I feel like a little kid as I’m riding it. I intentionally pretend I’m pedaling. (Hah!) C’mon a scooter with built in GPS and anti-theft features. That’s one of the reasons I got it. Sleep mode really works to save battery so please use it when you know you’re scooter is at a safe place. As describe it will disable important security features. Oh and if you’ll like to get a free bird helmet just go to the Bird app. Go to ‘Safety’ scroll down and ‘Select Order Helmet’ Remember to wear a helmet. =]

So many compliments on it, I feel safe riding it, and rides really smooth

I'm an employee of Best Buy and have had the opportunity to use the Bird scooter for more than 3 weeks. I'm going to break this review down into a few sections focusing on the various aspects that make up the scooter. Before I begin, however, I want to note that I'm within the max weight capacity, I have a smart device which is required to use the bird because of the app and that I live in a big city. Overall, I found this to be a very effective means of commuting transportation and a lot of fun to use recreation-ally. APP Before getting this, I'd ridden the Bird via their app service on a vacation and was pleasantly impressed that their standalone --sell able- unit also uses the same app. It shows you the gps coordinates of your scooter, alerts you if your scooter is being moved while locked, allows you to easily unlock your bird with the app scanner, and shows you the battery capacity to help you plan your ride distance. SCOOTER FEATURES Riding at night can be dangerous but this unit comes with both a headlight that's always lit up and tailight that blinks repeatedly illuminating brighter when the break is depressed, both features worked well under the city light and made me feel safer while riding. RIDING THE BIRD The scooter is easy to start up, you simply kick with your foot and hit the the thumb throttle. It accelerates pretty quickly getting to top speed of 18mph in approximately 4 seconds. It climbs hills nicely but note, I don't have particularly steep hills where I was riding it. I researched the max hill slope and couldn't find Bird calling this out, however, I've seen similar scooters call out a max slope grade of 20% and am confident this could climb that. In summary, what I liked most about this was that I could ride it 25 miles on a full charge, lock it at my destination via the app knowing that it was safe and that I could see its location and if it was being tampered with on the app at all times. It was dependable, fun to ride whether to get groceries, get to work, or joyride around the lakes and it fully recharged in less than 7 hours. The only critique I found is that it's pretty heavy (40 lbs) and not foldable, therefore if you need to climb stairs to store it, it could be inconvenient. I highly recommend for those in search of a e-vehicle that will be dependable for your commute, go long distances without recharging and give you the piece of mind that its safe wherever you decide to park and store it.

Disconnects when stopped for a short bit while still on it. Properly locked and unlocked when in use and out of use. Stranded now 2 times. Device goes dark and does not connect but says connected via app. Photos show connected via app then saying it’s not connected while connected. Contacted support twice via app no response.

We’ve seen plenty of E-Scooters around here in the Phoenix area and I’ve read plenty information online and in magazines about them over the years, “just never tried one out”. We have a Fiat 500e electric vehicle and thought this would be a great addition for us to run around our subdivision with and get the mail “cluster boxes a few blocks away”. Unboxing and Setting up: The Bird arrived in a very large “but relatively thin” shipping box, and was surprised upon opening it that it was almost completely assembled. The scooter was well protected by a large Styrofoam insert that the bottom half sat in and the upper was covered in a cardboard insert. The only thing to do was to attach the upper handle bar and housing to the upright. There were 4 star head machine screws included in the packaging and after cutting the zip tie keeping the sideways mounted handle bars from moving around I just had to insert the top into the upright, tighten the included machine screws with the “also included” star wrench and done. That’s it, nothing more to assemble, super simple. I plugged in the included charger and let it get a full charge before going any further. There’s a light on the power supply that will glow “Green” once that is finished. Next I set up the app on our phones and attempted to scan the barcode mounted on the handlebars. Now this is where I did run into a problem. The app stated that “the device is out of the service area”, and could not get it to unlock no matter how much we tried. I did find Birds phone number on their web page and tried to call them but with the lockdown their greeting stated that they are handling everything by email. I immediately emailed them the information and the issue I was having and waited. After waiting a couple hours I decided to give it a try again and this time the vehicle unlocked and said it was ready to ride “yippee”. Not sure if they saw my email and corrected the issue but it didn’t take long to resolve. Not long after that I received both a txt message and an email message asking if I was having any issues still as they show it’s now unlocked. Great customer service during these trying times, and getting it up and running quickly did instill more confidence in the companies tech support. The APP: We installed the app on our Samsung phones and it’s very simple / straight forward to use. On the main screen there’s a small icon of a scooter, tap that “not the ride button” and it will bring up the Bird that is registered under your account. There you will see a “slide to unlock” slider and sliding this over unlocks and activates the scooter. There’s also information in there about miles ridden, battery percentage, and a map showing the location of the scooter. I do like that there’s a security system built in and when activated the device will beep if moved and an alert is sent to your phone immediately. There isn’t physical on/off switch on the scooter itself and the way it’s sealed up turning it off to disable the GPS and cellular connection would be difficult. You can also put the scooter to “sleep”, but this disables the tracking and security system so you’ll want to be sure to store it somewhere that’s secure if you want to shut it down completely. Getting Ready to Ride: Now after unlocking the scooter with the app the headlight comes on and the tail light begins to flash steadily. These are nice safety features to have and you don’t have to worry about remembering to turn them on as they automatically turn on. After donning our riding helmets “purchased before receiving” and proper attire in case of a tumble we were off to start learning how to ride this. Riding: Now this is the first time riding anything like this for me, and my wife hasn’t ridden anything close for many years. We have a long stretch of room in our house that we took turns practicing our balance and getting the feel of it before trying it out. We also took some time getting used to how you push to start and how the throttle and breaks behaved. I’m glad we did this as just going out and taking off wouldn’t have been a good idea for either of us. I grew up riding dirt bikes, motor cycles and 4 wheelers, but haven’t used one in a good 25 years so I was really rusty. Next we took it out to our backyard, not large, but bigger than the area we were trying in the house. Getting it going there was easier and I didn’t have much of a problem doing that. My wife also had fun learning how to ride it and was really enjoying how to learn the right way to get it going. We did find that it was very important to have proper and quality footwear on “especially for us first timers”, this helps with balance immensely. This morning was the big test “for us at least”, and decided since Sunday is usually a very quiet day on our street it would be the perfect time to give it a go. My wife was first up, and was fully outfitted with protective gear “see pic”. The practice before hand helped a lot as she took right off without a problem. She took it very carefully and did a full loop around our block, returning with a huge grin, she had a blast. She says that it’s very easy to control on hard pavement over our back yard “but that was good for getting a feel for it”. She can see that this is going to be used quite a bit when going to the mail box cluster or visiting friend in other parts of the subdivision. After watching her I decided I just had to try it. Just a helmet and gloves for me but at least I had a helmet on :) . I agree with her that getting it going and riding was much easier than our back yard. And getting a feel for it there was a really good idea as the lawn is much softer to land on just in case. Power wise I was very impressed. I’m 210lbs and it didn’t have any problems getting me moving, and plenty quickly too. I had it topped out for a little bit and that was plenty fast for me, “anything faster I’d want a bike or sit down type scooter”. After returning from my trips around the block I also returned with a big grin, and hadn’t had this much fun in quite a while. I do have arthritis problems with my back and hips, and have had a total knee replacement. None of these caused me any problems riding the Bird which I had a lot of concerns about. Although I have to admit I’m a little sore from all the twisting and moving around that I’m not used to doing “proves I’m out of shape”, and this will hopefully get me more mobile and help with that too. Conclusion: The Bird One is a quality built scooter, it was larger and heavier duty than I expected. It has no flex what so ever when standing on it. The platform you stand on is roughly 6” wide and 20” long, so there’s plenty of room to put your feet. Power seemed very ample and I never once wished for any more. We do like that it has a headlight and tail light for safety, and there’s built in tracking so you’ll know where it is at all times. There are two small led indicators on the top of the handle bars that aren’t referenced in the manual and after reaching out to Birds’ tech support they informed me that the “green” led is power and stays on while the unit is awake and the “red” led indicates a cellular connection, and it will be solid when the unit is locked and off when unlocked. We do wish that the neck could be folded so transporting it in the back of the vehicle would be easier, but it does fit in the back of our SUV at least. That’s really the only negative I could find and not an issue for us but if you are wanting one that folds you’ll have to take this into consideration. Maintenance wise there’s really nothing to do other than make sure it’s clean. We wipe it down after each use. Just check the tires and brakes like you would on a bike and be sure everything is working properly before taking off. There’s nothing to open on the battery compartment and there are a lot of fasteners holding it together so I wouldn’t attempt opening it “this can also void your warranty”. We’ve already put a few miles on it and I can see us adding a lot more very quickly. If you are looking around for a very well built and quality scooter you would be hard pressed to find a better device.