2023 Ausom Leopard Review

The Ausom Leopard is a powerful electric scooter designed for off-road adventurers. With 1,000 watts of power it conquers both trails and pavement with ease, complimented by a full suite of quality accessories. It's adjustable in height, it folds, and it even includes an installable seat to expand your riding options.

Video Review

Written Review

Howdy folks! Today I tested out Ausom Leopard scooter. It's advertised as an off-road scooter but still includes city commuting details such as lights and a horn. Overall it has a lot of features packed in, especially when you consider the low price point of $949 USD.

Who's it For: All-Terrain All-Arounder

While it's marketed towards the off-road adventure crowd, the Leopard can do a bit of everything pretty well. Full integrated lights, turn signals, brake light activation, and a loud buzzer-style horn allow you to ride safely on busier city streets, and you can reach top speeds of 28mph which helps keeping up with traffic. Side note: The Leopard is advertised with a top speed of 34mph, but I wasn't able to top 28mph in my test rides.

However, off-road is really where the Leopard shines. On paper it doesn't seem like anything special; the 1,000 watt motor is powerful but not noteworthy, especially with many dual-motor competitors out there. The coil swingarm suspension looks awesome but doesn't have a ton of travel. I've ridden similarly-specced scooters that didn't feel great off the pavement, so I was pleasantly surprised at how well the Leopard performed! I attribute a lot of this to the construction; It's rugged, and the stem in particular is thick and reinforced well, with no noticeable flex or wobble. This is especially rare for telescoping stems!

Something else that made me feel much more comfortable is the elevated rear footrest, bolted on the back of the deck. Resting one foot there allows me to put my other foot squarely on the deck and pointing forward, so that I have a fully forward stance. It's a small thing but it feels so much more comfortable than on typical scooters where my feet are crowded onto the deck and pointed off to the side.

Display & Controls: Simple & Dialed In

There's not a lot to say about the controls on the Leopard; There's one button underneath the throttle that does everything! Hold it down to power on and off, and short press it to cycle between the three power modes. Your odometer and trip timer cycle automatically on the bottom of the screen every few seconds. On the left grip is a full set of motorcycle-style controls for lights, turn signals, and the horn. It's a simple and intuitive set of controls, which I love - no need to get fancy with a bunch of buttons and complicated display menus.

Speaking of the display: it's excellent. It's rugged and should hold up well in a crash, and it's incredibly easy to see even in direct daylight. While it isn't removable it does swivel around easily enough, so you can rotate it out of the way when transporting to minimize accidental damage.

Power & Performance: Satisfying Acceleration, Stable Ride

While I was only able to push the Leopard up to a 28mph max speed, that's okay with me - I don't feel safe going much faster than that on any scooter that doesn't have a steering damper. With that said, I was pleasantly surprised with how stable the Leopard is at speed, allowing for satisfying carving on smooth pavement. Rough trails were a blast too, and it felt nimble enough to dodge trees in tight spaces.

Ausom said the Leopard can climb 25% grades, and I'd have to say "maybe if you have a head start". Starting out on a steep grade requires a little pushing help to get started, but if you have some momentum the single hub motor does admirably. For any serious hill climbing though you'd have to opt for a more expensive dual-motor setup. On flat ground, however, the Leopard feels quite torquey with a lot of mid-range acceleration; even accelerating from 20-28mph feels quite brisk!

Safety: Decent Lights, Meh Brakes

The Leopard has a full light loadout that includes brake activation and turn signals. This is great to see, but the effectiveness is limited by the scooter form factor; The lights are very low to the ground and thus hard for vehicle drivers (or even bicyclists) to see. I'd like to see at least the headlight mounted up high on the stem, but there's not much you can do for the brake lights... other than making them brighter, as they're rather hard to see in the daytime.

Braking is a mixed bag as well. Like many scooters the Leopard is equipped with dual braking systems, one of which is the electronic braking system built into the motor. This provides some extra "oomph" but isn't sufficient to stop the scooter on its own, which is why you also have mechanical disc brakes with 140mm rotors on both wheels. These provide plenty of stopping power but they require quite a lot of grip force if you need to stop quickly; I would much rather have hydraulic brakes which are very easy to activate, and as a bonus also need much less maintenance work. With that said, these are high quality mechanical brakes and they certainly get the job done.

Utility: Sit or Stand?

The Leopard looks like your average stand-up scooter, but it actually ships with a seat that can be mounted in place of the rear footrest. Sadly this isn't a quick swap, you'll need 5-10 minutes and some tools... but hey, that's not bad for transforming into significantly more comfortable seated scooting platform. It's great to have both options, and the telescoping stem means you can dial in the fit for a wide range of riders (provided you stay under the 265 pound weight capacity, of course). Speaking of the telescoping stem, I really have to hand it to the Ausom design team, because it's perfectly built. There are three pre-set locking points for the stem, it feels rock solid once locked in, and the control cables are somehow perfectly bundled so that they fit and look good at all three height settings.

This stem also folds down, and again the folding mechanism is very well designed. Unlocking it is a two-stage process with a hand screw and locking pin, and when folded it latches securely in place. That's so nice on a big scooter that weighs in the neighborhood of 70 pounds; It's already tough to carry, the last thing you need is the stem swinging all over the place. With that said, even when folded down it's still pretty bulky and takes up a good chunk of space in the garage or back of a car. This is definitely not a scooter you can easily carry on the subway.

Closing Thoughts

Overall I'm impressed with the Ausom Leopard. It's got a good load-out of accessories, the interchangeable footrest & seat provide more riding options, and while its components might not be quite as premium as some competitors, it's hard to argue with that $949 price point!