[culcune]

Is that your budget? If so, then they are as good as you will get (which is actually better than it sounds). Are you mail-ordering?

BMS and SSR use Znen as their OEM, and they tend to be notches above most of the '$650-shipped' plain-jane scooters, but so are their prices. If you can figure out if anyone else uses Znen scooters, look at those first.

Taotao are a good, solid discount scooter, as long as you have no qualms wrenching. There are numerous videos of them on youtube (as well as numerous other brands, too, but they are all similar), and make sure you drain out the shipping oil BEFORE your first ride. Once you assemble the stallion, start it up with the shipping oil for a few minutes (this will thin the shipping oil for better draining), but resist the urge to ride for even a few feet. Once you throw in a quart or so (there will probably be some shipping oil left, so measure it to make sure you don't overfill, but the majority should be your first 'real' quart) then ride it around to initially break it in. I am not sure if there is a slightly different break-in for scooters vs. vertical 150+cc thumpers, but I have broken in a scooter by draining out the first 'real' oil after 100 miles. Then add another quart, ride another 150 miles, and drain again. Again, this is the suggested (loose interpretation) for what most of us own--thumpers, but I have used the technique for a friend's Chinese 50cc, and it ran great for over 3000 miles (a little over a year) before she got her second ticket as an unlicensed rider and parked her steed, and then her scooter got stolen out of her apt. parking lot before I could buy it. It was a Lintex branded scooter, but the engines are pretty much all the same (I have not heard anything about Taotao being inferior as compared to other Chinese bikes).

Watch youtube videos regarding Taotao, and take the negative ones with a grain of salt as I remember watching one a few years back when a guy bought one off Amazon, and rode it on the shipping oil, and then had engine failure (Duh!!). I saw one recently of someone having the same failure after buying one of Taotao's 80cc go-karts they coincidentally bought off Amazon and his video showed him running it right after unboxing. Set up is KEY!!

Keep in mind that when you assemble the bike, all the plastic might not fit as it should, but this is part and parcel the 'fun' of Chinese bikes across the board (okay, not with CSC's RX3 or SSR's XF250 which are 'premium' bikes and cost much more and are reported to NOT have much negatives with fit and fitment).

If you are purchasing from a dealer, they should know how to set up the bikes. What is your reasoning for a 50cc vs. a 150cc (if licensing--makes sense)?