Roma Medical Sirocco P110 Powered Wheelchair

The ROMA Medical ‘Sirocco P110’ is an electric wheelchair, manufactured - like most mobility products - in Taiwan, that can be folded up for carriage in the boot of a car. It requires 2 x 34 Ah sealed lead-acid batteries which, depending on the brochure you read, claim to give a range of 25 miles. Having used the Sirocco P110 over real-life terrain, in our view I very much doubt if even the lightest user would get anywhere near that figure. Ten miles if you’re lucky. But no more. That’s our opinion based on the result of empirical testing in the height of summer over ordinary roads and pavements in our area, which are typical of those found throughout the UK. Expect less in the dead of winter when it’s terribly cold. Although the battery boxes do look as if they might accept 50 Ah batteries for increased range, we haven’t checked that out.

Also, be warned. If you buy this chair, or indeed most mobility products, from an online retailer to get the cheapest price, it will arrive part-assembled in a big box and you’ll have to build it up yourself, or have someone experienced do this for you. Although the construction process is not exactly rocket science it’s not exactly easy either, especially for someone with little or no technical knowledge. And there are no building instructions in the box as there usually are with most part-assembled products. The reason for this is I imagine that end-users are not ‘supposed’ to buy chairs online and assemble them themselves. They’re ‘supposed’ to buy from a local dealer - if there’s one handy - and pay much higher prices for ready-assembled chairs and various levels of ‘service’. However, it is our sorry experience that while doing things this way means that you get a fully assembled product to drive out of the showroom, you don’t often get much in the way of service unless you pay lots extra. So, worth bearing in mind perhaps.

As an alternative to a ‘straight’ delivery you can have what’s known as an ‘engineering’ delivery, which can cost up to £100 extra. This involves a bloke (or blokette) bringing the chair to your house, building it up, testing it, and demonstrating its use. Some may find an ‘engineering’ delivery worth paying for. We’ve never had one. So we can’t comment.

The Sirocco has puncture-proof tyres and its build-quality is probably okay for a chair at this price point (sub-£900 online). But, despite tightening various nuts, our unit still has too many rattly bits that we feel could have been avoided by machining the parts to finer tolerances. The foot rests in particular don’t inspire confidence. They are made of plastic and only time will tell if they are up to the job of regular use. The battery boxes are made of what appears to be the same plastic and when ours arrived the lids were badly cracked and had to be replaced by the dealer.

Although ROMA Medical recommends that the chair not be used in the rain, for most people in the UK this is impractical since the rain can come on suddenly. Therefore, we feel that the electrical connections, which reside beneath the chair, between the battery boxes and the motors and the controller and the battery boxes could be much better protected against moisture ingress. If you don’t plan to fold up this chair we recommend that these connectors be wrapped tightly with self-amalgamating tape available from any good hardware store like B&Q. Otherwise, use in the rain at your own risk. If water gets into the electrics it is likely that the chair will just stop! and you’ll be stranded - wherever.

At any rate, all users of electric mobility vehicles are strongly advised to have recovery insurance because, apart from the inconvenience and risk to one’s health that breakdowns usually involve, recovering chairs and scooters can often be expensive because none of familiar motor vehicle recovery services - like the AA & the RAC - do it. Yet, while most chairs and the smaller scooters can be carried in certain taxi cabs, most of the larger ‘class 3’ scooters cannot and you’ll be up the proverbial gum tree. So, as they say, ‘a word to the wise’.

The Sirocco P110’s seat has provision for a cushion. There are Velcro strips to hold one in place. But no cushion was supplied with this model. At least, not the one we got. We felt this was downright stingy. However, provided in a plastic sleeve with a lanyard, is a dinky little toolkit comprising one of those multi-spanner tools and two Allen keys which are probably enough for most jobs except the big ones, like changing wheels. The chair also comes with a pretty decent-looking 5 Amp off-board charger with the usual Neutrik XLR connector that plugs into the VSI controller. This charger can bring the batteries from pretty flat to full in around eight hours. But it has a very noisy fan that starts at the beginning of the charge cycle and continues for ages before cutting out. So, if you’re a light sleeper, best charge the chair well away from your bedroom.

Compared to the other power wheelchair we have - a Pride Quantum 610 - the ROMA Sirocco P110 is nippy. Although the manufacturer’s stated speed is 4 mph, our chair has been clocked at 5.5 mph on the level and 4.5 mph going up a moderately steep hill. We have further found that the Sirocco can climb hills much steeper than the recommended 10% or 1:10. There’s a 1:3 slope near here that the chair sails up no bother at all with an eleven stone man aboard. So there’s no shortage of puff in this one.

Nevertheless, at the end of the day: would we buy another Sirocco P110? I hear you ask.

The answer is ‘no’. But largely for personal reasons. Aside from the rather iffy build-quality mentioned above we have in the past had indirect difficulty with ROMA over the speedy provision of spare parts for their products. We have also been most unimpressed by the ‘attitude’ implied by this Welsh-based firm in its responses to our enquiries via telephone and in writing.

In our opinion ROMA’s customer service leaves much to be desired.