 Electric motors are in pretty much everything these days, from cars to bikes to scooters. But one of the most fun things to ride with an electric motor in it is an electric skateboard. And believe it or not, the market's actually grown enough over the last few years that some of them are pretty useful now. Especially in cities, you can even use some of these to replace other transportation options. A good electric skateboard should have more than just a few miles of range. It should also be fast, not just because that's fun, but because you need the speed to be able to get around obstacles and avoid danger. It should also be able to stop really well, too. And it'd be nice if it was cheap, but most of the best ones are still pretty expensive, so you want to make sure you're getting the most for your money. Unfortunately, it's not that easy to find one that ticks all those boxes. But if you choose carefully, you can find something that gets you really close and still lets you have a lot of fun. Big surprise, the best electric skateboard comes from a company called Boosted. And the best one that Boosted makes is its new Boosted Plus, which ticks almost every box on the list. The Plus has an advertised 14-mile range, which is really more about 10 to 12, depending on how you ride. But that's enough to cover most trips without charging. I can make it all the way to work and back to my apartment in Brooklyn without charging in between, and that's about a 12-mile round trip. And more casual rides, you basically never have to worry about charging. Boosted's boards are also super durable. The Plus, like its predecessors, is really flexible. You can basically jump on it and never worry about it breaking. And you can even ride the board through water. It's also fast, with a top speed of about 20 miles an hour, which is frankly as fast as I ever want to go on an electric skateboard. But more importantly, it has really good braking, which is something you really need when you're going 20 miles an hour. I also find Boosted's longboard the easiest to ride out of all the other options. It has really big wheels, which grip the road really well. It has four different ride modes, so you can start off slow. And maybe most importantly, Boosted just makes the best remote. It uses a spring-loaded wheel to accelerate and brake, and there's just the right mix of tension and play in that wheel so that the movements aren't too sudden, so you go flying off the board. Boosted also makes the best app of any other electric skateboard company out there, which shows you stats like range, it has an odometer for how many miles you've traveled. It's just the most robust look at all the stats that you've generated while riding its boards. The Plus's size makes it easy and fun to ride, but it's also one of the board's biggest drawbacks. At 16 pounds, this thing is just not that easy to carry around when you're out riding it. And the charger it comes with is also pretty unwieldy, though the longer range means you hopefully won't have to carry that around as much. Another place where the Boosted Plus loses points is its price. Even though it's cheaper than the last model, it still costs $1,400. But so much of the competition is at or over that $1,000 price point that I'd argue this is where your money goes the farthest. For a completely different kind of ride, Boosted's new short board, the Mini, is a smaller counterpart to the Plus. It's a stiffer board, so the ride comfort isn't quite the same, and it weighs about the same at about 15 pounds. But I'm fine with those trade-offs for the price. The base level Mini starts at $800 and has about seven miles of range, and Boosted sells an extended range option that goes up to 14 miles for $1,000. They're the smallest and cheapest boards Boosted has ever made, but they offer so much what I love about the big boards, the durability, the app, the ease and speed of the ride in a smaller package that's hundreds of dollars cheaper. One of the only drawbacks about the Boosted Mini is the ride comfort. Everything feels like it rattles around a bit more because of the smaller wheels, the stiffer deck, and the shorter wheelbase. This just ultimately means you have to be a lot more careful on the Mini with bumps and cracks in the road. While it might be able to match the Boosted Plus on range when you have the extended range option, I didn't necessarily want to ride it on the same kinds of commutes that I was doing with the longboard because you just have to be way more careful. So if you want the quality of the Boosted longboard experience but in something that is cheaper and definitely easier to carry around, the Mini is basically better than any other electric shortboard out there. Or let's put it another way, Boosted isn't the only company around making electric skateboards, but based on our experience, they're definitely the farthest ahead. One of the only other startups to generate as much buzz about their electric skateboards as Boosted is a company called Inboard, and their M1 skateboard is really the next best option out there. At $1,000, it's cheaper than the Boosted Plus, but it only has a seven-mile range. What's cool about the M1, though, is that it has easily swappable batteries, and Inboard sells spares for $200 a pop, so you can effectively double or triple your range depending on how much you want to spend. The M1 has a stiff deck like the Boosted Mini, though it's almost as long as the Boosted Plus. I actually like the flexible Boosted deck better, but the M1 is pretty smooth, and some people prefer the stiffer deck, especially at higher speeds. It also has motors integrated into the wheels, which means you probably won't have to worry about maintenance on things like belts as much, and it means the M1 actually coasts pretty smoothly, too. Inboard does a lot of little things right, too. They have a really good app that shows you stats and helps you update the board's firmware. It has a pretty good remote, not as good as Boosted's, but still one of the better ones out there. And there's also taillights and headlights on the board, which is good because it just helps you stay noticed on the street. Overall, it's a really impressive first try from what's still a relatively new company, and it's not a bad option in place of what Boosted makes. One of the few boards that actually matches the Boosted and the Inboard on performance right now is the Acton Blink Quattro. It uses motors in all four wheels for a top speed of 23 miles an hour, and it has a range of 22 miles. The Quattro is a nightmarish product. First off, the braking is just really bad. There's basically no way not to stop suddenly, which is basically a safety hazard. It weighs 25 pounds, which means it's the worst to carry around. The remote is really bad, and it costs $1,700. Acton's made a name for itself, making some weird electric rideables and even a smaller electric skateboard before, but the Quattro is just nowhere near the quality of these other boards that we've been talking about. There are a lot of other options for electric skateboards and longboards on the market now. There's modular versions, there's off-road versions, there's some with really crazy range, but the problem is a lot of them are still really expensive, and also a lot of them are just kind of junk. The truth is there's still no great and cheap option here, so if you want to make sure your money goes the furthest with great range, impressive reliability, and awesome performance, there's nothing that beats what Boosted has to offer. Hey, thanks for watching. I know there are a lot of other electric skateboards out there, so let us know in the comments which one you like the best, and make sure that you subscribe to the new Verge Science YouTube channel. Bye Phil.