Unagi Voyager: Stylish, Reliable & Ultra-Portrable

Unagi has been making premium commuter electric scooters since the early shared scooter days, and they are still the only company to offer scooters by subscription.

Last year, they improved on their Model One Classic with the Voyager: still stylish and ultra-portable & now with 40-50% more range, higher speeds & an app.

Unagi Model One Voyager – $79/mo

Unagi Model One Classic – $59/mo

Save 30% per month when you pay yearly

The Unagi Model One is one of the most elegantly-designed scooters on the market, with eye-catching colors, a clean-one-piece aluminum frame, and exotic materials like magnesium alloy in the handlebars and carbon fiber in its tapered stem. 

The Unagi Voyager is the latest version of the company’s classic design, and it steps things up with a more powerful battery for more range and speed and an app for more control, without changing one thing that makes Unagis great, their low weight.  

Unagi set out to make scooters cool in the early days of Xiaomi M365s and dockless sharing, when electric scooters started showing up everywhere. Since then, the Model One has become a little bit of a celebrity itself.

Apparently, when stars ride electric scooters, they ride Unagis, the most notable of all being Billie Eilish, who’s been seen on her Unagi for years now, from Coachella to a recent Apple documentary.

They’ve blended fashion and function better than any other company, but is Unagi more style than substance? We’ve hands-on tested 127 different scooters, including the original Unagi (now called the Model One Classic) and the new Unagi Voyager, and this is our ultimate Unagi scooter review.

Who Is This Scooter For?

The Unagi Voyager is specifically made for busy urban commuters looking for a lightweight, portable, no hassle last-mile solution. 

Designed to require almost no maintenance whatsoever, the Model One Classic and Model One Voyager are as much fashion statements as they are everyday vehicles, and they’ve been embraced by celebrities and influencers for that reason. 

Unagi scooters are the only electric scooter available by subscription, and we recommend leasing instead of buying. You can get scooter insurance, including theft coverage; if anything goes wrong, send your scooter back and have a new or refurbished scooter shipped back to you.

Unagi Model One Voyager Specs

Our Full Video Review

Unagi Voyager: Performance

Top Speed

Unagis have always kept up with every entry-level electric scooter cruising in the bike lane, and the Unagi Voyager upgrade does so even better than the Model One Classic, with tested speeds of 19.5 mph. 

You can get even higher speeds by unlocking the top speed mode but we rode ours with the firmware kept stock, since most Unagi riders tend keep theirs that way.

Acceleration

Dual motors typically mean faster acceleration. But while the Voyager compares favorably with some of our single motor commuter favorites like the Segway Ninebot MAX G2 and NIU KQi3 MAX, it lags a few seconds behind both, with a time off the starting line of 4.9 seconds next to these scooters’ times of 4.1 and 4.6, respectively. 

Range

Here’s where the larger battery size and of the Model One Voyager becomes especially evident — the Voyager gets somewhere around 40-50% more range than the original Model One Classic, while only gaining a pound more weight. That’s kind of incredible.

We’re known for doing real-world testing on every vehicle we review. With the Model One Classic, you will get about 8.5 miles of range, which could be enough for you if you’re looking for something more affordable. Unagi claims riders can expect upwards of 25 miles of range on the Voyager. We achieved a tested 12 miles on our hilly test course.

Unagi’s app also has a “distance to empty feature.” It’s the most advanced we’ve seen in the category, factoring in rider weight, what mode you’re using, and even whether you’re riding on flat or hilly terrain as you plan your trips.

One thing people don’t know about Unagis, by the way: you actually get better range in dual motor mode vs. single motor mode.

Braking

The Unagi Voyager uses dual regenerative braking to slow and stop the scooter and charge the battery, and the brakes are sufficient to stop the scooter in 17.5 feet from a speed of 15 mph.

For reference, this braking distance is comparable to highly-rated budget scooters like the TurboAnt X7 Pro and Okai Neo Pro.

Additionally, Unagi scooters have a classic friction foot brake at the rear wheel in case anything should go wrong electronically.

Hill Climb

Unagis have always been great hill climbers; they were built for the streets of the San Francisco Bay Area, after all. 

The Voyager improves on the original’s time by 12%, climbing our test hill in 14.4 seconds. That’s faster than our other commuter favorite, the NIU KQi3 MAX, and blows most entry-level scooters away – not bad for an electric scooter you can rent for less than $100 a month.

Ride Quality

Unagi’s commitment to no-maintenance scooters is total — they don’t want their customers fussing around with adjusting brake calipers, changing brake pads, or fixing flat tires, the number one repair issue that plagues electric scooter riders. 

Most Unagi riders aren’t likely to carry a toolkit or bike pump around with them. They want a scooter they can hop on and off, and that means paring things down to the essentials. 

Essential, in electric scooter terms, means forgoing the luxuries of suspension and air-filled tires, which add weight and complications. The solid vented tires on Unagi scooters will never leave you pushing a scooter home with a flat tire, and they help keep the scooter’s weight down to its very manageable 30 pounds. 

Unfortunately, however, ride quality remains a little rough.

The Model One Voyager uses the same 8.5-inch vented solid tires as its predecessor. We’ve tested it plenty and can tell you that these spread out only slightly under the weight of the scooter and the rider, so you’ll definitely want to stick to smoother surfaces where you can.

Unagi Voyager: Design, Build & Reliability

We give both the Unagi Model One Classic and Model One Voyager an 8.7 on our reliability scale, a very high score for these scooters and one we arrived at through an average of 11 different factors. Unagi scores highly for its flat-free solid tires, maintenance-free brakes, UL listing, IP54 water resistance rating, and comprehensive warranty coverage.

We’ve found little fault with Unagi’s outstanding build quality over the years, and we’ve especially been fans of its Star Trek-like dashboard, which has also gotten 8 or so smaller usability improvements in the Voyager edition, including clearly showing whether you’re in single or dual motor mode and giving you more control via the buttons.

And now the Voyager also syncs with an app, a feature Unagi’s riders have wanted for a long time. The app looks great – like the Unagi Voyager’s display, it’s got an intuitive layout and a unique way to track range.

There’s always a trade-off between weight and range, and most people who get Unagis prefer the benefit of portability over extra range and a heavy battery. We think this new range is pretty impressive given how little the weight has gone up.

Unagi Voyager: Is It Worth It? Our Verdict

Fun fact: Unagi’s CEO and founder David Hyman is also the founder of MOG, an early Spotify competitor, which was acquired by Beats by Dre and later by Apple. Hyman served as CEO of Beats Music until it became Apple Music.

Hyman’s music connections helped make the Model One a favorite for celebrities. But his mission has always been to keep things practical and approachable for everyone, and that’s easy to see in the Unagi Voyager, which only improves on the Model One Classic’s lightweight and portable design.

For the urban commuter, we can highly recommend the Voyager, with a few caveats. The Voyager may be the scooter you’ll want to lease instead of buying. It’ll cost subscribers an extra $10 a month vs leasing the original Model One Classic, but it could be worth the money for the connectivity, new colors, and added range.

The subscription model also means you’ll be first in line for whatever comes next, similarly to how you might upgrade your iPhone.

We think leasing makes the most sense for Unagi, and their return policy deserves some attention. From its very beginnings, Unagi has had perhaps the boldest return policy of any scooter company, with a strong warranty in addition to their famous “30-Day No Risk Trial” that covers free shipping both ways. It’s obviously costly to do this, but clearly Unagi believes in their product.

The Model One Classic is a scooter our reviewer Paul has personally used on a near-daily basis in San Francisco because it’s such a great hill-climber, pound for pound, it fits in the trunk easily, and it looks great. And the new Model One Voyager is just better. Still lightweight, powerful, and quick. Only now it’s got app connectivity, longer range, and even more style.

Now you can lease an Unagi Model One Voyager for $79/mo and a Model One Classic for only $59/mo. Unagi also has savings plans that allow customers to save 30% on rentals when they pay yearly. They’ve made a great deal even better. This is definitely the time to check out Unagi.