Like many electric scooters that are trying to maximize range, the ES2 must be kick-started. Though we expect a 300-watt electric motor on a – electric scooter to be fairly peppy, acceleration was downright sluggish.

During our acceleration tests, the Ninebot ES2 went from 0 to 15 mph in 7.1 seconds, nearly one second slower than the M365 (6.3 seconds). The ES2 is actually slower than its cheaper, smaller motor (250 watt) friend, the Xiaomi M365.

On the plus side, the motor is very quiet.

The Ninebot ES2 electric scooter is a very poor scooter for climbing hills. In a city with any amount of hills, it will be wholly inadequate.

In fact, the ES2 is actually the slowest scooter we’ve tested. It took 36.9 seconds to complete our 200 feet, 10% grade hill climb test with a 165 lb rider.

For comparison, the less-expensive M365 completed this test in 20.8 seconds.

The top speed of the Segway Ninebot ES2 is 16.0 mph, according to our GPS-tracked top speed test.

The Segway Ninebot ES2 has a 9.8 mi range, according to our real-world range tests. We test all scooters on the same urban test loop with the same 165 lb rider. The loop has frequent stops/starts and hills. The scooter is ridden as quickly as possible in the fastest (least energy-conserving) mode.

This relatively short range isn’t surprising, given that the ES2 has only a 187 watt-hour battery. The M365, its nearest competitor, has a 280 watt-hour battery and achieved 14.6 miles in our real-world range test.

This is less than the Error: Invalid unit “mile”. range reported by Segway, under ideal conditions.