Varla Pegasus Review - Is This The Fastest Affordable Commuter Scooter?

The Varla Pegasus is one of the more interesting scooters in my electric vehicle fleet. I think of it as a commuter scooter, but it offers a lot more power compared to other commuter scooters, with the ability to hit a top speed of 28mph. It also has excellent range – I took this scooter 19 miles on a single charge at full speed and still had plenty of battery left when I reached my destination.

The Varla Pegasus is the third Varla scooter in my fleet. I also have the Varla Eagle One (a high-powered, expensive scooter) and the Varla Falcon (a more affordable, medium-powered commuter scooter). I’d say it fits somewhere between those two scooters, with more power than the Varla Falcon, but not the crazy power of the Varla Eagle One (the Varla Pegasus also has a much more affordable price tag).

In this Varla Pegasus review, we’ll take a detailed look at the Varla Pegasus and what my experience with this scooter has been like. We’ll also look at some of the quirks of this scooter and consider who this scooter is best suited for.

If you’re interested in my video review of the Varla Pegasus, you can check it out here:

Varla Pegasus Specs – General Overview

Let’s look at the general specs of the Varla Pegasus. Here’s a basic overview of what the scooter offers.

Dual 500w hub motors
Top speed of 28 mph
Up to 28 miles of range
48V/15.6Ah lithium-ion battery
4.6-inch LCD Display
Front and rear mechanical disk brakes
Front and rear suspension
Front headlight and rear taillight
9-inch puncture-proof tubeless tires
A foldable stem that makes it easy to fold for transport and storage

My Experience With The Varla Pegasus

To begin, let’s start with the power of this scooter. The Varla Pegasus features dual 500w hub motors. This gives it a ton of power, with the Varla Pegasus able to hit a top speed of 28mph. For a scooter that often costs less than $1,000, that’s incredible power.

The range on the Varla Pegasus is also surprisingly good. It’s advertised as having a top range of 28 miles, which I honestly didn’t expect it to reach. In my experience, most scooter companies overestimate the range or calculate the range based on riding at the lowest power level. However, I took the Varla Pegasus on an 18-mile ride and reached my destination with plenty of battery remaining.

The ride quality of the Varla Pegasus is excellent. The scooter uses 9-inch tubeless tires, which is in contrast to the previous version of the Varla Pegasus, which used solid tires. Using tubeless tires on the Varla Pegasus is nice because it provides a much smoother ride. The downside, of course, is that you risk getting flats, which is usually horrible to deal with when it comes to scooters. On their website, Varla says that in their testing, out of 5,000 test riders, 0.3% got flat tires. Hopefully, that means the tires should be able to avoid most flats.

In addition to the 9-inch tubeless tires, the Varla Pegasus also features front and rear suspension. Again, that helps smooth out the ride, making this an excellent scooter for city riding (and potentially off-road adventures too). For a $1,000 scooter, having front and rear suspension is a very nice value.

When it comes to brakes, the Varla Pegasus uses front and rear mechanical disc brakes. The brakes provide decent stopping power, but for a scooter that goes up to 28 mph, I would have preferred it used hydraulic disc brakes. I found that at more normal speeds (15-20 mph), stopping power felt fine but if I was traveling at higher speeds, it felt like I wasn’t stopping as fast as I would have liked.

The handlebars are nice and everything is arranged well. The scooter uses a thumb throttle that’s comfortable to use. You’ll want to make sure everything is set up the way you want it, especially with the throttle. When I first got this scooter, the throttle was too close to the handlebar, making it so the throttle would sometimes get stuck when I pushed it down. So, make sure you double-check everything on the handlebar before you ride.

Overall, I’ve had a very good experience with the Varla Pegasus. It’s one of the fastest scooters in my fleet and is a fun ride.

Some Quirks Of The Varla Pegasus

The Varla Pegasus has some quirks (some positive, some negative) that are worth mentioning for anyone interested in getting this scooter. Here are the main things I’ve noticed:

Stiff Stem

The Varla Pegasus has a very stiff stem (or maybe it’s the headset – I’m not sure of the terminology here). Basically, the turning on the Varla Pegasus feels very stiff. It’s stiff enough that making sharp turns can be difficult.

When I first set up the scooter, I found it odd how stiff it was and thought that there was something wrong with it. Most other scooters I have don’t feature any resistance when turning the handlebars.

To confirm that there wasn’t an issue with the scooter, I emailed Varla and explained to them how stiff the stem felt. Their response was as follows: “[W]e’ve incorporated a damper set to enhance safety by mitigating potential risks during sharp turns. The scooter’s steering tightness is preset at the factory. To alleviate stiffness while turning, twist the stem and apply lubricant, which should result in noticeable improvement.”

The damper set is similar to the Cane Creek Visco Headset, which is a special headset you can install on bikes that adds resistance to the steering assembly. By doing this, it stiffens up the steering, leading to less wheel wobble and a steadier feeling bike. With the Varla Pegasus, the stiff headset does the same thing, reducing wobble and making the scooter feel a lot more stable, with the tradeoff that it makes it more difficult to turn.

I never loosened up the stiffness of the headset and just let myself get used to it. Interestingly enough, I’ve gotten so used to the stiffness of the Varla Pegasus that it now feels better to me compared to other scooters. The stem and handlebars are stiff enough that there’s very little front wheel movement when I’m riding, to the point where I feel like I could ride the scooter with no hands if I wanted to.

Whether this is something you like will be up to your personal preference. I’ve grown to like the stiffness of the stem and handlebars and I think it makes the scooter safer by making it more stable. But it does make it more difficult to make sharp turns, forcing me to take my turns a little slower and wider.

That being said, if you don’t like how stiff the stem and handling are out of the box, it does look like you can loosen it up if you want to.

Bad Kickstand

One negative aspect of the Varla Pegasus is the kickstand. It holds the scooter up decently when it’s engaged, but the placement of the kickstand isn’t great.

Specifically, the kickstand has too little space around it to engage it with your foot. As a result, it makes it difficult to engage the kickstand with my foot, and a lot of the time, I’m forced to bend down to pull the kickstand out. It’s possible this is just user error on my part or I’m not understanding a better way to get the kickstand down, but this is what I noticed when riding the Varla Pegasus.

The kickstand on the Varla Pegasus isn’t great and is difficult to engage with your foot.

The Hook To Hold The Folded Stem Isn’t Good.

Scooters with foldable stems typically have a hook part located near the rear fender so you can fold the stem, connect it to the hook, then lift the scooter by the stem.

The Varla Pegasus makes it easy to fold the stem, but the hook part that connects to the stem is a metal ring that doesn’t hold it well. When folded, it’s difficult to hold the scooter by the stem because the stem will often slide out from the ring, leading to you dropping the scooter on the ground.

For the most part, this is a fairly minor complaint because the Varla Pegasus is big enough that you’re likely not going to be folding it up and carrying it with you. However, it’s worth mentioning as it does make it slightly more difficult to carry.

Who Should Get The Varla Pegasus?

The Varla Pegasus is well suited for a daily commuter looking for a fast, powerful scooter that can get them around quickly and comfortably. Since you can get up to 28 mph on this scooter, you’ll be able to cover a lot of ground quickly. For example, someone with a 5-mile commute could theoretically travel that distance in just 12 minutes if they’re able to go an average speed of 25 mph. More likely, a 5-mile commute would take around 20 minutes if you account for lights and the need to slow down. Still, 20 minutes for a 5-mile commute is really good (and probably comparable to a car if you live in a city with a lot of traffic).

The wheels and suspension provide a smooth ride, which further makes this a good commuter scooter since it can deal with potholes and uneven streets and terrain.

And of course, the range on the Varla Pegasus is good enough that most people should be able to do round-trip commutes without needing to charge the battery. If you do need to recharge the battery, you can easily do it in a few hours.

For food delivery with apps like DoorDash and Uber Eats, the Varla Pegasus is also good, mainly for the same reasons it works well as a commuter scooter. The only potential downside with it as a food delivery scooter is the stiff stem, which makes it a little more difficult to turn and weave through high-traffic areas. The kickstand is also an issue since it can be difficult to engage and as a food delivery person, I need to stop a lot when picking up and delivering food. A lot of the time, I find myself just leaning the scooter against a wall, rather than using the kickstand.

I will say that if you’re a beginner scooter rider, I wouldn’t recommend starting with the Varla Pegasus, mainly because it has a lot of power and some quirky riding characteristics. This isn’t a difficult scooter to ride, but I would think of it as more of an intermediate scooter.

Final Thoughts

For the price, I think the Varla Pegasus is a great value. The title of this post asked whether this is the fastest affordable commuter scooter and I think it might be. The price of the Varla Pegasus usually hovers around the $1,000 mark, but with sales, it can often drop to below $1,000. Getting a sub-$1,000 scooter with these specs that has good range and can get up to 28mph is incredible.

The Varla Pegasus did take some getting used to because it handles differently from my other scooters, but now that I’ve gotten used to it, it has quickly become one of my favorite scooters. If you’re in the market for an affordable, fast, commuter scooter, the Varla Pegasus is one worth looking at.

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Kevin is an attorney and the blogger behind Financial Panther, a blog about personal finance, travel hacking, and side hustling using the gig economy. He paid off $87,000 worth of student loans in just 2.5 years by choosing not to live like a big shot lawyer.

Kevin is passionate about earning money using the gig economy and you can see all the ways he makes extra income every month in his side hustle reports.

Kevin is also big on using the latest fintech apps to improve his finances. Some of Kevin's favorite fintech apps include:

SoFi Money. A really good checking account with absolutely no fees. You'll get a $25 referral bonus if you open a SoFi Money account with a referral link, and an additional $300 if you complete a direct deposit.
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US Bank Business. US Bank is currently offering new business customers a $900 signup bonus after opening a new account and meeting certain requirements.
M1 Finance. This is a great robo-advisor that has no fees and allows you to create a customized portfolio based on your risk tolerance. You also get $100 for opening an account.
Empower. One of best free apps you can use to monitor your portfolio and track your net worth. This is one of the apps I use to track my financial accounts.

Feel free to send Kevin a message here.