Like us, you may enjoy the idea of being a rad skateboarder, but are put off by all the leg work that comes with actually propelling the thing. It’s hard work and hard work makes us tired. But the internet is currently a buzz with a new gadget that will change all that and will just allow you to just ride and glide. It combines an electrically driven deck and super-sensitive weight receptors which take out all the hard effort – it’s called the ZBoard.
The Zboard will see you whizz past those serious skateboarders with an electric drivetrain motor which responds to weight pressure on certain parts of the board. Lean forward a small amount with foot down on the front pad and the deck will creep forward without the need to push off – lean a little more and you can hit speeds of up to 15mph on the Classic model and 17mph on a more advanced Pro model ZBoard. Motioning to the left or right will control the direction and if this is all a little too fast for you, simply put a bit of weight on the back pad, as you would a real deck, to slow things down.
In fairness, the ZBoard looks a bit on the chunky side, with big rubber wheels and much larger than your average streamlined deck. The weight varies between models from 30 to 37lbs but there is a handy grip hole for carting the deck around if you happen to run down the battery, which will gain you 5 miles or 10 miles of ride time on each respective model with a full 7 hour charge. The motor mechanism and Li-lon battery are visible but safely stashed underneath, but we still wouldn’t dream of hitting the ramps and trying to emulate any of Tony Hawk’s tricks for fear of breaking some part of either of these expensive toys!
Speaking of the cost – If you’re now sold on the ZBoard this is the point you’ll probably pull a sharp 180. The deck is now available for pre-ordering and price of owning one of these for yourself is $499 (around £320) for the Classic or $749 (about £470 British) for the Pro. Unless the nice people at the toy’s maker Intuitive Motion would like to offer us a test model, we’ll keep burning that sole-rubber!
www.zboardshop.com
ZBoard on Facebook
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