Review: Onewheel+ XR

This seems obvious, but most electric vehicles still feel like non-electric vehicles. If you know how to ride a bike, you also know how to ride an electric bike. If you can ride a skateboard, odds are you can probably figure out an electric skateboard.

However, the Onewheel+, and now its update, the Onewheel+ XR, operates outside of the boundaries of physics and logic. It’s unlike any board I have ever ridden. The thick deck is balanced on a fat, heavy tire that’s 10 inches wide and 10 inches across. When you step onto the board, the Onewheel’s three gyroscopes and three accelerometers kick into action. The motor starts and all of a sudden you, and the board, are held level.

Future Motion Inc. founder Kyle Doerksen designed the board to feel like snowboarding in powder. It really does. Unlike, say, a Boosted Board, the Onewheel’s chunky tire can tackle any terrain, like sand, dirt, or gravel.

Rather than using a handheld controller, the Onewheel+ XR reads minute shifts in your body positioning. If you look and slightly lean towards where you want to go, it heads in that direction. If you recoil from going too fast, or thrust your body impatiently forward, it slows down or speeds up. The board also leans as you turn, giving you that intensely satisfying carving sensation.

But I’ve been snowboarding, surfing, and skateboarding since I was thirteen, and the Onewheel+ XR is the first board that I’ve ever been on that, well, makes me a little scared. I took a spill off the Onewheel+ XR and sprained my knee. A snowboarder friend of mine sprained his ankle. Another friend, who also skateboards and snowboards, face-planted.

Which isn’t to say that the Onewheel+ XR isn’t enormously fun. It’s just more of an extreme sports toy than it is a commuter vehicle. I recommend strapping on a helmet and some wrist guards more than I recommend riding it to work. As it turns out, stepping outside the boundaries of intuitively understood physics has consequences.

Future Motion first debuted the Onewheel+ in 2014. In 2018, they upgraded to the Onewheel+ XR, which has a range of 12-18 miles instead of 6-8 miles, and adds about 10 percent more power to motor uphill or scooch over rough terrain.

The Onewheel+ XR is a more formidable object that you might think. It’s around the same size as a skateboard, at 29 inches long and a little under 10 inches across. But it weighs 26 pounds. In contrast, a folding bike weighs around 10-12 pounds. When I carry it by the indented handle under the deck, it's hard to remember not to drop it on my foot.

To start, you download the Onewheel+ app, turn on the board, and connect it to your smartphone via Bluetooth. The dashboard shows stats like the board’s battery level, your speed, how many miles you’ve ridden on each trip, and your range.

You also use the app to tinker with the board’s settings, or what Onewheel calls “Digital Shaping.” It has five different selectable profiles, ranging from “Sequoia” to “Delirium,” each with different max speeds, different levels of responsiveness, and an estimation of whether they’d be best for town or trail. Sequoia is the laziest setting, with a max speed of 12 mph, while Delirium ramps things up to a ridiculous 20 mph.

I found Mission (the middle setting with a max speed of 19 mph) to be the most fun to ride and the closest approximation of making deep turns on a powder day. My husband, however, preferred setting the board to Elevated, which has a max speed of 19 mph and a looser, more responsive feel.

When I first got on it, it was so fun that it was a little hard to get off. And then I realized: It’s a little hard to get off the Onewheel+ XR, period. To stop, you lift up either your heel or your toe on the frontside of the board. A blue line bisects the front panel, and to make the board stop moving, you have to relieve the pressure on one of those sides.

Sometimes, you lift your heel up and the board doesn’t stop, depending on where your foot is, or if you’re wearing flip-flops (Nota bene: Absolutely do not wear flip-flops). Onewheel+ chief evangelist Jack Mudd told me that if things got iffy, I could always just bail and jump off with both feet. What a coincidence! "When things get iffy, just bail" is actually a personal motto of mine!

But figuring out when to bail is also a little hard because of the Onewheel+ XR’s operational quirks. For example, it can go uphill as well as downhill. When you go downhill, it will slow down if you lean back to stay upright, but go faster if you lean forward (it also has regenerative braking, which means if you slow down, the battery will recharge).

But if the hill is steeper than 20 or 30 degrees, the hill will scrape the end of the board as the Onewheel+ XR tries to hold you level. And if you scrape and stop, it's hard to start again. I imagine there are some brave souls who are willing to tip forward into empty space on a motorized board to get it restarted, but those people are not me.

Funnily enough, it was on a hill that I met my doom. An off-leash dog bounded towards me happily as I Onewheeled down a hill. Too many things happening at once! I forgot how to stop, then I couldn't. All of a sudden I was on the ground with a sprained knee.

It’s worth noting that my husband, an experienced surfer and snowboarder, could not be kept off the Onewheel+ XR. He also could not be stopped from detailing the Onewheel+ XR’s many advantages over something like a Boosted (I know, I tried).

For example, it's highly water-resistant, and you can ride it through rain and puddles. You can attach a fender, so it doesn’t kick up mud or grit on you. It also has LED lights under the deck, so it’s safer to ride at night.

The battery life is also excellent. After four days of riding for over an hour, the battery only drained to 60 percent, and went back up to 100 percent after an hour on the charger. I felt perfectly fine going on trips within 3-5 miles of my house without worrying that the battery was going to run out.

I have to admit that before I fell, I was a full-on proselytizer for the Onewheel+ XR. It is unbelievably fun to ride, especially if you live near trails, or broken roads, that prevent skateboarding from being a viable activity. You only have to search Instagram for the #onewheel tag to realize that the Onewheel+ has a bit of a cult following, with people eager to showcase all sorts of probably unadvisable feats on this addictive board (WIRED fave and pro surfer Kelly Slater is reportedly a fan).

However, there are risks that I’m willing to take while playing around that I’m just not willing to take when I have to get somewhere on time. Especially after seeing several friends take spills, and falling myself, I don’t feel that I can recommend the Onewheel+ XR to just anyone. That's not to say I don't fall off skateboards and bikes all the time, but I understand how those machines work and can usually assess and manage the risk of injury. The Onewheel+ XR is truly unique, so making that call can be more difficult.

If you’re willing to strap on a helmet and some wrist guards, and are willing to take some time to figure out what it's all about, then you'll have a ton of fun. But if you’re looking for a quick and simple electric commuting vehicle to navigate through unpredictable barking dogs and kids going to school, while listening to a podcast?

In that last case, the Onewheel+ XR might not be for you, especially not with a $1800 price tag. Maybe look into electric folding bicycles? After all, it’s not for nothing that my friends now refer to it as “the Danger Wheel.”