Budget scooters fail in the same boring way. The battery is sealed into the deck, it takes eight hours to charge, and you live in a flat with nowhere to park a scooter next to a socket. Six weeks later it is in a hallway and you are back on the bus.

TurboAnt split the battery in two, made both removable, and put one on the stem. You carry a 7.5 Ah pack upstairs, charge it on a desk, and swap it in the morning. The scooter itself can live in a bike store, a garage or a stairwell with no socket anywhere near it.

The problem with budget scooters is not the battery capacity. It is where the socket is.

That is a better idea than any single specification on any other scooter under $900 in this index.

What it does

TurboAnt claims 80 km with both packs. Our loop at 78 kg in the top mode gave 58 km across both batteries, which is a 27% shortfall and, more usefully, is more real range than the Xiaomi Electric Scooter 4 Pro delivers for about the same money.

Charging is four hours for a pack, and because you can charge one while riding on the other, effective downtime is close to zero. That is a structural advantage the spec sheet does not capture.

The ride

Rear dual-spring suspension and 9.3-inch air tubes make the V8 noticeably more comfortable than the solid-tyred scooters at this price. The 6.9-inch deck is wide enough to stand on with both feet placed properly rather than balanced in a line.

The penalty is punctures. Air tubes with no factory sealant on a city commute is a question of when, not whether. Budget $15 for sealant and fit it before your first ride; it is the single best upgrade you can make to this scooter.

Where 450 W shows up

On flat ground, 450 W gets to 32 km/h and holds it without fuss. On our 14% test ramp the V8 dropped to 11 km/h with a 78 kg rider — slower than the Xiaomi, and a long way behind the dual-motor Unagi's 24 km/h.

The three ride modes are also badly spaced. Eco at 6 mph is walking pace and useful only on a shared footpath; Comfort at 9 mph is oddly slow; Sport at 20 mph is what you will use permanently. Two of the three modes are wasted.

What the second battery costs you

The stem-mounted pack is not free. It puts roughly 3 kg high up and forward, which changes the handling more than the weight figure suggests. The V8 steers slightly lazily and feels top-heavy when you lift it, and folded it is an awkward object with a battery sticking out of the middle.

It also means the folded scooter does not lie flat, so putting it in a car boot takes more negotiation than the Xiaomi does. If you are commuting by car and scooter, that matters. If you are commuting by scooter and stairs, the removable pack wins every time.

You can also ride on one battery. Range drops to roughly 29 km measured, the scooter loses about 2 kg, and the handling improves noticeably. For short trips it is the better configuration, and being able to choose is a real advantage.

Four weeks of ordinary use

Two punctures, both rear, both from glass on a cycle lane. Both took about 25 minutes at the roadside with a lever and a spare tube. After the second one we fitted sealant and had no further trouble — which is the strongest possible argument for doing it before the first ride rather than after the second flat.

Otherwise: the folding latch needed tightening once, the stem developed a small amount of play at around 400 km that an Allen key fixed, and the lighting stayed working throughout. Nothing failed.

Braking and build

A mechanical brake plus a disc gave us 4.3 m dry from 25 km/h and 5.5 m wet, with noticeable fade by the eighth consecutive stop. Acceptable at the speed this scooter travels; it would not be at 45 km/h.

Build quality is honest rather than impressive. Fasteners are plain, the folding latch has a little play out of the box, and the plastics are thin. Nothing failed, and nothing felt like it would survive a drop.

Verdict

7.9, mostly earned by a genuinely smart design decision rather than by any individual component. If you live in a flat with no ground-floor socket, this is the scooter to buy under $900, and the reason is not on the spec sheet at all.