OneWheel Pint S Evaluate: The Good, the Dangerous, and the Crashy

I was ready to love the new OneWheel Pint S.

Though I typically gravitate toward non-electric transportation, there’s an undeniable attraction to these hoverboard-like creations. As the EV marketplace has grown crowded with electrified scooters, bikes, and skateboards, OneWheel has earned — and maintained — a loyal following.

And that’s despite ongoing controversy over the relative safety of these devices. After four people reportedly died while riding them, the company was forced by federal regulators last year to recall every unit in the market (that’s more than 300,000).

This is the context in which OneWheel has dropped the Pint S, an updated entry-level model with an off-road-capable tire and a larger platform. It comes with additional safety features meant to prevent deadly accidents — as well as higher speeds than the original Pint.

My experience with the Pint S was defined by polarizing extremes: At its best, OneWheel delivers a transcendent riding experience unlike anything else I’ve tried. But I also don’t think the new safety features change the fundamental risks associated with riding these powerful electric skateboards.

In short: The OneWheel Pint S offers more power, performance, and safety features than the brand’s previous entry-level models. It’s fast, responsive, and (once you’ve got the hang of it) deeply enjoyable on either smooth streets or easy off-road trails. However, they’re also risky machines that can get you seriously hurt — as I discovered first-hand.

OneWheel Pint S Review

To be clear: I view myself as an obvious target for OneWheel.

Not only do I love being outside and pursuing extreme sports, I grew up with media that fantasized about futuristic devices like OneWheel long before they became a technological reality. That usually came from pop culture focused on time travel.

From Marty McFly cruising on his hoverboard in Back to the Future: Part II to the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles speeding down cyberpunk streets in Turtles in Time — the “float life” had won a permanent place in my psyche by the time I was 12 years old.

However, it quickly became clear that using the OneWheel Pint S in the context of real-world physics is something else entirely. Learning the basics of these machines takes time and dedication. Mastering them would likely take much longer.

You’re not just learning how to balance atop a single wheel — you’re learning how to collaborate with intuitive software that’s making guesses about what you want based only on the movement and placement of your feet.

Diehard OneWheel fans with years of experience may dismiss any criticism of the machines as mere alarmism. But it’s fair to point out that the OneWheel isn’t a grab-and-go device like the rentable e-scooters or e-bikes that have proliferated in major cities. For me, the Pint S was both more fun than those — and more complicated.

Day 1 Testing: The Problems of Crowded Streets

When it comes to the learning curve of the Pint S, or any OneWheel, your mileage will likely vary.

I was initially surprised at how much difficulty I faced on my first day. Luckily, I have a grassy, lonely path near my apartment that served as the perfect runway for finding my balance.

The Pint S, like all of the brand’s new S-Series, comes with four riding modes accessed through the OneWheel app on your smartphone. The first of these, Redwood, serves as the beginner’s mode, with a top speed of 12 mph and medium responsiveness.

It took me about an hour to find my center of gravity on the Pint S. Thanks to the treaded tire (an upgrade from the original Pint), I could practice in the relative safety of an easy trail where falls were unlikely to hurt.

I soon graduated myself to chill neighborhood streets, where the concrete proved an easier, if riskier, surface. Then I decided to make a trip to the corner store using a bike path that navigates intersections and a mixed-use path of walkers, runners, and cyclists. This, it turned out, was a very bad choice on my part.

Dismounts and Dangers

First off, the OneWheel “fender,” which covers the center wheel, turned out to be absolutely essential. OneWheel was nice enough to send me a fender, but they’re sold separately, and I wanted to know how it worked without one.

My advice for those looking to try these? Buy the fender. On several occasions, the exposed wheel sucked in the bottom of my jeans, sending me sprawling into streets with moving cars before I could react.

My other first-day conclusion was the critical importance of mastering the dismount. Like landing an airplane, stopping the Pint S felt like the most difficult (and most important) part of the technique.

Early on, a OneWheel representative advised me to rely on the SimpleStop function. When turned on, the feature allows the rider to lean back on the rear feet, causing the device to slow down, roll backward, and come to rest on its “tail.”

Despite the name, SimpleStop still takes time to perfect — and only worked for me in ideal circumstances. So you’ll also need to learn the emergency “two-foot hop-off” dismount. This version requires a small leap from the board, and carries its own risks.

For any speed over 1 mph, the Pint S will keep moving with one foot on the board. Practicing the “hop-off” resulted in plenty of hard falls for me, as the OneWheel zips out from under your feet if you dismount incorrectly. Even if I leapt off without injury, the OneWheel often kept going — sometimes right into the street or off the path.

This made me feel like an imminent danger to every person or vehicle around me. After my third hard fall into the concrete from bad dismounts, I decided to change the context of my testing.

Day 2 Testing: Riding Modes & Haptic Buzzes

To be clear, the features described above are not new. They’ve been part of the basic features of OneWheel models for at least 5 years.

After spending 4 hours on a Friday afternoon learning those basics, I continued my Pint S journey with more focused testing the following day. Instead of glorified sidewalks near busy streets, I drove to a lonely bike path in southeast Atlanta, where I could practice on smooth concrete away from other people or vehicles.

This time, I’d try out some different riding modes, and see if I could understand the additional safety features added by OneWheel in late 2023 after the recall. The change included two updates: haptic buzz and Pushback.

The first is a vibration meant to alert riders when the board detects a situation that could result in a crash. It’s meant to activate when riders experience top speeds, high torque, or low battery. These haptic buzzes work in conjunction with Pushback, which lifts the board’s “nose” to let riders know when they’re pushing the limits.

At first I kept to the Redwood riding mode. After several hours of riding (I’m getting better!), I finally felt a “haptic buzz” as I reached the mode’s top speed. With some hesitation, I switched over to Pacific, the first of three other modes, all with an increased max speed of 16 mph.

As I experimented with higher speeds, I found that the haptic buzzes became a bit more frequent, especially if I was going uphill at a decent clip. Only two or three times did I feel the Pushback. In general, these features felt like a decent way to try and prevent accidents from either overzealous novices or hardcore tricksters.

In my case, however, they still didn’t prevent a debilitating crash.

A Note on Convenience

Perhaps I’m missing something, but I don’t think the word “convenience” belongs within a city block of the OneWheel Pint S. I’ve seen the word used many times to describe OneWheels, including for commuter use — but I don’t really get it.

The Pint S weighs 27 pounds and is awkwardly shaped. It does have a metal handle for one-handed carry, but that gets tiresome real fast. As soon as you encounter an obstacle you can’t “float” over — like the closed section of trail shown below — you’ll have to carry it. And that’s easier holding it like a baby than by the thin metal handle.

If you run out of battery, or the machine overheats, you’ll also find yourself hauling this around. There’s no doubt that it’s fun as hell to ride. But trying to use this practically, like running to the corner store, seems a bit silly.

Maybe that works for someone living in San Francisco. It’s hard to imagine safely locking this up at a bike stand, or stashing it under a cart while shopping at the grocery store. But to each their own.

Day 3: Sublime Day Ends Badly

By the third day of my weekend with the Pint S, I had mostly gotten over my newbie hesitations. I’d taken many falls in my first and second days, and came close to serious injury. But now I was happily cruising, pulling off SimpleStops and hop-offs without a problem.

I returned to the bike path near Panola Mountain, and spent 3 hours of nearly uninterrupted riding through 20 miles of a concrete path surrounded by beautiful fall foliage. This was the moment I finally grasped the hype about OneWheels.

Sure, it’s not exactly exercise. Your feet and legs feel a bit sore after prolonged riding, but that’s about it. Rather than focused physical effort, the Pint S brought me to a relaxed, meditative space. I started imagining how I might enjoy riding a OneWheel after long-distance trail runs or bike rides, giving my body a break while still enjoying the outdoors.

I also got to test out the off-road tire on a range of surfaces, as the bike path was often covered in piles of leaves, mud, or sand. The Pint S traversed the first two admirably, but couldn’t manage even shallow patches of sand without difficulty.

At one point, I took it off-trail for an hour, testing it against steep granite inclines covered with loose pebbles. At slow speeds, the Pint S proved sturdy and reliable, traveling over the rocky terrain without a hitch. I even experimented with small jumps off rocky shelves, though I quickly realized that pulling off stunts with a OneWheel was a level of skill that could take months or years to master.

The fully charged battery lasted for over 3 hours of continuous use — but I still wasn’t ready to stop riding. When I arrived back at my car, I still had 14% of juice and decided to keep going until I drained the battery. This proved to be another mistake.

About 10 minutes later, as I was riding uphill on the concrete bike path and going about 15 mph — I hit something. I still don’t know what it was. Perhaps a burly pine cone or an unfortunately shaped rock.

Regardless, it proved an immovable object for the Pint S and popped me straight down into the pavement. The impact was strongest against my palms and wrists, ripping apart the strap of my protective gear and partially dislocating my left elbow.

My transcendent ride — and Pint S testing — had suddenly come to an abrupt end.

Final Thoughts

Any outdoor sport comes with risks, and OneWheel’s leaders — forced to confront claims of injuries and deaths on their boards — argue that the brand has gotten a bad rap. Responding to last year’s recall from the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission, founder and CEO Kyle Doerkson said, “OneWheels are as safe as any board sport.”

I can’t claim to know if that’s true. However, I don’t think the Pint S is in the same league as a skateboard or scooter. And it’s clearly much more complicated than e-bikes or e-scooters. It’s got a motor with a mind of its own, which is the source of both profound joy and serious risk.

For those interested in trying out a OneWheel, the Pint S is a clear upgrade from the original Pint. And at $1,400 MSRP, it only costs few hundred dollars extra. If you fall in love and ride it for thousands of miles, perhaps you’ll get to enjoy the extra speed up to 20 mph. If not, even beginners like me will appreciate the burlier tire and ability to avoid paved roads.

Just a week after my injury, I drove past Atlanta’s Halloween bike ride, with hundreds of costumed cyclists and at least a half-dozen OneWheelers, often riding the brand’s larger and faster models. I was impressed by their ability, though I can’t imagine ever using these in traffic.

To be fair, I already miss riding the OneWheel Pint S, and a sensation closer to flight than anything I’ve experienced. But I won’t be hopping back on one any time soon.