The GoTrax G6 is far from my favorite scooter, but for the money, it has an excellent range

A lot goes into making the best electric scooters. Some pack in high-tech parts and design at every corner. Some try to deliver all-around quality without the high-price that comes at the cutting edge.

Comparatively, the GoTrax G6 doesn’t seem to strive for much. Between tame looks and specifications, it’s not liable to catch much attention. It has modest capabilities that fit its price and role as a daily commuter. It checks some important boxes, like including lights, suspension, and UL2272 certification.

With such tame bonafides, it has a hard time standing out against great all-arounders like the Segway E3 Pro and Apollo Go or discounted flagships of yesteryear like the Segway Max G2. What the GoTrax G6 is left with, then, is a really big battery for the money.

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In over a week of riding, I didn’t find much to love about the G6, especially after testing some other great rides. But that big battery is one thing even some more expensive models don’t keep up with. For range alone, it’s worth a peek.

GoTrax G6 review: Pricing and availability

The GoTrax G6 launched in 2023. Since then, it has been followed up by the G6 Commute model that simply adds a combo lock. While it has a list price of $799, it has been available directly from GoTrax steadily for between $599 and $629. It’s available only in one color scheme: gray and black.

GoTrax G6 review: Design

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The GoTrax G6 isn’t much to look at. Aside from some blue underglow LEDs, it offers a pretty utilitarian design, doing what it needs to and little else. It’s still reasonably equipped, fitting a few reflectors, a bell, a functioning brake light and a headlight. It gets dual drum brakes and electronic braking in the rear, both actuated by simple brake levers. It just doesn’t really stand out from others on the market.

In fact, it’s pretty simple right from the start. Out of the box, the scooter was easy to assemble. It just needed the internal cables connected where its headset and steering tube meet and then four bolts screwed in to connect those two parts. GoTrax includes an allen key to get the job done and a few extra bolts in case you drop one. Before the first ride, you’ll want to charge up fully. In my case, there was a little over 210Wh to top up before the scooter was full, and this took close to 2.5 hours to deliver.

The folding mechanism is practically generic, splitting near the bottom of the steering tube with a simple latch and lever with a safety catch. It’s not too tight or loose, and it’s easy to operate with a single hand.

The GoTrax G6’s folded position is an awkward one, though. Rather than clipping along a point on the steering tube or at the back of the headset so the deck and tube are parallel, the G6 has a spring clip on the left handlebar that latches to the rear fender. The handlebars end up angling out to the side slightly when folded. It’s not the end of the world, but it’s an odd choice. The scooter’s not any easier to carry or store as a result, and the tight tolerance for the clip actually makes it a bit fussy to get in position.

Thankfully, when it comes to the ride, there’s a little more straightforward quality. The GoTrax G6 offers big, beefy handlebar grips with rubber ribs that feel great to hold. The base has a decently spacious deck and tail that’s good and grippy if a little small for someone with size-12 shoes.

The front and rear fenders have good coverage to keep riders dry on wet pavement. The scooter feels plenty sturdy riding along even while carrying a 240-pound rider. The brake levers and thumb throttle do feel a bit cheap, though.

A small kickstand on the side is easy to kick into place, but doesn’t hold the scooter very close to straight upright.

The user manual suggests that the recommended pressure for the scooter tires is 50 PSI while the tires themselves only mention 30 PSI in the context of their max load. The front wheel is easy to inflate, but the rear has a recessed valve stem that calls for an adapter to get at. GoTrax includes that adapter, but it’s a nuisance to have to keep track of.

The G6 packs in a bit, and ends up sizable as a result. It’s definitely not a small scooter. It’s easier to find space for than some of the 2000W, full-suspension offroaders out there, but it’s no Unagi One or Niu KQi Air. It’s also not nearly as light. GoTrax lists the G6 at 45 pounds, which would be decent, but I weighed it at 52.1 pounds, erasing one of the big advantages it might have had over the NIU Kqi3 Max or Segway Max G2.

GoTrax G6 review: Display

The display on the G5 is rather rudimentary. It’ll show your speed, trip distance, and speed mode, but it’s not very bright and has a glossy surface, so it’s almost impossible to see in daylight. At the bottom of the screen, there’s a five-bar battery indicator, which tends to be less useful since it’s so imprecise.

At power-up, the display will show a total odometer reading, but that’s the only time you’ll see this figure. Navigating settings is all done with the power button. Single taps cycle through speed modes, double taps toggle the headlight, triple taps toggle metric and imperial units.

GoTrax G6 review: Security features

To get going, pressing the power button for three seconds will turn the scooter on, but to actually get started riding, you’ll have to first get past the password. The user manual might forewarn you if you read it fully, but the scooter doesn’t have any tags or labels as a heads up.

It’s all the more confusing as there don’t immediately appear to be any controls. By default, the password is “000,” and the process for entering it is to tap the throttle to go up or pull the brake lever to go down a digit, tapping the power button once to move onto the next digit, and finally double-tapping the power button to input the complete code.

If that seems tedious, trying to figure out the instructions for setting your own password will be even worse. The manual’s explanation doesn’t make a lot of sense.

When you park, the only decent locking point is around the neck of the scooter, but there’s no firm loop, so any large U-locks or chain locks will leave the scooter insecure against thieves with a couple alley keys and some know-how.

GoTrax G6 review: Performance and handling

I tested the GoTrax G6 coming off the back of testing some really impressive scooters with the kind of suspension I was happy to leap off curbs with, and it brought me back down to earth. The G6 does little to get beyond the basics.

The G6’s 500W motor is sufficiently powerful, but not mighty. It could push me along at 20mph just fine, and it didn’t take forever getting up to speed. I could even start up on slight grades and get up to 17mph on that slope. The motor emits not-so-subtle whirring while operating that makes it sound both strained and a bit cheap.

The flipside of having a motor that’s not too peppy is that it’s also not too jerky. The G6 was a pretty smooth ride as far as starting and stopping was concerned. The electronic braking is quite meager, though. That’s a shame, as regenerative braking can add some extra range to the tank while providing less wear and tear. Alas, I consistently had to rely on the physical drum brakes to stop the scooter. With the cheap levers and somewhat weak bite, the brakes don’t feel great, but they do their job.

The biggest downside of the ride is that the G6 just feels stiff. It rides on 10-inch, pneumatic tires and even has a suspension fork in the front. Even then, I found the road a constant rattling in my hands. The suspension fork does little to help. Pits, divots, and bumps in the road hit hard and would occasionally knock one of my hands loose from the handlebars. Ultimately, because of this ride quality, the G6 calls for smooth roads or slower, more careful riding.

For longer trips, the scooter offers cruise control, but it behaves in unfortunate ways. For one thing, it takes 10 seconds before it will activate, which can make it hard to anticipate and especially hard to set at anything other than full speed. The system communicates in beeps that aren’t very loud, which can make it hard to notice when the scooter has gone into cruise control.

The scooter also doesn’t react to subtle brake pulls very well. In fact, I can hear the brakes engaging before cruise control will deactivate, leading to situations where the motor is actively working against the brakes. That brake lever behavior also means the brake lights don’t always come on during gentle braking pulls.

GoTrax G6 review: Battery life and range

The G6 might not be leading the pack in terms of ride quality or speed, but it has one big thing going for it: a big battery. Scooters around its price tend to have smaller packs, like the Segway E3 Pro’s 368Wh battery. The GoTrax G6 goes big with a 48V/16Ah battery for a total 720Wh.

This gives it an estimated range of up to 35 miles. I’m a heavy rider at 240 pounds, and I try to take advantage of the speed on offer from scooters, so I never expect to get that full estimated range.

I covered 19.3 miles on the G6 before the battery died, which is fairly solid. The first 12 miles were fast city riding. With the battery getting down to the last two bars, I babied it a little for the last 7 miles, but was still hitting 15 mph reliably. It certainly didn’t feel as zippy.

Once the scooter got down to one bar on the battery meter, performance sank lower still. It took about four seconds to get up to just 10mph even with a strong kick, and it took a full 10 seconds to reach 13mph where the scooter leveled off and stopped accelerating.

Though the scooter went 19.3 miles, performance dwindled over that last mile, with the scooter’s speeds gradually dropping to a crawl and a few heavy kicks required to get any sort of speed back from a standstill.

Still, that range is competitive for a scooter at this price. It could have been even more impressive if the G6 operated more efficiently and took better advantage of regenerative braking. I have seen better range from smaller batteries.

A flipside to the big battery is a big charging time. GoTrax lists a 3-amp charger in the specifications, but the included charger was only 2.5 amps. This took a bit over 7 hours to fully recharge the scooter. With a 3-amp charger, it might have been closer to 5 hours.

GoTrax G6 review: App and features

The GoTrax G6 lacks a companion app for advanced metrics and customization. That’s no surprise at this price, but it does hold it back some. The Segway E3 Pro is competitively priced and works with an app for ride customization.

Despite the lack of an app, the G6 isn’t without special features. It has an integrated tether cable lock that uses a four-digit combo. This can make it easy to post up and lock to a bike rack. I wouldn’t count on it as heavy security though. Tethers are notoriously easy for thieves to cut, and this isn’t even a thick on.

Then there’s the fact that the scooter’s own handlebars give thieves about a two-foot lever they can use to break the lock. With the lock set around a sturdy pole, one swift tug was all it took for me to break the locking pin and free the scooter. Do yourself a favor and invest in one of the best bike locks.

GoTrax G6 review: Verdict

Some electric scooters seem to do it all. It’s that all-around quality that makes the Segway E3 Pro such a compelling option. By contrast, the GoTrax G6 is utterly utilitarian. That’s a quality I often find commendable, but GoTrax may have stayed too simple in its utility.

The G6 is quick enough and it has good range for the money, so if you have a simple, smooth route from A to B that calls for as much range as possible, it might make sense to get. But its ride quality and build fail to impress. It folds up awkwardly and proves heavier than specified by no small margin.

This all puts it in a tough spot. If you’re going by list price alone, the G6 is less expensive than the competition. We’ve seen the G6 go for as little as $599, and at that price, it may be compelling enough for the range. However, depending on the day, you might be able to get the Segway Max G2 or Apollo Go for a very competitive price and enjoy a superior scooter.

Alternatively, if you can live without all that range, the Segway E3 Pro is strongly worth considering as it delivers more in just about every other regard.