Glion Dolly Foldable Review

The Glion Foldable Dolly is a top model in its class and it is a stand out for its commuter specific features. This machine can turn grinding traffic and parking nightmares into a memory and replace them with joy as you zip to and from work with ease. This scooter cruises at a reasonable 12+ mph and is unsurpassed in travel radius. It folds up quickly and easily into a compact package that is (thanks to the dolly function) a cinch to transport when it's not being ridden. The only knocks against the Glion are its relatively rough ride and single electronic brake.

The Glion Dolly Foldable electric scooter.

Performance Comparison

In a concerted effort to isolate and analyze the very top electric scooters on the market, we've combed the web compiling customer's praises and criticisms, manufacturer's innovations and redundancies and finally bought nine of the most promising electric scooters for a regiment of peer-to-peer tests. We narrowed product assessments down to key features that, when designed and integrated well, coalesce to form a high-quality product that is greater than the sum of its parts. Here we divided our analysis into five weighted categories and the Glion Foldable Dolly's performance in each is discussed in depth below.

The Glion's long effective range keeps you going all the way home.

Range

Our range tests were comprised of two separate assessments: travel radius and battery charging time. To properly appraise what the travel radius of a scooter is, we broke the assessment up into two parts that we call effective range and maximum range. The effective range is the number of miles a scooter can travel on flat ground going at or near full speed. Conversely, the maximum range is how far the machine will go at any speed. The Glion was the top performer in this category with a matched effective and maximum range. What that means in plain terms is that a rider can pretty much go full speed until the batter is completely depleted. The flip side of this appraisal is the time that is required to recharge the battery. Here too the Glion crushed with a 4 ½ hour drained to full charging time.

The powerful Glion makes daily commutes a breeze.

Power

The power metric is a composite of a few different tests that provide an overall understanding of how well a scooter will propel a rider across a range of topography. Here we assessed flat ground max speed and hill climbing capability. The speed test is a measure of the time it takes a tester to cover 100 feet of flat pavement given a running start and a full battery. The test was performed three times in a row and the average was converted into miles per hour. The Glion was no slouch in this category, but it didn't dominate either with an average max speed of 13+mph.

Hill tests were conducted on two hills - one at a 3.5% grade, and the other at 10.5%. The Foldable Dolly cruised up the shallower grade, steadily climbing at a respectable 8-10 mph. However, this machine set the bar on the 10.5% grade by motoring all the way up the ¼ mile stretch. This feat was out of reach for almost all of the other products in this class.

The Glion's solid rubber tires produce a lot of feedback from the road surface.

Ride

The world is a rough place and we're looking for a scooter that can smooth it out. Ride is admittedly a more subjective category than others here discussed, but what isn't subjective were testers' reactions to the rattly ride served up by the solid rubber tires on the Glion Foldable Dolly. This scooters' performance (or lack thereof) in the metric ride assessment hurt it in the overall assessment.

Single electronic brake.

Braking

While most electric scooters in this class offer an electronic hub brake, it is less common for that brake to be the stand alone stopping mechanism. The fact that the Glion uses an electronic brake with no mechanical redundancy hurt it both in terms of safety concerns and in the stopping power assessment.

To get at stopping power we isolated two components that most will agree are paramount: hill braking and flat ground stopping. The first is an evaluation of the scooter's ability to maintain the desired speed when going down a hill. Considering that the scooter only has one brake it did pretty good. But the lack of redundancy had testers concerned - if the battery died on a descent, then the brake would cease to work as well.

The second half of the assessment is an analysis of the scooter's capacity to stop when cruising at the maximum speed. What we want to quantify here is how quickly we could stop if something unanticipated popped out in front of us like a car or pedestrian. Here the Glion did poorly. For those scooters with dual brake systems we looked at each brake individually and then in unison, and what we found was that, regardless of brake type, two brakes were always stopped a scooter better than one. While the Glion's single brake was functional and effective, it lacked the power of a dual brake system.

The Glion Foldable Dolly makes non-riding transport of the scooter easy peasey.

Portability

If you're looking at electric scooters to simplify your commute, then portability is paramount. Why? Because a scooter has to be carried or stowed as one moves from the train, bus or cab to the street where the scooter is useful and vice-versa. Our portability analysis aims to isolate and appraise specific features that make transporting and stowing a folded scooter as easy as possible. This appraisal focuses on weight, folding ease, carrying latch design, transporting and/ or carrying ease and folded dimensions.

The Glion pulled down high points in each of these subcategories and garnered the highest portability score overall. It's no surprise since the design focuses on these needs specifically. As the name implies, the folded scooter is essentially a dolly with two small rear wheels that stabilize the machine when it's being rolled in this configuration. So, it's no big deal that the weight of the machine is average when compared to its peers. However, if you do need to carry the machine, it has a comfortable handle and the most compact folded dimensions in its class.

Value

We understand that price is a chief concern for most consumers. However, we do not include price in our appraisals because we want the best product in a given class to win regardless of how much the product costs. The quality of a product plays directly into its value. As the old saying goes: buy cheap, buy twice. With that in mind, the Glion Foldable Dolly is one of the more expensive machines in its class. However, given all the performance that the machine delivers (especially for the commuter), we find it worth the money spent.

Conclusion

While other electric scooters in our review outperform the Glion Foldable Dolly in individual categories such as ride and braking, none do better at addressing the portability needs of the modern commuter. However, if commuting isn't your primary reason that you're looking for a scooter, then the Glion's strength's may not out weight its weaknesses.