I’ve been riding the Raldey Mt-V3 for the last couple of weeks and I have to say that I am fairly happy with it for the most part.
There’s a handful of things about this eboard that didn’t live up to my expectations which I’ll go into more detail about throughout this electric skateboard review.
Aside from those to-be-mentioned things, it’s generally a good eboard. It’s comfortable, turns surprisingly easy and you can have a bit of carving fun along the way.
So, enough chit-chat, let’s get going with this Raldey Mt-V3 review.
In The Box
It’s your usual suspects in the box.
You, of course, get the Raldey Mt-V3 electric skateboard, the remote, the board charger, a micro USB cable for charging the remote, a T-tool and an extra Allen key that’s used for opening the motor cans
Remote
As remotes go, this one sits around the middle of the pack in regards to features and build quality.
It has a glossy black plastic finish which is fine in the naked hand, but once you put some gloves on, it becomes really slippery.
It has a great LED screen that shows a bunch of useful info like your current speed, your trip distance, a running total of your total distance, the riding modes including the brakes, the board direction and the battery levels for the board and the remote.
The modes for both acceleration and braking are LO, MI, HI and HI-Pro and you can use any combination of the two that you would like. For example, you can have an acceleration mode of MI and a braking mode of Hi-Pro.
And you also have cruise control. The way this works is that you have to be holding the accelerator on at the speed you want and then press the power button. You can’t apply cruise control if you aren’t holding the accelerator on.
To pair the remote with the board, all you need to do is turn the remote on and then kick push the board. The board will turn on once the wheels get spinning and connect with the remote automatically.
I love this feature because you don’t have to constantly flip the board over to turn it on.
Plus, the board turns itself off after 5 minutes of inactivity, so you don’t even have to turn it off. You pretty much never have to touch the power button on the board.
Deck
The deck is made of 8 layers of Canadian maple which is generally really stiff, however, the slight dropdown style gives the board a tiny amount of bounce making the ride a lot more comfortable than if it was completely stiff and flat deck.
It also locks you in and prevents your feet from slipping out and away from you while riding. This means you can spend more time looking at where you’re going rather than down at your feet making sure you’re not about to slide off the board.
It’s 38.5” / 98cm long and 8.5” / 21.5cm at the narrowest part which is the centre of the deck and 9.5” / 24cm at the widest part which is where you’ll be placing your feet.
The grip tape on top is fairly coarse, although it is starting to wear down slightly after 4-5 long rides. They’re not real hexagonal pieces, they’re just printed straight onto the grip tape. And there’s something about the symmetry of the hexagons that doesn’t sit quite right. I can tell it’s not straight because if you follow the plane of one of the hexagonal lines, it starts on the right side of the truck bolts, but by the other end of the eboard, that line is closer to the left side of the truck bolts.
But whatever, that’s just an aesthetic thing which doesn’t affect the performance of the Mt-V3 at all.
Raldey has used some locking nuts to fix the enclosure to the deck and they protrude out the top, above the grip tape. You can’t actually see these on the images on their website, and maybe Raldey is planning to lay the grip tape over the top of these nuts in the future. Either way, they stick out by a few millimetres but you really can’t feel them when you’re riding.
Enclosure
Speaking of the enclosure, it’s made of plastic and mine actually has a carbon-fibre-looking coating which is a nice touch. It doesn’t have this on the boards in the images on their website, so I do hope they ship them all like this because I think it makes it look a whole lot less plastic.
The charging port is on the side of the enclosure facing the back wheels and it can be a little tricky to get to if you’ve got big hands.
The power button is on the ground facing side of the enclosure, but you rarely ever have to touch it for reasons I’ll explain in a sec.
Lastly, there’s a weird orange plug that opens up to an empty hole straight into the enclosure. I’m not entirely sure why it’s there. Possibly because they were originally planning on having the power button there, but decided to move it after the enclosures were printed.
It doesn’t really matter, that plug is snug and is not going to fall out.
My only concern is that the Raldey Mt-V3 has a waterproof rating of IP55 which means it’s protected from any dust that could be harmful to the normal operation of the product and it is protected from water jets projected by a small nozzle from any direction.
That’s pretty risky to say it can take direct water with a removable plug like that. Hit me up in the comments section of the Raldey Mt-V3 review video on Youtube if you want me to actually test how waterproof it is. I don’t really want to do it, because I don’t want to risk it, I kind of like this board, in certain riding situations, but if enough people want it, I’ll suck it up and do it.
Wheels
Let’s jump to why I think most people will be interested in this board. And that’s the wheels.
There’s been a massive surge in the number of eskate brands that are either making boards with these big “urban-terrain” wheels or are partnering with Cloudwheels to offer more options.
Raldey decided to go with their own 110mm, airless, rubber, urban terrain wheels. They’re fantastic for riding on poor quality roads, short-cut grass and compact gravel trails, but they struggle in longer grass and loose dirt. That’s where you would ideally want some of the bigger AT wheels like you see on Evolve.
Trucks
The trucks are 9” with a 45-degree angle. This angle, combined with the soft bushings gives the Raldey Mt-V3 a really tight turning circle. Plus, if you need to, you can easily cut corners of the paved tracks thanks to the big urban wheels.
When I received the Raldey Mt-V3, the trucks were REAAEAALLLY loose. So much so that I wasn’t that confident riding around at even a cruising speed because the trucks were so touchy that even the slightest lean resulted in a large movement in the trucks.
Experienced riders will eat this up and love the agile carveability, but I’d recommend tightening the trucks up quite a lot before you set out on your first ride. You can always loosen them off when you start to get a feel for the board.
Motors
The Raldey Mt-V3 has 2x 900W hub motors which they claim is the largest rated-power single hub-motor in the industry at the moment.
But don’t let that fool you, it’s not crazy fast. It’s just a good old regular kind of fast.
The top speed I managed to hit was 24.8mph (40kmh). But take a look at this graph. On my way back to where I started, I only hit just over 18mph (30kmh).
I didn’t initially realise it by looking at the stretch of road, but there was a 2m elevation across the 800m distance. And I noticed that there was an ever so slight headwind on the way back. But it was hardly enough to notice until I was looking for it.
That just goes to show how much external factors can have an effect on an electric skateboards performance.
Hill Climb
I attempted to take it up a 20% hill grade but it crapped it halfway up. It really struggled leading into it and I was worried about popping a battery or burning out the motors, so I just stopped.
It manages anything up to 10% fairly easily. but anything nearing 15% requires you to gain some speed before giving it a go.
It won’t even budge trying to go up hill from a standstill on anything over 10%.
Battery
The Mt-V3 has a 252Wh battery running Sanyo GA cells in a 10S2P array.
You can get yourself extra batteries on the Raldey website to swap them in and out, but it does take quite a bit of effort to swap them over. It takes about 5 minutes to get the enclosure off then another 5 to put it back on. Plus the original battery will have some adhesive on the underside to secure it to the enclosure. So you’ll need to sort yourself out with adhesive velcro strips to make the swapping process a lot easier.
I took the Raldey Mt-V3 out for two range tests just to be sure of the distance and also because something happened at the end of the first ride that I had to test again on the second ride. But I’ll get to that in a sec.
I weigh 83kg, the road was very up and down and I rode it pretty hard.
On my first ride, I managed a distance of 10.4 miles (16.7km) and on my second ride I got 9.7 miles (15.7km).
The only difference between the first and second ride was that on the first ride I rode the first half in High mode, then moved up to Pro mode. On the second ride, I rode entirely in Pro mode.
Raldey’s website states a max range of 12 miles (19km) and I think under certain conditions where the board isn’t stressed so much from climbing so many hills and you rode at a lower, cruising speed, you’ll get a lot closer to that number.
But don’t buy this eboard expecting to get 12 miles out of it. In 99% of cases, the range stated on a manufacturers website will be overstated. This isn’t specific to Raldey, they ALL do it.
ESC
Now, I want to talk about the ESC and the events that happened at the end of both of my first rides.
I’ll just say that the Raldey Mt-V3 is a great board for about 95% of the ride.
Once you start nearing the end of the ride, you lose a significant amount of power. For me, that was a short time after the board’s battery indicator was on one bar.
Theoretically, this is anywhere between 0-25% of the battery but it’s really more like 5%. Once you get down to one bar, I’d recommend you start heading to the nearest charging station.
Not only does the board lose power, but you start getting some voltage sag. This happens when you draw too much power, the ESC thinks the battery has gone flat and turns itself off.
Vintage Evolve riders will know all too well what I’m talking about here.
In this case, with the Raldey Mt-V3, the board disconnects from the remote and you can’t use the acceleration or the brakes.
It’s not until you come to a complete stop that the board and remote seem to repair and you can start riding again for a little bit longer, maybe 10-15 metres until it disconnects again.
This happened maybe 5 or 6 times before I just called it quits.
The annoying thing here is that there was no warning that I was nearing the end of the battery. Usually, the board will beep or the remote will vibrate to let you know “hey, we’re coming to the end of the battery”, but there was nothing like that on the Mt-V3 which made the disconnects unpredictable.
It’s a shame this happens at the end of the ride because the rest of the ride is so damn enjoyable.
While we’re still looking at the ESC, let’s talk about the throttle.
I think the best way to describe it would be very smooth. Maybe too smooth in some cases. There’s absolutely zero jerk when applying the accelerator or brakes.
Because of the massive wheels, the Mt-V3 is slow off the mark, especially when on an off-road type of surface like loose gravel or grass.
The same goes for it’s braking capability.
It takes a long time for the Raldey Mt-V3 to come to a complete stop. This just means that if you’re going to be riding fast, make sure there’s nothing that might jump out in front of you unexpectedly.
You can see in the footage above just how long it takes to brake. I come in on the right-hand side of the screen at a pace of around 20mph (32km/h) and apply the brakes at the white line.
Final Thoughts
If you’re looking for absolute speed and power, this is not the eboard for you.
However, where the Raldey Mt-V3 shines is in its comfort. The huge, urban-terrain wheels soak up vibrations and ride over the majority of bumps and cracks you’re going to face on your ride making this a fantastic commuter eboard.
I also wouldn’t be shy about taking this thing out on weekends to rip up some gravel trails or beachside boardwalks.
Price
The Raldey Mt-V3 is US$599 or you could opt for the Raldey Mt-V3S at US$699 which is the exact same board but with a bigger 504Wh battery which could get you up to a 20-mile (32km) range, but likely something a little less.
