2025 Ather 450X First Ride Review

The Ather is one of the most exciting scooters, electric or otherwise, to ride with its potent performance and sharp handling abilities. Ather calls it the Bike Of Scooters and for 2025, they have updated the scooter with a lot of new features. We spent a short amount of time riding it at the Arunai Grid go-kart track in Bangalore to bring you our first impressions.

Design

The 450X has been one of the sportiest and sharpest looking scooters in our market. Ather surely does love the design of the 450X and for 2025, it remains unchanged but there are two new colour options on offer. What we have for this review is the Stealth Blue scheme and there is also a Hyper Sand shade to choose from.

The design is proportionate and the scooter has good build quality, but maybe now, I feel like it is high time we see facelifted styling considering that all generations of the scooter up until now have shared the exact same design language.

Performance & Range

One of the main updates on the 2025 Ather 450X is the optimization of the battery and motor to deliver more range on a single charge. Considering that this was just a first ride event, we could not really test the range so that is something that will have to wait for later. For now, here are what the new riding range figures look like: 

I did spend most of my time riding in Warp mode because we were out on track and was immediately reminded of why the Ather 450X has always been so much fun. It's light, quick and feels properly sporty, giving you the confidence to ride faster with every passing lap. 

Handling 

This is another department where the Ather 450X has excelled and it now gets new tyres co-developed by Ather and MRF. These tyres are called Zapper N e-tred and offer great levels of grip. You can push harder, lean lower, and get on the accelerator earlier without having to worry about losing grip. These tyres are also said to have lower rolling resistance which is another factor that has played a part in increasing the riding range.

Features

The scooter still gets the 7-inch TFT touchscreen with some new features to play around with. The Magic Twist feature has now been added which essentially allows riders to roll off the throttle and the scooter comes to a halt almost as quickly as if one were to use the brakes lightly. This feature does work well and should come into good use while riding through tight stop-go traffic. Additionally, it also provides regen.

The scooter now also gets three levels of traction control; Road, Rain, and Rally. Each of these modes distinguishes itself apart. Rain obviously has the most intervention and Rally has the least intervention. This customization will allow riders with different skill levels to opt for the mode they find the safest. These features are part of the Pro Pack which costs an additional Rs 17,000 on the 2.9 kWh variant and Rs 20,000 on the 3.7 kWh variant. 

Verdict

The 2025 Ather is priced slightly higher than the older model and riders will have to shell out an additional amount if they want to get a scooter that is fully equipped with all of the features. The Apex which was said to be a limited-run variant is still available and now becomes one of the most expensive scooters priced at Rs 2 lakh (ex-showroom).

The Ather 450X has always been a sporty, fun scooter to ride and with all of the new updates has surely become more engaging. It surely lives up to the ‘Bike of Scooters’ tag because of its exciting performance and sharp handling, but is still an expensive proposition. Compared to the previous generation model, the 2.9 kWh variant is priced Rs 6,400 higher and the 3.7 kWh is priced Rs 2,000 higher.