Mobility Scooter Review

Pride Go Go Elite Rated

noreply@blogger.com (Mr Mobility) — Wed, 02 Jun 2010 20:52:00 +0000

Finally! At long last we have got round to sorting out the ratings. To celebrate this great event we have added the first set of ratings to what is surely the most popular travel mobility scooter on the market today - the Pride Go Go Elite. It's no surprise that this little scooter garners some pretty positive feedback from users, it averages 4.5 out of 5 in overall satisfaction. It doesn't perform too badly in the categories either, only dropping below 4.5 in the comfort and handling categories, but even then only down to a 4.

The Pride Go Go Elite Traveller is also available in a 17 amp version.

Mobility Scooter Review Goes Live

noreply@blogger.com (Mr Mobility) — Sun, 16 May 2010 19:12:00 +0000

Well we are months behind, a little lacking in design terms and missing some rather crucial features but finally we have some content on the Mobility Scooter Review. We have pages up for nearly two hundred mobility scooters with our price watch prices on most, specifications some and unfortunately reviews and ratings on none.

Why have we gone live with no reviews?

It does sound a little insane for a site called Mobility Scooter Reviews to go live with no reviews at all but we felt what we did have was worth putting live.

So What Have You Got?

We have up to date pricing on the most popular mobility scooter. Our prices are pulled from the ten largest mobility scooter retailers including Factory Outlet Scooters and Value Mobility and are updated at least weekly. Scooter we price watch range from the Pride Go Go Elite Traveller to the NHC Aviator S8.

When Can We Expect Real Reviews

Soon! We have stacks of rating of dozens of scooters from real live customers, all we need to do is sort out the systems to manage them which is taking just a little bit longer than we hoped...

Mobility Scooter Review, Coming Soon (really!)

noreply@blogger.com (Mr Mobility) — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 16:51:00 +0000

It’s been a while since we posted so I thought it was time for an update. We are working night and day to get the main site up and running and it looks like we may have something ready to go in early March (touch wood). Some of the things we hope to have ready for launch include:

Mobility Scooter Search Engine

Using Google search technology we will have a search engine purely for mobility aids. We are going to include as many retailers as we can and hope to have an option to display only those sites that publish prices. While this will be useful for anyone looking to buy a scooter it is also a rather self interested development as we will be using it as the basis for our monthly mobility scooter price watch features.

Mobility Scooter Price Watch

We will be starting these again very soon, hopefully getting a round completed before the proper site goes live. Once it is live we will be aiming to incorporate the price watch feature in with the reviews.

Aliases

Not everyone knows that a TGA Vita is the same as a Heartway S12 and now they won’t have to. Our reviews engine will support multiple variants and aliases letting you find what you want as simply as possible.

Scooter Reviews

And now to the most important part, the reviews. We have been working with scooter retailers to contact genuine consumers of mobility products (scooters and power chairs initially) with the aim of creating the most comprehensive collection of mobility reviews. At the moment we have only received a few, but the signs are good and we expect the trickle to become a flood very shortly. So that is our excuse for not updating the blog for a while. I hope you can bear with us during this busy time, and I hope you will find it worth while in the end!

Mobility Scooter Batteries

noreply@blogger.com (Mr Mobility) — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 19:27:00 +0000

The most common complaint about mobility scooters is why batteries don't last as long as they are supposed to. The first thing to bear in mind is that the manufacturer stated range is often a little optimistic: these figures can be based on a light weight user on flat ground in ideal weather conditions. Another thing to bear in mind is the age of the battery. Each time a battery is discharged and recharged it looses a little capacity - the more often you use your scooter the more often you will have to replace the batteries. While you can't change the conditions you need to ride in, there are things you can do to extend the range of your batteries. These steps will also extend the life of the batteries, and with the battery being the most expensive part of many smaller scooters this is well worth doing.

Use the Right Charger

Manufacturer supplied chargers are designed to work specifically with their batteries. Using the incorrect charger can actually damage your battery.

Turn it off

Ensure that your scooter is turned of when not in use, especially when charging as many chargers are not designed to charge the batteries while they are discharging and this can lead to damage

Charge It Up...

Always charge your battery after use. Don't worry about over charging the battery as modern three stage chargers can be attached indefinitely without damage (as long as it is switched off).

And Keep it Charged

Don't run your battery out completely as this can cause damage, also regularly running your scooter without a full charge can leave deposits on contacts that reduce the efficiency of the battery.

Keep it Cool

While heat or cold shouldn't cause long term damage to you batteries, it can affect the life per charge. Where possible they should be kept in a cool and dry place. If your scooter is not going to be used often, for example during the winter, you should take the batteries off the scooter and store them inside.

Storage

When storing batteries or your scooter you should always store it fully charged. Where possible you should check and recharge the battery if needed ever month. If you are storing your scooter for more than a month it is a good idea to disconnect the battery.

Care for the Battery

Cleaning the battery and greasing its terminals should be an essential part of you mobility scooters maintenance. Try to ensure that you scooter batteries don't get wet, and if they do wipe them of and let them dry fully before use. While battery deterioration is inevitable, by following the advice above you should be able to get more use and enjoyment from your mobility scooter, and hopefully save money on replacement batteries.

Aviator Mobility Scooter

noreply@blogger.com (Mr Mobility) — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 04:34:00 +0000

We like Heartway scooters at mobility review; they are one of the few companies that actually seem to like designing mobility scooters. Their products seem to have a sense of style and fun that is unfortunately lacking in many of their competitors. This year they have launched a number of new products in the S series, and the Aviator S8 is the latest to be imported into the UK by Niagara Health Care (NHC). While not as aggressively styled as the Vita S12, the Aviator is still unmistakably a Heartway Scooter, the chevron motif being reminiscent of the Heartway Royale (imported into the UK as the NHC Royale). As with all Heartway scooters, the details are of the highest standard. The LED headlights auto dim when the scooter is stationary to conserve energy. The controller is a state-of-the art LCD unit featuring all the standard features (speed, battery level ect.) as well as a clock and temperature gauge. The fully adjustable tiller and captains seat ensure an optimal driving position. The Aviator is an eight mile an hour scooter, and as such has the features required by British law; auxiliary hand brake, indicators, pavement mode switcher etc. This scooter is designed for comfort, being supplied with double wishbone suspension allowing for a highly tuned ride and a weight capacity of 28 stones. The Aviator is fitted with the same 700 watt motor as the Vita S8. This is not as large as the Royale's 1,100 watt motor but this is a much lighter scooter than the Royale.

Specifications

WeightCapacity	185kgs(400lbs)
SeatSize	20"
DriveWheel	330mmx100mm(13"x4")
FrontWheel	330mmx100mm(13"x4")
TopSpeed	8MPH
Batteries	12V50Ahx2pcsor12V62Ahx2pcs(Optional)
Range	35km/45km
Charger	5Amp,OffBoard120/240Volt,50/60Hz
Controller	DYNAMICRHINO110Amp
Motor	700W4-PoleMotor
WeightWithBattery	108kgs(238lbs)
Suspension	Full

Pride Celebrity XL8 Discontinued

noreply@blogger.com (Mr Mobility) — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 16:43:00 +0000

One of the most popular mobility scooters of the last decade, the Pride Celebrity XL8 is to be discontinued from the start of 2010. This eight mile an hour scooter was popular for many reasons, not least being it's exceptional build quality and comfortable ride. Consumers should not worry though as there are plenty of excellent mobility scooters ready to take its place. Here are just three of them.

Days Strider Maxi 4

The Strider Maxi 4 scooter is the top of the range four wheeled scooter from Days Healthcare. This eight mile an hour scooter has been designed for both road and pavement use, but really shines on longer, harder journeys. Fitted with a huge 70 Amp battery the Strider has a stated maximum range of 35 miles. The Maxi has front and rear oil damped suspension and pneumatic tires to ensure a smooth and comfortable ride and features a fully adjustable captain's seat.

Maximum Speed :	8 mph
Number Of Wheels :	4
Weight Capacity :	31 stone
Batteries :	70 Amp
Battery Charger :	Offboard charger
Front Tires :	Pneumatic
Rear Tires :	Pneumatic
Range Per Charge :	35.0 miles
Standard Seat :	Two-tone captain seat
Suspension :	Oil damped
Vehicle Length :	56 inches
Weight of the Heaviest Piece :	81.0 lbs

Drive Mercury Regatta 8

The Mercury Regatta 8 is a scooter designed for ease of use. Solidly built to provide years of worry free transportation this scooter has all the features you would expect from a mobility scooter in this class. The Regatta has adjustable suspension both front and rear; a plush rotating admiral seat that reclines and slides; and twin rear mirrors.

Maximum Speed :	8.0 mph
Number Of Wheels :	4
Weight Capacity :	25.0 stone
Batteries :	40 Amp
Battery Charger :	Offboard charger
Front Tires :	Pneumatic
Rear Tires :	Pneumatic
Range Per Charge :	25.0 miles
Standard Seat :	Admiral seat with slide and recline facility
Suspension :	Yes
Vehicle Length :	57.0 inches

Freerider Kensington SII

The distinctive Kensington SII is a light and agile scooter. With a maximum user weight just under 18 stone this is not a bariatric scooter by any means. This has however allowed Freerider to keep the weight down in construction,the heaviest piece without batteries is only 126lbs. This gives the FreeriderKensington an excellent 35 mile range from only a 50 amp hour battery. As you we have come to expect the scooter is supplied with a fully adjustable rotating captain seat with lift up arms for easy access. Ride quality is handled by front and rear shocks and pneumatic tires, with solid tires are available as an option.

Maximum Speed :	8.0 mph
Number Of Wheels :	4
Weight Capacity :	17.9 stone
Batteries :	50 Amp
Battery Charger :	offboard Charger
Front Tires :	Pneumatic
Rear Tires :	Pneumatic
Range Per Charge :	35.0 miles
Standard Seat :	Captain seat
Suspension :	Yes
Vehicle Length :	54.0 inches
Weight of the Heaviest Piece :	52.0 lbs
Weight Without Batteries :	126.0 lbs

8 MPH Mobility Scooters, January 2010

noreply@blogger.com (Mr Mobility) — Sun, 03 Jan 2010 16:35:00 +0000

For the eight mile an hour category we will be focusing on four wheel scooters and we have chosen a few more scooters to compare as this is one of the more popular categories of mobility scooter. We will be trying to represent a good cross section of products from all the most popular manufacturers. From Pride we will include the ever popular Celebrity XL8 and new Colt XL8 that looks to supercede it. From Drive Medical we will include one of the best value road legal scooters on the market; the Mercury Neo, as well as one of the most heavy duty; the Mercury M48 GT. Roma will be represented by the Shoprider Cordoba and the Soprider Cadiz and Days by the Strider in its Midi and Maxi models. From NHC we will include the Freerider Kensington SII and the Aviator S8. Electric Mobility will be represented by the collapsible Rascal Liteway 8 and the Rascal 889. From Sunrise we will include the Sterling Diamond and the Sterling Elite and last but by no means least is TGA who will be represented by the Mystere and the exciting new Vita.

Pride Celebrity XL8 and Pride Colt XL8

Retailer	Pride Celebrity XL8	Pride Colt XL8
Mobility Zone	£1,265	N/A
Nice Mobility	£1,370	N/A
Value Mobility Scooters	£1,470	£1,495*
Easicare Mobility	£1,392	£1,470
GoActive Mobility	£1,297	£1,634

The cheapest price for the Pride Celebrity XL8 was £1,265 from Mobility Zone, bizzarely however you could visit a different website and buy it for £1,350 from the same dealer. The lowest price from the Colt was £1,470 from Easicare Mobility, although Value Mobility's price of £1,495 with the 70amp battery upgrade looks very tempting.

Drive Mercury Neo 8 and Mercury M48 GT

Retailer	Mercury Neo 8	Mercury M48 GT
Mobility King	£1,195	£2,499
Mercury Scooters	£1,370	£2,399
Value Mobility Scooters	£1,074	£2,354
Mobility Buddy	£1,395	£2,995
Discount Wheelchairs	£1,078	£2,257.18

Discount Wheelchairs just about took top spot for both of the Drive scooters, but were edged by a mere £4 by Value Mobility for the Mercury Neo 8.

Roma Shoprider Cadiz and Shoprider Cordoba

Retailer	Shoprider Cadiz	Shoprider Cordoba
Mobility Smart	£2,999	£4,399
Nice Mobility	£1,260	£1,528
Value Mobility Scooters	£1,285	£1,649
Factory Outlet Scooters	£1,195	£1,685
Mobility Superstore	£1,271.36	£1,610

Days Strider Midi and Strider Maxi

Retailer	Strider Midi	Strider Maxi
EuroScooters	£1,540	£1,745
Mobility Zone	£1,385	£1,500
Value Mobility Scooters	£1,442	£1,860

Pride Celebrity X Review

noreply@blogger.com (Mr Mobility) — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 18:06:00 +0000

Luxury Mobility Scooters, December 2009

noreply@blogger.com (Mr Mobility) — Sun, 13 Dec 2009 19:45:00 +0000

We have picked the top popular luxury scooters in the market, the TGA Breeze 4 and the Freerider Royale 4. The Breeze is manufactured by Afikim of Israel and is imported and distributed by TGA; the Royale is manufactured by Heartway and distributed by NHC under the Freerider brand.

Retailer	Freerider Royale 4	TGA Breeze 4
Value Mobility Scooters	£3,250	£3,245
Factory Outlet Scooters	£3,795	£3,795
Discount Scooters	£3,995	£3,465
Scoota Mart	£3,495	N/A
A1	£3,465	N/A
TGA	N/A	£4,695
Lazarus Mobility	£4,695	N/A

A price difference of £1,445 between high (Lazarus Mobility) and low (Value Mobility) on the Freerider Royale 4, and a difference of £1,450 between high (TGA) and low (Value Mobility again) tells us that shopping around is an absolute must. In most cases the sites that required you to contact them for a price didn't have a price that varied a great deal from the published prices on other sites. Some companies thought it would be a good sales tactic to refuse to give a price until we provided our best quote, and unfortunately some companies feel that belittling the competion, or mobility scooters that they didn't stock.

Mobility Scooter Price Watch

noreply@blogger.com (Mr Mobility) — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 15:34:00 +0000

Comparing prices of mobility scooters is a notoriously difficult thing. Many manufacturer recommended retail prices are normally massively inflated to allow massive apparent discounts to consumers; products may be re-branded to make comparison shopping near impossible for most consumers; but worse than all these is the practice of hiding retail prices. Hiding retail prices has two main effects: it drives true competition out of the market by making real comparison shopping overly difficult; and it forces customers into contact with high pressure sales people. To help make things just a little bit simpler we are going to try to find the best prices on the most popular mobility scooters on the market. How are we going to do this? First of all we will collect prices from sites that actually do make their best prices freely available; then we will cross reference that with online price match services like Google merchant centre; third, we will contact a selection of sites that don’t list a price, but do give quotes by email. What we will not be doing is contacting sites that are only contactable by telephone or mail as it will be far too time consuming. The other thing we will not do is haggle. Expecting the many of the most vulnerable people in society to have to haggle for a product that is required to maintain a normal standard of living is deeply distasteful and hopefully naming and shaming these companies with their outrageous ‘opening offers’ will help to end this sharp practice. The prices initially will be broken up into seven categories; luxury scooters; travel scooters; 8 mph scooters; 6 mph scooters; 4 mph scooters; three wheel scooters; and powered wheelchairs. This is all a work in progress so please let us know what you think and if this is useful.

Mobility Scooters

noreply@blogger.com (Mr Mobility) — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 07:54:00 +0000

Just got to keep that posting rate up in order to be recognised as a site about mobility scooters. This is going to be another gibberish post that I will delete or edit into some sembalance of order once things are up and running. Thinking about manufacturer names it will probably be worth using the regional distributers of the mobility scooters as the web has a global reach and a consumer in Israel won't know that a TGA Breeze in York is the same scooter as the Afikim Breeze in Tel Aviv, or the EV Rider Breeze or Wheelcare Breeze in the United States. Equally the same can be said for Heartway scooters that are sold as NHC (Niagara Health Care) scooters in the UK. Some scooters are even sold under more than one brand within the same market, take for example the Big Yellow Scooter Company that simply sells Pride Colt's and Pride Go Go's that happen to be yellow.

Mobility Scooter Review

noreply@blogger.com (Mr Mobility) — Sun, 06 Dec 2009 21:46:00 +0000

In order to get this site listed I will have to make a number of long blog posts for the blind thing to read and index. If you are reading this I would stop right now as this is not going to have any interesting information about mobility scooters, that will come later. I think this blog post will need to be about eight hundred words or so. Writing eight hundred pretend words about mobility scooters is not an easy thing to do but I will persevere. Did I spell that right? Shouldn't really matter though as no one will have read this far. When I start writing real posts they will be about scooters like the TGA Supersport and the Freerider Royale. These posts will be full of interesting information about the scooters including their maximum speeds, weight capacities, battery life, and much much more. The real posts will describe things about these scooters and their strengths and weaknesses. Some scooters are great for indoor use, others not so good. Some are perfect for heavier users, often referred to as bariatric. If the user plabs to take their scooter off road that scooter will need to have certain attributes, things like large wheels and suspension. Their will also be posts about the Motability Scheme as it seems that there will be interesting times ahead now that Motability Operations appear to be about to take over the scooter scheme. Other things of interest we will be watching and blogging about will be the rising tide of anti scooter sentiment that seems to be spreading across the country. I think this is only three hundred odd words so far so I will just keep going. I am now starting to struggle to come up with other words that are related to mobility scooters. There must be many more, maybe I could effectively just list products. I'll give that a go. The Pride Colt XL8 is a mobility scooter as is the TGA Mystere. Unsurprisingly the Mercury M48GT and the Shoprider Cadiz are both scooters as well, good ones too. I know that I haven't reached my count yet, but I'm going to wrap it up. I think I will need to do this for a good few more days before I can actually post some real content. I will stick an image of a mobility scooter up though so this one isn't totally done. That picture is the Freerider Aviator S8, a rather nice new scooter manufactured by Heartway. When I am doing this for real I might write a piece about a mobility scooter like this. I would talk about the great stuff that Heartway are doing to raise the standards of design in mobility scooters.