Why No-Suspension is sometimes better:

We all grew up riding standard bicycles, so your body already knows the worst-case feeling of having just air-filled tires as your suspension. You may think that the smaller wheels of a scooter would make for a much rougher ride than a bike, but you’d be wrong!

For most of the bumps coming your way, the thick-sidewalls of air-filled electric scooter tires (especially the tubeless ones on VMAX scooters) do a better job of soaking up bumps than the skinny tubed bicycle tires you may have grown up with. You’ll also remember the #1 thing that smoothed things out when riding a bike was standing up over the rough stuff. On a scooter, you’re always in that smooth standing-up zone. Just remember not to lock your knees!

So we’re already off to a smoother start than you may have thought.

The Pros of No Suspension (we’ll cover the Pros of having it too!)

Featherweight Portability: There’s no getting around the physics. Suspension, swingarms, and shock absorbers all add weight. If you need to carry your scooter up three flights of stairs every day, or load it into the trunk; going without suspension makes carrying it easier.

The Compact Factor: Suspension also takes up space! Suspensionless scooters fold down significantly smaller for less wrestling to fit under the desk, or in the trunk when you’re going multi-modal.

Cost-Effective: Good suspension costs money. Dropping the suspension entirely allows you to spend more of your budget (both in dollars and pounds) on a larger battery for longer range, which can be handy for commuting.

The Cons:

The Bumps: You will feel the road. If your local commute looks like a war zone of cracked asphalt, suspension feels nice. Also, if your commute is longer than 10 miles, less vibration means less hand-fatigue during long hauls.

Keep in mind, all VMAX scooters also let you tune your ride for comfort with a specified range of tire pressures: 36 psi for the smoothest ride and 43 psi to tune for the longest range.

The Case for Full Suspension

When done right, a proper suspension system transforms the way a scooter handles, especially as you start riding faster.

The Pros of Suspension:

The High-Speed Safety Net: As you push past 25 mph, your reaction time shrinks. It becomes significantly harder to spot and dodge small imperfections in the road. This is exactly where a good suspension system shines. While you still have to avoid potholes, suspension absolutely eats up the micro-bumps and cracks you didn't have time to see, keeping the scooter stable at higher speeds.

The Magic Carpet Ride: It irons out the daily chatter, making long rides incredibly comfortable, often leaving you thinking, "Wait, am I home already? I was just getting started."

Confidence in the Corners: Good suspension keeps your tires firmly planted on the pavement. If you are leaning hard into corners at speed, good suspension gives you confidence that your wheels won’t chatter out from under you mid-corner.

Better Braking: By managing weight transfer and keeping the tires glued to the road, proper damping significantly improves traction, your braking distance and control; another important factor for high-speed riding.

The Cons:

Added Bulk and Cost: Scooters with suspension are heavier, they cost more to build, and they can sometimes be a tight squeeze in standard car trunks.

Potholes are Still Potholes: Suspension smooths out chatter; it does not make you invincible. You still need to keep your eyes up and steer clear of huge potholes, especially at speed.

The Trap: Bad Suspension is Worse Than None

This is the most critical point: If you are going to buy a scooter with suspension, it has to be good suspension. Many cheap scooters bolt on massive, stiff metal springs with absolutely no oil damping. This turns the scooter into a high-speed pogo stick. Hitting a bump compresses the spring, which then aggressively rebounds, bucking you upward and actually reducing your control rather than improving it. Almost every cheap scooter on the market has bad suspension and it is awful.

How to spot good suspension:

There are three common types of scooter suspension and each of them can be bad or good. Here’s how to spot the good ones.

The Shocking truth: If a scooter has stand-alone shocks: a shock absorber with a spring wrapped around it, look for a red damping adjustment knob. If you see the knob, you have oil-damping (the good stuff), if you don’t see a knob, it’s probably a springs-only shock (the cheap stuff).

The next two types of suspension are harder to inspect. If you have motorcycle-style front forks, everything (good or bad) is hidden inside. Sometimes it’s just springs (cheap suspension) and sometimes you have springs + oil damping (good suspension). In this case, you need to look at the spec sheet. VMAX scooters use motorcycle-style front suspension with both springs and oil damping for a true motorcycle-like ride.

For rear suspension, scooters often use rubber cartridges or springs. Here you want to look to the spec sheet for terms like “elastomeric” or “self-damping”. These indicate premium suspension. That way you know that when you hit a big bump, the next bump won’t be you bouncing up off of the deck. VMAX uses patented elastomeric suspension or oil damping on all of its scooters which have suspension.

The original Zero 10X was a great example of a scooter with bad suspension: just springs and no damping. As a former motorcycle racer I found that scooter absolutely terrifying to ride at speed. Fast-and-floaty! It was worse than no suspension at all when it came to sporty riding.

More Moving Parts: More failure potential, *and* the More you need to trust the engineering!

Never buy a suspended scooter from a fly-by-night brand. Make sure you are purchasing from a reputable company that backs its engineering with a solid two-year warranty and localized, in-country support if you ever need parts or service. With VMAX, you also get the knowledge that you’ve bought a Swiss-engineered scooter, built in our VMAX factory in China to Swiss standards.

What to Buy:

If your priority is lightweight and low cost, and your commute is less than 10 miles, scooters like our best-selling VX2 Pro and VX5 Pro with air-filled tubeless tires get you there with confidence and under-stated style. Or if your priority is ultra-lightweight, you could choose the carbon fiber VMAX VX8.

If you have the need for speed, or regularly ride on post-apocalyptic-style pavement and don’t mind carrying a little more scooter with you, the New 34 mph VX2 Hub and 37 mph New VX4 are amazing rides and have a way of making every ride feel a little too short!

No matter what you need, we’ve got you covered with the best warranty in the industry and the best ride quality at every price point.