Looking Into a Hoverboard for the Holidays? Slow Your Roll

NBC News- Hoverboards: They're the tech trend that no one quite knows what to make of, though everyone wants to give them a try. Of course, hoverboards don't actually hover — they're more like Segways without the handlebars.

But before you drop a few hundred bucks on one for you or an enthusiastic loved one, there are a couple things you should know.

"Hoverboard" is the term that has come to encompass these two-wheeled, electric, semi-self-balancing scooters. You stand on them, and by pressing forward or back with one or both feet, you can cruise forward at a fast walking pace, turn corners or spin in a circle. Their weirdness — and a few well-placed celebrity endorsements — propelled the devices from virtual unknown to coveted curiosity over the course of 2015.

"We started by selling a couple a week, now we're selling a few a day," Andreas Rodriguez, of Miami Hoverboard Rental, told NBC News. "We thought our main market would be kids, but we've got teens, people in the 40s, even 50s. It's definitely a hot item for Christmas."

It's not quite at Beanie Baby or Furby levels of hype, but there should be plenty of kids hoping to unwrap a hoverboard this year.

If you look online right now, you can find hoverboards for as little as $300 or as much as $1,500. There's a reason for that!

"A lot of people buy some from China and just put a sticker on it," said Rodriguez. "All customers see is a plastic shell and some wheels. But the quality definitely isn't there."

Among the first devices to make it to market (at least in the U.S.) were the Hovertrax and IOHawk, which happen to be the most expensive and claim to have the highest quality. Over 2015, dozens of other brands have appeared — but many are cheap knock-offs with lower-quality motors, smaller batteries or less sturdy construction. Resellers are buying these in bulk and selling them for cheap, and you get what you pay for.

"I get emails all the time where I could buy a thousand of these for a hundred bucks each," IOHawk's Kelly Morales told NBC News. "Even the cover itself and the wheels, it's just the cheapest stuff out there. On the straightaways you want to go straight, but the knockoffs kind of swerve."

Some super-cheap ones are even using batteries so bad that they're spontaneously combusting — a serious risk the London Fire Brigade felt the need to warn people about.