Navee N65 review - "Stow and go with ease"

Overall rating:

The Navee N65 is a practical, stowable electric scooter that features an ingenious additional hinge in its steering column that allows you to drop AND rotate the handlebars when you’ve finished riding. The result? No more annoying sticking out grips when you look to squeeze your scooter in the cupboard under the stairs or into a locker. Nice.

On the move the Navee N65 is as good as it gets. It’s properly put together with a sturdy, wide platform; chunky 10-inch wheels (three inches wide!) that will ride over the worst surfaces; and an equally chunky 48V battery that powers a 500W front-wheel motor that also serves as an electric front brake and energy recovery system. Sold yet? 

That 48-volt battery means proper range – Navee quote up to 65km (40 miles) – which makes the N65 a serious contender for one of the best value scooters on the market at just £699.

 

Good for:

• Folding down for stowing away
• Long-range journeys
• Sturdy reliability

Pros:

• Easy to use and fold
• Hi-tech E-ABS front motor and brake
• Super-wide 17cm riding platform with anti-slip silicone
• Lockable via phone app
• Can take riders up to 120kg

Cons:

• Weight, at 23kg it’s kinda hefty
• No suspension (but fat tyres do the job well)

Expert verdict:

The Navee N65 is a sturdy, well-built, extremely well-specced 500W e-scooter that is destined to be among the more practical, reliable and well, just sensible, two-wheel e-rides on the market today.

Think of any of your standard mass-produced e-scooter brands and then appreciate the fact that the Navee N65 is just that much better in nearly every department: build quality, strength, performance, tech, practicality and more.

It’s in the details that the Navee N65 really shines. I like the thinking, for example, that’s gone into beefing up the rear mudguard with an integrated metal brace. (It’s beyond annoying when you snap a rear guard dropping off a kerb. On the N65, the kerb would lose…)

But it’s the unique double-fold handlebar stem that sets the Navee apart. Just a quick press and flick of two retaining clips at each end of the stem means you can drop and then swivel the bars to align with the platform. It’s so simple but so useful. 

Components + build quality
Safety + security
Performance + handling
Comfort + practicality
Overall star ratings

Specs:

Max speed	15.5mph
Distance	65km (40 miles)
Motor power	500W front-wheel motor
Speed modes	3 + walk assist
Battery	48V / 12.5Ah
Removable battery	Yes
Suspension	No
Wheel size	10-inch pneumatic
Weight	23.5kg
Maximum load	120kg
Brakes	Front electronic ABS with regen and rear disc brake
Display	Yes with Bluetooth
Kick stand	Alloy

 

Navee N65 in detail

Performance

The Navee N65 offers great real-world performance, and enables both the experienced and novice rider to quickly adopt an electric scooter as their daily rider.

Compare the Navee N65 to something like the Xiaomi 4 Pro (that’s priced right now at £749) and you’ll find the Xiaomi is a bit lighter, and perhaps just a tad more responsive. But does it provide better performance? I don’t think it does. The Navee might weigh in at 23kg (quite hefty for a scooter) but it’s just so solid and feels built to last. Crank it up to Speed Mode 3 and it reaches its 15.5mph limit effortlessly. I found that it carries that weight really well and doesn’t feel labored, weighty, or physically exerting when riding. I tried Mode 1 and 2 as well but let’s be honest, if there’s a 3 what are you doing not using it?

I tried the N65 on a range of slopes and surfaces and can report that even my 85kg of could get shifted around without complaint. Navee says the N65 can actually take riders up to 120kg, which is impressive.

The 500W front motor is seriously torquey when you need some pulling power and it serves as an advanced electronic front brake when it’s time to shed speed. I found it was responsive, but most importantly predictable. The power delivery was obvious and  matched the level of my input on the thumb-throttle.

I could easily see these performance statistics entice the novice and pro rider with equal success – it’s a high quality ride regardless of your previous riding experience. 

Comfort and Handling

Here’s a bit of Electroheads advice for you: a well-engineered scooter doesn’t have to have suspension to handle and ride well. Of course, it’s nice to be able to bounce on your damped front end but engineering in suspension costs money and that often comes at a price to you, the rider. That might be in the literal price or it might be at the cost of other features that scooter makers have to sacrifice in order to keep the price down.

The Navee N65 has taken another course. And it works. There’s no suspension but there are huge, 3-inch wide (and 10-inch in diameter) pneumatic tyres that soak up the vibrations, jarring and general bumps and lumps that scooter life can throw at you.

Out of all the electric scooters I’ve ridden that feature on the Electroheads.com website, the N65’s chunky tyres really offer ride quality far superior to that of your generic commuter electric scooter.

I think that the big, fat wheels work in tandem with the strong chassis and silicone foot platform to muscle their way through all but the toughest surfaces. Our office test track has a cobbled section that we punish our scooters on and I rode the N65 into that bit of the test at full speed. It coped better with the bumpy, undulations than many suspended scooters. 

Brakes

The Navee N65 features a two-way braking system to ensure that you can come to a stop safely, or manage your speed whilst out on a ride. 

The E-ABS function not only uses the front motor hub to slow you down when you brake but also has an energy recovery system – think Formula 1 for scooters – that scoops up some of that braking force and sends it back into your battery for a little more charge.

You’ve got some tried and trusted mechanical braking at the rear, as well, with a disc brake to stop your back wheel from overtaking your front.

I’ve had the misfortune to ride a handful where a proper yank on the brake lever was followed by the realisation that I’d stop faster if I just stepped off… Those machines haven’t made it onto our marketplace.

Then there are scooters like the 8TEV B12 and C12 – marvellous machines both – that have brakes that can pull the fillings out of your teeth. That’s the kind of stopping power we like around here.

On an 8TEV, that braking is all mechanical (they have huge disc brakes everywhere), but on the Navee N65 there’s a blend of old-school mechanical and 21st Century miracle, thanks to the aforementioned front motor hub that drives the scooter forward when you are on the throttle but works in reverse when you pull the brake lever. I tried the Navee N65 with the electronic front brake set to Regen mode, where the scooter ‘engine brakes’ for you whenever you come off the throttle. I felt that in this mode the Regen (which pushes charge back into the battery) was actually a bit intrusive – sometimes it’s nice to coast at speed.

Better, I found, to turn the Regen from ‘always’ on in the Navee phone app to just ‘on when braking’. That way, every time I pulled the brake lever I felt strong electronic braking at the front (with a bit of Regen for added value) and the old-school disc brake kept the rear wheel under control.

The E-ABS really is a brilliant addition, and one that I wish every scooter had and with this level of customisability.

Extras

I mentioned the phone app above. It’s simple to Bluetooth your phone to mate with the N65 and from there I could meander through a series of menus that allowed me to adjust scooter settings, run diagnostics for faults and servicing and, perhaps most usefully, lock the front motor so that it is rendered unusable should bad-intentioned people take a shine to your ride.

I also really liked the N65’s main screen that sits front and centre on the handlebars. It has a really clear design, allowing you to read all the information you need whilst out on a ride, as well read the remaining battery charge in volts and these super reactive graphics to show both throttle and regen levels.

 

As mentioned previously, one of the big selling points of the N65 is it's ability to fold down into a really useful package. I really liked how the handlebars had their own twist and clip mechanism, so that they lock into the rear fender and produce a sturdy object that you can carry or wheel around. It just makes the practicality so much higher.

And finally, some clever tools like cruise control – ride without keeping your thumb jammed on the throttle – and walk assist (the scooter can crawl along beside you at walking pace if you need to roll it somewhere without riding). I used both functions often and very much rate them.

So in short, I like the Navee N65. A lot. It really does all the important things well and has a grown-up feel to it that I found reassuring. A £699 e-scooter is an investment and I’ve come to conclusion that investing in an N65 makes a whole lot of sense.