Dualtron Scooter Shootout: Togo Plus, Mini Special & Popular

South Korea-based Minimotors has has lived up to its reputation as the inventor of the dual-motor electric scooter. Less well-known, however (at least in the States) are Dualtron scooters made for riders who’ve never rolled onto a race track.

Minimotors Dualtron Togo Plus, Mini Special & Popular

Minimotors’ Dualtron line of electric scooters is renowned for being some of the biggest, baddest, fastest scooters around. But Dualtron also makes sensible commuter vehicles with lots of power and speed. In this review, we’re looking at three smaller Dualtron scooters, the single-motor Togo Plus, and the dual motor Popular and Mini Special Long Body. (Minimotors loves their long, confusing names!)

These are each great scooters in their own way, with lots to offer different kinds of riders. We ride each one, test speed, acceleration, range, weight, hill climbing, braking, and ride quality, and talk about how Dualtron scooters have improved over the years, leaving behind many of the build issues that gave us pause in earlier models.

Each of these scooters needs to be tuned with the Minimotors app, as I discuss below, but once you get the settings dialed in the way you like them, you won’t really need to use the app much afterward. Simplicity is the key word here, with maintenance-free drum brakes and streamlined, elegant cockpits, these Dualtron scooters pare down the buttons and switches of their bigger siblings to just the bare essentials, and that’s a very good thing.

Dualtron Togo Plus, Mini Special & Popular Specs

Who Are These Scooters For?

What do each of these scooters do best and who are they for? The Togo Plus is a premium beginner single motor scooter that’s kind of like a Segway Ninebot Max G2, except with less weight, a little less range, and a higher top speed. Like the other two scooters, the Togo Plus has an updated build that all-but-eliminates stem wobble.

On the downside, the Togo’s handlebars are about an inch and a half lower than I prefer, at 38.5 inches above the deck, but they’re still taller than some classic Dualtrons like the Thunder 2. I’m five foot 10, and I feel like this scooter is best suited for rider of my height or shorter.

Then we have the dual motor Dualtron Mini Special. This is the same price as the Popular, but it was originally a higher priced scooter. The Mini Special has a sportier, more immediate throttle and gives you more control over the settings directly through the dashboard, so you’re less dependent on the app than the Togo Plus. The Mini Special also has the advantage of folding handlebars that will never wiggle, but it’s also got an older design than either the Popular or the Togo.

The Popular (or “Pop” as people call it) has a fully updated modern design, a nice stiff stem, and quick folding handlebars, which will need adjustment from time to time. It’s a very likable scooter and looks really cool.

If I had to pick one of these to ride, I think the Popular would be my favorite, but you really can’t go wrong with any of them.

Our Full Video Review

Dualtron Togo Plus, Mini Special & Popular: Performance

Top Speed

All three Dualtrons turned out to be exceptionally fast relative to their prices. This was the first surprise during our week of testing. While I expect Dualtron scooters to have great build quality, I don’t expect them to be such a bargain when it comes to performance.

Above, see the top speeds of each scooter both with and without the app maxed out. Our top speeds were 26.9 mph for the Togo Plus, 38.9 mph for the Mini Special, and 39.2 mph for the Dualtron Popular.

While maxing out speed with the app doesn’t make much difference to the high speeds of the Togo Plus and Mini Special, it pushes the Popular nearly 2 miles an hour faster.

Acceleration

These scooters have nice new displays, new stems that don’t wobble, and finger throttles that are actually comfortable to use for long periods of time.

The Togo Plus has a very competitive acceleration profile similar to other single motor scooters like the EMOVE Touring and Fluid Freeride Vista, while the Popular comes in at just a few milliseconds behind the Apollo City Pro from 0 to 15 miles per hour.

These scooters have plenty of power for getting up to speed and climbing steep hills. When it comes to acceleration, the Mini Special dominates, due to its dual motors and a less progressive throttle response.

Nominal power is 420 Watts for the Togo and 900 Watts for the other two. But the way they deliver the power is very different. The Togo is a super chill, friendly scooter that any rider can ride.

The Mini Special is aggressive, with a lot of wheel spin and a very immediate throttle. The Popular is kind of a best of both worlds. It’s got a smooth, progressive throttle, but it still has plenty of power for climbing and accelerating.

Hill Climb

The Togo Plus is a single motor scooter, so it climbed our 10% grade test hill significantly more slowly than the other two, reaching the top in 15.8 seconds – fairly typical at this price.

The Mini Special has exceptional hill climbing ability for its price, with a time of 9.2 seconds, and the Popular was just behind the Mini at 9.9 seconds.

All three Dualtron scooters are going to climb most any hill you come across, but the dual motor scooters will do so much faster. The Mini Special and Popular averaged around 15-20 mph up every hill I encountered, which is faster than the average hill-climb speed in this price class.

Minimotors Dualtron Mini Special Long Body Gallery

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Range

Minimotors makes a ton of different Dualtron models, and what makes the shopping experience even more challenging is that each model comes in several flavors of voltages and battery sizes.

Keep in mind that we tested the biggest battery, highest-voltage, highest-performance version of all three scooters. For example, you can buy a 36V Togo that costs $610 and has a 281Wh battery. But I really think you should get the $850 version with a 720Wh battery.

If that wasn’t confusing enough, there are four versions of the Mini Special and three versions of the Dualtron Popular. Let me simplify things: Unless you’re absolutely sure you will never need the range, just get the big battery version. The pain of a higher price is temporary, but the pain of a too-small battery is forever.

Range numbers for all three scooters, in their biggest battery versions, were excellent, however, these scooters do something unusual when their batteries hit a certain level of discharge: they shift into ECO mode and cap the top speed.

As you can see in the graph above, ECO kicks in pretty early, and can really cramp your ride unless you turn this feature off in the app. You will get less range, but I think most riders will prefer the higher speeds.

Minimotors Dualtron Togo Plus Gallery

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Braking

The drum brakes on the Mini Special and the Popular are the strongest that I’ve ever felt. They did an amazing job with these brakes, and I’m really impressed. Drum brakes are often known for feeling mushy and uncertain, but that’s hardly the case here.

The stopping distance from 15 miles per hour for all three scooters was better than expected. In fact, these Dualtrons beat many scooters with dual disc brakes and came within inches of matching the braking distance of the Kaabo Mantis V2.

Drum brakes have the advantage of almost never wearing out or needing maintenance or replacement. They are enclosed in the wheel, so there is no risk of bending or warping parts, as with a disc brake’s rotor, and there’s no need to buy brake pads, ever.

Ride Quality

The dual spring suspension on all three scooters is impressive, but the suspension on the fast, dual motor Popular is definitely the best. It’s got a girder-style front end like the Segway GT2, and it feels amazing.

Ride quality on all three of these Dualtron scooters, however, could be much improved with the addition of tubeless tires.

Dualtron Togo Plus, Mini Special & Popular: Design, Build & Reliability

We’ve given the Mini Special a Reliability rating of 7.3, while the Popular gets an 8.1 and the Togo Plus gets a 7.7.

There are some relatively minor issues with these scooters that pull down their Reliability scores: all three use tires with inner tubes, which are more prone to flats; all three scooters lack UL certification; and the Mini Special lacks an IP rating for water resistance.

None of these are deal-breakers, given that we have long experience with Minimotors as a company and trust that their scooters are well-built and tested before they leave the factory. (We would be more cautious in recommending scooters without UL ratings from a new or unknown company.)

Minimotors Dualtron Popular Gallery

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What’s more important to note here is that Minimotors’ updated designs have finally given us Dualtron scooters without stem wobble.

I recommend you watch the video review to get a full sense of the lighting profile on these scooters. That’s another thing Dualtron is know for – swag – and the Popular and Mini have it.

Other design elements, like the BMX-style handlebars on the Togo Plus, add panache and even more swagger, while practical upgrades like new displays on all three scooters make your stats easier to see in bright sunlight.

Dualtron Togo Plus, Mini Special & Popular: Our Verdict

As I said at the outset, if I had to choose, I’d take the Dualtron Popular over the other two commuter scooters here, for several reasons.

The Popular has the shortest braking distance and highest top speed. More importantly for me, it has a nice, smooth acceleration curve and a very responsive suspension. For the same price as the Mini Special, you get superior ride quality and more features.

That said, however, these are three very different scooters made for three kinds of riders, and they will serve each of them well: the Mini Special suits more aggressive riders who want to shoot off the line every time and rip over hills.

The Togo Plus obviously suits riders on more of a budget, but it’s one of the coolest-looking, and fastest, single-motor electric scooters in its price range, with superior stats and build quality to many of its competitors. I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend this scooter to someone looking in the $800-$900 range.

All three of these Dualtron scooters were exciting to ride and review, not only because they’re each great in their own way, but also because they promise great things ahead for Minimotors. We can’t wait to see what they send our way next.