SegwayChat - Get the ball rolling

In my opinion, there is very limited information on which to make a comparison. Apart from Segway/Ninebot, there are very few Chinese products that are of the original style (gen 1 or gen 2) Segway products in the the USA. While the new Segway/Ninebot products are technically Chinese designed and manufactured, they seem to be pretty solid in design and materials. One might expect that clone-type companies with no real physical presence in the USA could take a cheaper approach, because they are essentially impervious to US product liability laws.

Segway Inc was aggressive in enforcing their patents, and US Customs (years ago) seized a number of clone shipments from China, discouraging would-be copycats. In 2015, Xiaomi/Ninebot bought Segway to acquire their patents, and was also aggressive in enforcement, which kept competitors out of the market, at least until the original self-balancing patents began to expire in around 2018/2019, if I have my dates correct. By then, the market for gen 1/gen 2 type Segs (which was never much more than 10k units per year, worldwide), had evaporated, and even clone-makers were not much interested.

There WAS, however, a huge rush of Chinese-made self-balancing "hoverboard" products which hit the market a few years back, just before Christmas. Many people think of these as "Segways", and they are primarily remembered for starting fires, and justly so. I searched for "hoverboard fire" under "news" and found several just in the last few weeks, along with a link to the US Consumer Product Safety Commission (cspc.gov) There, I found 13 PAGES of complaints/investigations/CPSC warnings into fires, deaths, and face-plants on (mostly) Chinese hoverboards, going back to 2017.

In conclusion: Clones are often VERY inexpensive. There is little or no redundancy. They may use off-brand or inappropriate type lithium-ion batteries, with little or no charge protection circuitry. Manufacturing may be entirely by hand, leading to variability in assembly that can cause wiring or mechanical faults. Personally, without being able to individually assess a particular company's product (and their ISO quality certificates) I would not have it in my home.