Juiced Scorpion X Electric Bike Review

Electric Mini Bikes Juiced Bikes

Follow along as we review and rate the Scorpion X model from Juiced e-bikes. The Scorpion X is the the 2020 edition of the Juiced Scorpion model and is labeled as a "moped-style electric bike". We rate all ebikes on our objective tower ebike score. The Juiced Scorpion X scored a 74 out of 100 on the Tower eBike 100-point scale which gives it an “outstanding e-bike” rating.

DISCLAIMER - Juiced and Scorpion X are trademarks of Juiced Bikes, and use of that trademark in this review does not indicate that the reviewer is claiming any interest in the mark or any affiliation with or sponsorship or endorsement by Juiced Bikes

Tower's eBike Repair Shop mechanics review electric bikes on the following 100-point scale:

86 - 100 = eBike of Highest Distinction
71 - 85 = Outstanding eBike
56 - 70 = Very Good eBike
41 - 55 = Mediocre eBike
0 - 40 = eBike Not Recommended

Electric bikes are holistically assessed and given a single score called the "Tower eBike Score". This single point rating encompasses seven core electric bike attributes and capabilities. Learn more >>

Seven Core Attributes

Materials Quality – 5/10

With this bike, it’s an aluminum frame, it's called 6061. This is a pretty standard step up in quality from your basic steel framing. So that is a good frame. And you get some rust-proof benefit with that.

With the tires on this bike they use the generic. It seems to be made private-labeled for them perhaps, but the problem is there it could be any factory or quality and that can change. All we know is it’s not really a known brand. So there's some risks there. The tires do seem to have a high level of flat protection and this is really a moped style bike so more like motorcycle tires. But you know, the tires are not like a known quality brand of tire that we can speak to.

They have they have mag wheels on this electric bike, which is actually a pretty significant upgrade. When you look at a lot of e-bike companies, they do this as an expensive upgrade over spokes. It’s a lot more durable than spokes. This is a very heavy bike. This is 101 pound bike, but we'll get into the weight later. It’s a good sign they don’t put cheap spokes on it, or even stainless steel spokes. They have mag wheels, which is nice.

There's a good, comfortable seat on this Juiced Scorpion. I mean, it's not a super premium seat, but it's nice. They also have cheap pedals, but nice grips.

We give it a score of five on materials quality. The tires where the one sort of big lacking thing. The seat wasn’t super premium and the pedals were downright cheap. We put a lot of stock in trusted, branded tires as flats are a nuisance. This eBike was in our shop to get a rear flat repaired, which is ~$100 fix on these heavy electric moped looking things. Lastly, it’s not like a carbon fiber frame or anything.

Our scoring system can seem kind of harsh to some brands. A 71 would be like a C in your high school English class, but we still consider that the lower end of the “outstanding e-bike” tier. We really have room built into these ratings for ultra premium ebike because there are bikes that use carbon fiber frams, high-tech components, and the latest, greatest components and luxurious materials. And then there's the cheap bikes that are sold at Walmart. So there's a really wide range on this. So we're not just trying to like give everybody a decent score to make every brand feel happy about their offering. We're very intentionally being highly judgmental and calling things for what they are. So they get a five on materials quality.

Mechanical Quality - 7/10

The Juiced Scorpion gets a seven overall on this. If you look, they do have very premium hydraulic brakes. Brakes are critical on an e-bike because without them you're having to do a lot of adjusting every hundred miles or so. Good hydraulic brakes are very nice to have.

This bike has excellent suspension. It's got both front and rear shocks. That’s great from a mechanical perspective because things tend to break down less when there's not so much vibration on everything else.

They do use a pretty cheap derailleur on this bike and they have a free freewheel in there instead of a cassette type sprocket. Those are both signs of reliance on cheaper components, which won’t hold us as well over time. So they do go cheap on some of the parts, but overall they invested wisely on the critical components so they still get a pretty good mechanical quality score from us, a seven.

Low Maintenance – 6/10

We give the Juiced Scorpion eBike a six on this on the low maintenance rating. While the tires are non-branded, they do seem to have significant flat resistant built in. That's the number one maintenance problem you're going to get on e-bikes - getting a flat tire. And if you get a flat tire on the rear of an e-bike with all of the cables you’ve got to disconnect, they're just a nightmare to change for most consumers. Even in our shop to get this rear tire swapped out, it was about a hundred dollar repair fee because these electric bikes are so heavy that they have to be treated like a motorcycle.

The fact that they installed premium hydraulic brakes, that’s going to translate into their customers doing a lot less maintenance. So that's an incredible thing in that they’ve address the two biggest issues – flat tires and brake adjustments. Overall though, the components besides the hydraulic brakes on here aren't the highest quality. In fact they're pretty low quality. So you're going to have some issues.

There seems to be a fairly rustproof bike as it's aluminum and has the mag wheels. You’ve got gears paired with a cheap derailleur, so you’re going to have issues with your derailleurs. The freewheel sprocket isn’t the best choice on a high power eBike like this, so that’s more potential problems long term.

Hill Climbing Ability – 9/10

The Juiced Scorpion eBike gets a strong score here on hill climbing ability. It’s got a pretty powerful motor on this bike, a 750 watt rear hub motor but it seems more tuned for speed than torque. At 750 watts it’s going to give you both, but whenever you see a high speed eBike they tend to focus on speed over torque which is at the expense of hill climbing ability. They do have gears, so with pedal assist and shifting down you can go up pretty much anything.

It's a 52 volt system on this bike, which is a pretty strong system. You can find 36 volt systems on a lot of bikes and those are pretty weak when you’re in throttle only. 48 volt systems is pretty much the standard on most powerful electric bikes. And then some of these ones that are high performance, like this Juiced Scorpion, they bump that up to 52 volts.

So overall the hill climbing is quite good.

Range – 7/10

They do put a pretty good sized 13Ah 52V battery on here with quality cells paired it with the 750 watt motor. They didn't cheap out on that. You're going to get pretty good range here. We gave it a range here of 7.

Comfort – 10/10

On comfort this bike gets a perfect 10. That's as good as you can get on this rating.

You have a pretty nice upright sitting position, you've got front and rear shocks, and you've got a pretty comfortable seat. Match that with a significant pedal forward design and it’s just sort of a nice way to sit. The handlebars are adjustable back and forward so they’re pretty easy to reach. Overall this is a pretty comfortable electric bike that you're going to be able to ride comfortably for long periods of time.

It's also looks a lot like a motorcycle, and there's a reason motorcycles and moped are made like that. You travel much longer distances on a moped than you do on a bike, so they’re built with comfort in mind. In the broader e-bike market, that's actually a very rare take. Even though we feel pretty strongly it’s a very important thing.

The good news is if you get this bike, you're not going to be constantly miserable from riding an uncomfortable electric bike.

Universal – 8/10

For our rating of whether this eBike is universal for a wide range of people, we give it an eight. It really will work for a lot of people. The seat, while not adjustable is fairly low. The seat sits at about 31 inches. You've got to step over height of about 16 inches. And there is some adjustability with the handlebars coming forward and back so you can adjust the reach there. You can’t adjust the seat up at all as it’s fixed, but it's low enough that most people can get on this.

The thing here is that this is all when you got the throttle running only or you are helping a bit with pedal assist. Then it rides well, but if you turn the motor off and you actually had to peddle this, it’s going to be hard to pedal because the body positioning isn’t set-up optimally as a bike. This will be more like pedaling a kids banana seat bike.

It’s really not so much of an electric bike as it is an electric scooter. But it will work for a wide range of people, so we give it a ranking of eight there.

Combine those scores and normalize to a 100-point scale and we give this Juice Scorpion a Tower Score of 74. This puts it on our second tier, which is an “outstanding ebike”. It is somewhere in the lower middle of our second tier as that tier goes from 71 points to 85 points on the scale but it made the cut.

Weight – 101 lbs

This bike is a little shocking to how heavy. It's 101 pounds. Just to give you sort of comparison, our Tower Beach Bum weighs 49 pounds. So this eBike, or really electric moped, is twice the weight of a lot of electric bikes. And there are bikes that look very similar in design to this that weigh in the low 70s.

Understand upfront this is a heavy electric bike. If you're buying a motorcycle, that's not such an issue, but if you're buying an electric bike, lightweight is kind of nice. It’s kind of nice to be able to take an eBike up stairs to put it in your apartment or something like that. This can be problematic if you have to put this in your car or truck to transport. You’ll even get charged more for flat fixes due to the weight as they’ll have to use a motorcycle lift on this sometimes.

Looks

This looks like you have a trail riding bike. There's a reason that we don't try to give a 0-10 rating on looks because is there really even a bike at all or is it a motorcycle. People are definitely going to give you dirty looks if you try to ride this on a boardwalk, sidewalk, or bike trail. One of the biggest benefits of eBikes is if no one knows your bike is electric you can ride it in many places you can’t ride a moped or motorcycle. Kind of defeats the purpose to make it look exactly like a trail bike. That might work for a while, but as eBike grow in popularity the bike trails will be more policed to restrict vehicles that clearly aren’t “bike like”.

As a trail riding bike thought, it looks pretty good.

Low Proprietary Risk – 3/10

This is a pretty low score here so there is a large downside risk to owning this eBike. Juiced isn’t exactly a diversified company. All the electronics are specific to Juiced. The tires are a non standard size. A lot of the parts are standard parts, but not all of them. If Juiced goes out of business a some point or discontinues this model you might well have a hard time.