Swegway buyers guide - what do I need to know?

November 27, 2015 6:57 PM

I'm considering buying a swegway for my nine year old for Christmas. I'm a bit confused about what vendor to buy from and not get ripped off. In fact, I'm not certain which websites are official distributors or even if I can buy from "them" directly. For those in the know, I'd appreciate some advice getting what I clearly know nothing about.
posted by whatisish to Shopping (13 answers total)

Just to be clear - "swegway" is not a typo - it's another name for those skateboard-shaped things that people call hoverboards but do not hover... I don't think it's a brand name, and seems to be used more commonly in the UK - are you UK-based?
posted by brainmouse at 7:10 PM on November 27, 2015 [2 favorites]

Response by poster: US. That's part of what confused me; I see lots of UK reference and not much about brands. I don't want to accidentally buy a knock-off that is junk.
posted by whatisish at 7:14 PM on November 27, 2015

Best answer: I've only seen it spelled, "Swagway," but maybe there's competition in the spelling department among manufacturers.
posted by rhizome at 7:23 PM on November 27, 2015 [1 favorite]

BoingBoing just "reviewed" it and they liked it.
posted by jpeacock at 7:28 PM on November 27, 2015 [1 favorite]

Best answer: Here's a buying guide from Wired. There's a bunch of different brands.

That said, the one I'm familiar with is the Swagway, and you can find them at Modell's Sporting Goods. But I'm only familiar with it because I hosted an overseas visitor who was trying to get one for his kid and the Swagway was the first brand I could find that was sold in brick-and-mortar stores. Admittedly I did not have a lot of time to search, though.
posted by Anonymous at 7:50 PM on November 27, 2015

This is an interesting article about Chinese hoverboard production. The takeaway here is that almost all of them are identical on the inside and dirt cheap to make.
posted by JoeZydeco at 4:47 AM on November 28, 2015

There was one recently for $250 on slickdeals. I wouldn't pay much more than that. There's lots of branding of identical OEM products and huge markups going on. It was a $400 product a few months ago if you knew where to get it, and now the hovering(lol) around $300.

I've heard really mixed things about reliability and such. Some say they're fairly unbreakable and then have them inexplicably die a couple months in. Some have no issues. Regardless, I'd try and pay the absolute least I could because they really are all just the same Chinese wheeliemachines. There's no "brand name" here despite what some resellers are trying to pretend.
posted by emptythought at 1:00 PM on November 28, 2015 [1 favorite]

On further searching I'd go for this. Airwheel is a known quantity as a reseller, and monoprice is a us distributor with quality support.
posted by emptythought at 1:02 PM on November 28, 2015

Had looked into this, and an Amazon comment made me wary of an issue it's hard to know about upfront: seems the weakest point is the central axle - if that bends (as it will on cheap models after a couple of weeks) the fun is over.
posted by progosk at 1:17 PM on November 28, 2015

Also, for a fascinating look behind the scenes of how they get made, this Buzzfeed article goes deep.
posted by progosk at 8:09 AM on November 29, 2015 [1 favorite]

Which, on review, is probably why Joe Zydeco already posted the link above...
posted by progosk at 8:11 AM on November 29, 2015

Planet Money just did an episode on "hoverboards." It seems like there is no one "official" company that makes these. Somehow they're all knockoff of each other. The Hovertrax (now owned by Razor) is potentially the "original" but that doesn't seem to matter much anymore.

My best suggestion would be to read a buying guide like the Wired one above, and go with their recommendation.
posted by radioamy at 11:12 AM on November 29, 2015

Here's a related FPP.
posted by LobsterMitten at 12:19 AM on December 4, 2015