Alber Power Chair - User Review

This review of the Alber Adventure has been written by Antonio Ferreira, aka Antonio Katawa aka AK57. It has been extracted, with permission, from one of his emails.

AK57, with his camera and on his alber power chair, in a Tokyo street. I ride my Adventure almost everyday around Tokyo and even in the bullet train to Osaka and other areas in Japan.

Much better than the Pride Jazzy I had from the start .

After six months I am still sort of impressed with it's capabilities and getting finally to be ready for it's negative points . A few, but still they can hinder its performance and can be rather dangerous on certain places here in Tokyo at least .

I have also tried Permobil Trax, a Swedish made chair, for a month and it was the Creme de la Creme. Too expensive to buy, too long to fit onto elevators and public transports , but I would recommend it to anybody in the country side. Still the medieval medical system here won't lease it either so I guess that it's AA or bust .

I also carry a heavy camera bag , my crutches , prosthesis and other stuff with me most of the time combined with my weight , 95 Kilos plus / alpha, the chair still gives me around 25 to 35 kilometers of range around this city. A miracle in a way, because many other chairs in the Pride rank won't even give me a third of that. The suspension, red color heavy duty type is very good too ... Light rain does bother it, I had mud guards installed in it too .

Trundling along a road with wooden buildings in the background. Negative points: From the start let me tell you that the Alber engineer did a good job with the Alber. I also have an assisted chair by Alber called e-motion . Another nice machine but the battery goes empty too damn soon to the point that I had to bring another set of batteries and the charger. Or no way I could make it all day. The weak point are : it slips and slides on certain street and road surfaces, especially manholes and door ways, and on rainy days it is stressful and dangerous - especially when going over rail road crossings. Any one weaker than me might just be thrown off the chair when it bucks side ways.

Germans are good with metal work, but very bad with plastic devices . Hub caps fall off, screws especially on the foot rest keep on getting loose and the head rest is absolutely useless .

The charging plug is way under the arm rest and a one legged person like me has trouble to plug it in, to the point of having to ask a third party to do it for me instead. The foot rest has been made for small sized feet. My prothesis keeps on sliding off it and if I tie it up with velcro, I risk getting stuck when needing to run off in case the chair gets stuck in front of a train or a truck.

Anontio taking pictures from his Alber. Germans being big people, I wonder why they made the AA so small - and I only have 180 cm's height and wear size 11 shoes.

When I told Alber Japan about these problems with the chair, and others that I can't remember too, Mr. Mine the manager and the two engineers told me that they had been begging Germany to adopt certain features for the AA, especially because Japanese streets, buildings, public transports, public facilities aren't built like in Germany or the States .

All that was in vain. Alber Germany does have serious communication problems with us here and/or doesn't give a damn about the Japanese clientele .

A sort of "you don't feed the fish you've caught " sort of ideology ... Once they hooked one to the AA or even to other of their gismos, they don't care a thing about the meaning or after care . Maybe that term is not in the German dictionary . It certainly is in my life dictionary .

Metal parts are fine, plastic and small details are a big NO!

The German solution to these rants are to build spare stuff and make us pay for their own f#ck ups. Thus the charging plug has an extension to go under the chair arm and within easy reach for some of us, BUT you pay a bundle for it !

Another of Alber's duds was the Quix. I tried it for two months and it was a simply an absolute piece of crap. I had the habit of coming off when I needed it to carry my wheelchair, mainly across the rail crossings (where it left me stranded only minutes before the urban express passed by) . People kindly ran and hauled me, Alber in a train. the chair and the Quix off the rail tracks or I think I would not have been here e-mailing you. Quix left me stranded at the entrance of shops, in the rail station mall and even at Kinko's entrance one night when I had to come and do some paper work. Quix is not for the faint of heart and the disabled weak ones .

The old geezer in Alber's Quix presentation either was soaped up with booze, Alber's paid model and/or Alber fast forwarded the tape to give the impression of easy mobility.

Quix should never hit the road, nor should Japan’s streets be taken lightly. To me it is a lethal weapon .

If Alber Germany were more understanding and not so cranked up in their attitude A .Adventure could be the top of the top in power chairs .

I was blessed with a good staff here in Japan and their dedication makes me often forget that Alber Germany doesn't care about us here in Japan. Alber’s Japan staff is dedicated and is always on the look out for improvements and to make our lives as easy as and as comfortable as possible .