Choosing a Segway: What the Name Means Now

If you came here looking for the two-wheeled, self-balancing machine with a post between your knees — the one ridden by mall security and tour groups — it is no longer made. Segway discontinued the Personal Transporter in the summer of 2020, nineteen years after it launched to some of the most extravagant predictions in the history of consumer technology.

The brand did not disappear with it. Segway today is one of the largest makers of electric scooters in the world, and the name now means something quite different from what it meant when this guide was first written.

What happened to the Segway PT

The Personal Transporter arrived in 2001 promising to reorganise cities around itself. It did not. It was expensive, it was heavy, it was awkward to store, it was banned from pavements in many places, and it never escaped the association with tour groups and security patrols.

What it did do was prove the engineering. The gyroscopic self-balancing at its core is the direct ancestor of every hoverboard, self-balancing scooter and one-wheeled board sold today. The PT failed as a product and succeeded completely as a demonstration.

Segway was acquired by Ninebot in 2015, and the combined company kept the balancing technology while abandoning the form factor that carried it.

What Segway actually sells now

The current range is built around kick scooters, with e-bikes and off-road machines alongside. As of mid-2026 the scooter line runs roughly:

E2 and E2 Pro — entry level, short urban trips.
F2 Pro and F3 — the commuter middle. The F3 is quoted at up to 44 miles, extendable with an external battery.
Max G2 and Max G3 — the long-range models. The G3 carries a 597 Wh battery and is quoted at up to 50 miles.
ZT3 Pro, GT3 and GT3 Pro — heavier, faster, semi-off-road machines with suspension.

There is also an e-bike line (Xafari, Myon, Muxi) and, at the far end, the Xaber electric dirt bike. RiderGuide maintains a current model-by-model breakdown if you need to compare specific trims.

How to choose between them

The lineup is large and the model names do not make the differences obvious. Three questions settle it.

How far, really?

Quoted range assumes flat ground, low speed and a light rider. Expect roughly a third less in practice. Work out your round trip and buy for that, not for the one-way distance — charging at the far end is a plan that fails on the first cold morning.

Short hops under five miles: the E2 range. A genuine commute: F-series. Long or hilly: Max G-series.

Do you have to carry it?

This decides more purchases than range does. A scooter that lives in a hallway, goes up stairs or boards a train has to be liftable. The bigger Max and GT models are substantially heavier, and past about 50 lb most people quietly stop carrying them and start leaving them outside.

What are the roads like?

Ten-inch pneumatic tyres handle broken tarmac, kerbs and drain covers far better than smaller solid ones. Self-sealing tubeless tyres, now common across the range, remove most puncture risk. If your route is rough, this matters more than power.

The self-balancing machines that remain

If it was specifically the balancing you wanted, the technology is still available in other forms:

Hoverboards — two wheels, feet either side, the PT's principle without the handlebar.
One-wheeled boards — a single wide tyre, balanced fore and aft. Read the safety section on that one before buying.
Electric unicycles — a niche, with the steepest learning curve of any of them.

Segway itself still sells self-balancing models under the Ninebot name, which is the closest thing to a direct descendant of the original.

Where you can ride

The regulatory picture has tightened since this guide was first written, and it is the variable most likely to catch you out. Some places treat scooters as bicycles, some restrict them to roads, some prohibit them on pavements, and a few still do not permit privately owned ones on public land at all. Check locally before buying.

Buying secondhand

Plenty of used Segway scooters are on the market, and a few things are worth knowing:

Battery age matters more than mileage. Cells degrade on a calendar as well as with use. A four-year-old scooter will not hold what it did new, regardless of how little it was ridden.
Check for water damage. It is the most common cause of death in this category and it is not always visible.
Avoid an original Segway PT unless you specifically want the museum piece. Parts and service support ended with production.

The short version

The machine that made the name famous is gone. What replaced it is a large, competent range of kick scooters, and choosing within it comes down to realistic range, whether you can carry it, and how rough your roads are. The scooter buyer's guide covers the specifications in more depth and compares Segway against the rest of the market.