Review: Apollo Phantom V3

I'm often disappointed with a good chunk of electric kick scooters I test. Many of them just don't have a range that satisfies my needs. I frequently trek from Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn, into lower Manhattan for a meeting, around 15 miles in total. Hopping on a scooter is much faster and a lot more pleasant than the subway (especially in the summer), but it's not always guaranteed that I'll have enough juice to get home.

But the Apollo Phantom V3 has never disappointed me with its range. I once rode it in one stretch from my home in Brooklyn into Manhattan, up to 179th Street, and over the George Washington Bridge to a coffee shop in Fort Lee, New Jersey, and the Phantom had 43 percent left in the tank—22 miles. It took me about an hour and a half! It's the ultimate commuter scooter.

Here's the rub. The range on an electric scooter isn't solely based on the size of the battery but on a myriad of factors, like rider weight. I am a 6'4" man who’s 240 pounds—a lot of people can generally eke out a few more miles than me on the same scooter. Folks like me need something that can handle extra weight without sacrificing range.

The Phantom V3 is rated to support up to 300 pounds and had no trouble climbing even the steepest slopes on my way up the George Washington Bridge's bike path. The compromise to get this kind of range lies in the weight of the scooter itself. Alas, this thing is a whopping 77 pounds. Seventy-seven.

I can carry it, yes, but it's not easy. I really wish Apollo would make handlebars that fold down, because they constantly hit the wall in my narrow stairwell or get stuck in the rails—not helpful when you're carrying something so heavy. Thankfully, the stem is narrow so my hand can actually grasp it comfortably, and the additional handle at the end of the deck is a nice touch. Some lighter scooters have super-thick stems that actually hurt my hands when trying to tote them around, so much so that I'd rather carry the Phantom V3.

You might need a hand pulling this escooter out of the big box it arrives in. Setup also required a few steps more than normal; mounting the handlebars is more of an involved process, with more screws and parts than its peers. Weirdly, none of the wires around the handlebars were plugged into each other, and this step wasn't listed in the instructions. For a few minutes, I sat confused wondering why the Phantom wasn't turning on. I figured it out and plugged them all in, but it's odd that this isn't mentioned in the manual.

As usual, you can pair the scooter with Apollo's companion app on iOS or Android, which is much more stable than my prior experiences with other Apollo scooters. It connected quickly too. You'll need to enter your scooter's serial number during setup, which is annoyingly on the underside of the deck. That's my only gripe. You'll have to run through a lot of safety videos, but it's helpful and important information.

The app lets you see your scooter's ride information, like the odometer, but you can also tweak a variety of settings, from the speed and the acceleration to the level of the regenerative brake. The latter nets you a modest amount of charge when you use the regen brake thumb throttle instead of the standard disc brakes. Speaking of, I'd have liked hydraulic brakes on a scooter this expensive instead of disc brakes, but the truth is, I rarely used them. I stuck to the regen brake most of the time, and it was perfectly capable of bringing me to a quick halt.

Photograph: Apollo

The Phantom V3 can hit a top speed of 38 miles per hour—41 if you use the Ludo mode—but this is, frankly, insane (and probably illegal, depending on where you live). I have never felt the need to go higher than 20 mph, which is already ridiculously fast for something you just stand on like a zombie. I set it to this speed in the app, so that also has an affect on my range data.

There's a big display on the handlebar, and here you can use the Mode button on the left handlebar to cycle through data like the odometer or travel time, and Apollo even lets you monitor the battery a few different ways. You can check the voltage, glance at the battery gauge, or see a more specific percentage. I love having multiple options. Too bad the display has really poor visibility in sunny conditions.

My favorite feature? Proper turn signals. And by proper I mean that the buttons aren't annoyingly mushy like on the Apollo City. They're on each side of the handlebar and are easy to reach. Push the button and LEDs on the front and back of the scooter start blinking for a few seconds, so all motorists should know you're turning if they're paying attention. It's super handy and gives me more peace of mind when I'm in the middle of a lot of traffic.

The handlebars are comfy to grasp, and there's plenty of room to attach other accessories like a phone mount. I just wish I could fold them down so they weren't as wide. They tend to snag on things when I'm carrying the scooter, but even when the Phantom is folded up and lying next to me, people have tripped over the long handlebars; they make the scooter so much wider than it needs to be.

To unfold the Phantom, you bring the hook on the stem out of its little hole on the deck. Lift the stem up, pull up the latch to keep it locked, then secure it. There's a bolt you push through a hole for additional security. It's not as fast as the folding system on other scooters I've tried, but there's no huge learning curve here. The stem doesn't flail around when it's sitting still like prior Apollo models.

Photograph: Apollo

Good news: The riding experience is phenomenal. The quadruple-spring suspension does a great job handling the many bumps on the road, even when I suddenly encountered my greatest enemy: milled asphalt. Acceleration is excellent too—you can easily vault away when a light turns green instead of dealing with a gradual buildup and honking cars. If the acceleration is too much for you, tweak it in the app's settings!

The 10-inch, air-filled front and rear tires gave me cause for concern only once: After a three-week vacation, the rear tire was completely flat. I thought it was a punctured tube, but after I took it to Apollo's local service center, they told me it was just flat and I could've just pumped air back into it with any standard bike pump. Oops.

Range is the hallmark of the Phantom. I've put more than 80 miles on this scooter over the past few months, and it has never failed me. Aside from the aforementioned 22-mile trip, a 27-mile trip left me with 21 percent. Frequent 10- or 15-mile trips over the Williamsburg Bridge and back would end with roughly 70 percent. Keep in mind that this is with the speed limited to 20 mph. If you go faster, expect the range to sharply drop to around 25 miles, according to Apollo.

At this price, I'd have liked to see a few additional extras, like a fast charger. The included charger takes a stupid 12 hours to fully recharge the Phantom; you have to pay extra to halve that time. This beast of a scooter also comes with a normal bell. Ding ding! That's not the kind of bell I want when using a speedy scooter like this. You can pay up for a horn, but it should be included, like on the Taur scooter I recently reviewed.

It's worth noting that there are plenty of scooters that weigh less and can hit somewhere around the sub-20-mile mark for a lot less money, like the Niu KQi3 Max and even the Apollo Ghost. The Phantom V3 also creeps into the territory of scooters like the Bluetran Lightning and the Dualtron Victor, which are slightly pricier but are similar in weight and can go even faster with greater range. But despite the haunting name, I think what Apollo has here is a little less daunting. As long as you don't mind the weight.