2021 Middleweight Adventure Motorcycle Shootout

[Applause] a lot of great middleweight adventure bikes these days hot segment i've had a chance to ride all of them but what i haven't had the chance to do is ride all of them back to back so what we've got now is a little bit of everything you know what's big in the adventure segment as far as middleweight motorcycles that kind of keep going bigger and bigger but you know this is the spread of what's hot and i'm really looking forward to two days of testing on these bikes got the rest of the guys out of the office with me so i think we're gonna have a good time hope you guys enjoy the video [Music] [Music] so [Music] [Applause] [Music] right on so that was two days of riding with the 2021 middleweight adventure segment really we have five bikes here so we got to kind of sample what all the uh different manufacturers are doing with this segment and it's been one of the hottest uh and you have things like the ktm 890 adventure r that are pretty bitching to ride off road and then you kind of have everything that runs the gamut between really intense off-road that maybe gives a little bit up for touring comfort and then you have bikes that are stellar touring bikes that uh still do pretty good off-road really and so we also got dunlop to give us their new trail max mission uh they call them 50 50 tires i would say they're a little more street biased you know but we got everything here with these tires on them and they they work pretty good i think they great on the road um maybe not quite as much traction as a like a tkc 80 type tire off-road but i'm definitely glad to have everything on a level playing field rather than you know this bike coming with tkc 80s and another coming with street tires so thanks dunlop for that we appreciate it so let's kind of go through here and get everyone's feelings we've got a couple different levels of off-road riding and uh decades upon decades of touring between all of us and so let's uh take a look i guess we'll start with the ktm since i'm over here uh hey sean how do you feel about the ktm i love it uh i was really impressed with uh the motor for an 890 you know not quite a full leader bike or a 1200 like some of the full-size swing brakes it's got a lot of punch uh there are some compromises in in the setup in terms of comfort as you were alluding to earlier that was one of the bikes i was thinking of as you were saying that see it is a bit firm reminds me of 30 years ago when i actually used a motocross you had those firm seats so that might be something some people might want to think about for if you're going to do a lot of road miles on it but very competent bike off-road and very competent on-road as well i remember about three years ago when we did the big bore adventure bike shootout we were testing the 1290. it really didn't come to term so well with the 21 inch front and i'm not sure what tire we had on at the time but we were going around some twisties and the ckc 80 probably didn't okay yeah it was it was sort of giving vague feedback let's put it but i felt very confident on the front of that bike love the motor and that thing just feels like almost like a big 450 motocross bike when you get into the dirt seeing a lot of people doing a lot of amazing stuff on it not me but you know like guys like quinn cody or chris burch have done really amazing stuff on it so yeah i agree and the only thing i guess i would want to add when you pointed out to me the on-the-fly traction control adjustment after a couple times of stopping put the bike in neutral and like mess with the menus or turning off turning back on we got a lot of loose dirt and sand here and several of these bikes or in road mode and it's literally to the throttle stop you know puddling along behind somebody at 12 miles an hour so to be able to not have to pull over and stop if you're to do a lot of off-road and then you know that's what you'd expect from ktm yeah the off-road company so if your idea of adventure is more getting in the dirt and connecting it with pavement that bike is definitely the top of the list the electronics are my favorite feature about this bike definitely rally mode you can change the throttle response so you've got rally that's really sharp and then you can adjust the traction troll on the fly with the directional pad on the left switch gear and be able to do that over like sean was saying over varying terrain is is really nice to be able to do john knave you spent some time on the 890 adventure r what do you think you know they did their homework on that bike um that was the bike that i as soon as i got in the dirt on that bike i was shocked at how easy it was to ride aggressively ryan helped me with some suspension settings and to be able to dial in the traction control and and make changes on the fly i felt the bike was it feels lighter than it is i'm used to a i ride a 450 dual sport bike and that bike that ktm i felt like i could almost go as fast on the trails as i was on my 450 so i concur with sean it's a very light bike in comparison but uh ktm did their homework i like that bike a great bike in the dirt terrific you know i think to your point of how nimble it feels it has a lot to do with this low slung 5.3 gallon gas tank because it just keeps all that weight so low around it's really compact engine and it just makes it feel you know you don't really get the top heavy feeling that you get with some of these bikes you know and bigger bikes with bigger tanks and whatnot and then the chassis you know the suspension package on this is the wp uh explorer suspension that you get on like the exc line so they've you know they've they've really made it done a good job i think of making this bike perform well off-road for sure john what do you think about it you seem to be enjoying it yeah i enjoyed it except it's time to turn around the seats kind of tall in the dirt yeah i i've heard everybody talk about how good it is off road but i managed to get on it for the ride up s 22 out of borrego springs this morning which is a fast flowing road and i was surprised how good how good it worked there too those tires stick pretty good on the pavement i was surprised and things got power makes the other bikes kind of look small in the mirrors on the straights so yeah and i enjoyed it off-road too even though i didn't ride it a lot off-road it seemed like probably the easiest one to ride if you're a novice when you figure it out it weighs a lot less than a bunch of them too doesn't it it's a it's one pound heavier than the yamaha so the 460 and that one are like quite a bit lighter than the other three yeah and it's as far as the horsepower it is leading the charge with 92 and a half uh horsepower and 64 pound feet of torque so it doesn't make a lot more than the triumph but a little more in the triumph and more than the others more than the others yeah yeah i think that the tall seat height will definitely scare some people away but maybe if you're going to replace the seat anyway maybe you can get something from the guys that like seat concepts or something like that and get a a softer lower seat because it's not actually not even bad except when you're trying to turn around in awkward situations and often you know and if you're out riding you don't stop and turn around and make five camera passes all the time so it's actually fine yeah evans you got a a derivative of the 790 adventure at home yeah well everyone knows that i'm a big fan of this engine but before i start talking about the 890 i think i had to start with a confession and say that every single one of these bikes their off-road capability vastly surpasses my street biased riding i mean it's just it's plain and simple and so while they they can all talk about how easy it is for uh to ride the 898 venture r and it was easy to ride it's wasted on me it really is so i love the engine everything works really well but um a more street biased bike would be more what i would be choose out of these bikes yeah well i mean this thing what do you think about on the street on the street well uh i dug it you know going down the montezuma grade last night at the end of the day and we were just ripping along and i felt really at home you know it's of course it's higher than my my 790 duke is but uh there's a real you know family resemblance to the way the engine behaved the suspension although it's softer than my dip kept the bike well controlled it was it was it was good fun on the street i rode up here with two hours or an hour and a half of freeway droning to get here and while i might not complain as much as some people about this seat it wasn't much it wasn't fun i agree but i really like this bike on the road too because the the motor you know it just really gets it starts spinning up real quickly and then it gets really exciting and uh with the 890 you have even more of that little bit of push that that the seven i mean the 790 wasn't lacking by any means but this thing has a bit more torque and a bit more power you know if you look at the dyno graph which you can find at motorcycle.com but as far as the brakes and suspension this is kind of the whole package for me i would replace all the tires with something more aggressive because i like to take these bikes on as much off-road as possible i think for me changing the seat on this bike i'd be totally happy with it the bike retails the base msrp is 14.2 for the 890 adventure r we have rally mode which is no longer standard it used to be on the 790 and we also have the quick shifter and the the rally pack in the technology pack is what it comes out to so it's actually 550 over msrp so it's 14 750 for this bike but as far as the off-road portion goes there you know there's only one other bike in this pack that i think is is anywhere close but it there's one thing about that motorcycle that we'll get to soon enough that i don't think is anywhere close being the same level as this bike so this kind of the electronics package is great the suspension is great this bike kind of does it for me for what i like to do for adventure riding which again is more off-road focused and it's a blast on the street this is kind of my favorite but uh enough about you know what i think is my favorite what about this moto guzzi here evans the moto guzzi a v85 tt travel that means it has the bags on it as well but we left them behind because we didn't want this bike to have a weight penalty compared to the other bikes but now we're getting more in the neighborhood of what i look for in an adventure touring bike it's a really capable street bike it's got the the v-twin feel and sound and except for uh some you know john noticed it a lot to comment on a lot the some of the fueling abruptness but this bike works really well on the street and yet you know it's still capable of doing what i am comfortable doing in the dirt for me the bike that i chose will choose as my favorite is the goldilocks so having a more street bias and less technical dirt approach uh really appeals to me in this bike right you john burns what do you think i think we all know what you think but of course that's right i like the gutsy a lot i liked it the first time i saw it and riding it i don't like it much less it's got kind of a weird flat spot like 2000 rpm or something but when you get past that it's okay and uh i i really liked it off-road i think it's got the lowest seat here uh it doesn't have all the electronic suites but you can turn off traction control and then you can chug through sand and stuff so it actually goes pretty good and i've always i said it before i think bikes with longitudinal cranks have some kind of self-riding feel to them and it seems to plug along through sand and stuff what do you think of the goosey i like the gucci i was surprised it's on-road manners uh i was you know i'm the amateur in this group of experts and i had a chance to chase them and it was really quite impressive uh the bike's got great on-road manners yeah in the dirt i think tires really help i think it's got a uh something to be said for dunlop trail max missions which i run on my personal home and i agree with john the seat pipe really helped it off-road it had great great dirt manners not as competent i i think it's not really as hard edged a dirt bike but again i think the gucci was really fun on the road i chased these guys down montezuma grade and it was impressive what the bike was capable of doing good brakes um i liked it uh i think in a word charming and i don't mean that to be you know like a disingenuous saying it has character yeah yeah i really mean the bike is charming like you're saying with the longitudinal crank john when you start it up and that you know it's just oh there's something different here the only thing that sort of does that is a boxer you know bmw boxer layout engine uh definitely lower to the ground which for you know either less experience or shorter riders would be a good thing it also makes me realize like what flavor of motorcyclists i am as i was talking earlier to you about you know what what is your style of adventure are you more street biased are you more dirt biased for me motorcycling is about like pushing myself pushing the bike however there are times i don't want that and i love you know i love riding scooters for getting around town i love like a v7 or v9 bobber or something like that i just felt like in this package for going out and if your friends are on different bikes it was a little bit underpowered a little bit softer it's still charming i didn't get the opportunity to ride it around town or city so i think it might elevate in my estimation of it in that circumstance but uh it just felt a little bit like old tech slow compared to these other bikes when we were on the twisties having said that uh that was the last bike i rode actually this location we're at now in the dirt and i was expecting to be like oh this thing's just going to be a pig and it pleasantly surprised me even with the 19-inch front tire it wasn't as sandy here as our previous location so maybe it might be different there but it handles as long as you don't hit the big bumps hard you know you roll off the gas it handles the dirt pretty well like you're all saying i agree with you and that i did not expect that except seems like the goosies that they kind of always go a little bit off the beaten path you know and i think you guys are all kind of competitive and you want to see kind of push each other to go faster but if you want to come out here on these roads but by yourself with gina lola bridges on the back and a picnic basket you know the goosie's it all right some nice cheese and a good chianti yeah you're not in a huge hurry but you go pretty quick on it but you're not trying to beat people anymore agreed yeah i know i i've really lo i love the styling of the bike and i really love the uh yellow white and red frame edition that was that they had when it first came out super cool looking it was kind of reminiscent of their uh motoguzzi's dakar attempts um which you know didn't pan out all that great but the bike looked cool but yeah this bike it's really cool you know and yeah it's maybe maybe you don't want to go try and catch your friends on an 890 adventure r but if you're going out with some guys on i don't know triumph street street scramblers or scrambler xe or something like that that's kind of more in the vein of what i think that bike is and it's it's got a lot of character you know the engine is a lot of fun it's it sounds like a muscle car when you start it you know we listen to it bounce off the canyon walls this morning and it's a really cool bike and the 19-inch front it pushes a little bit in the sand and whatnot but like sean said if you're just kind of doing a little bit of exploring keeping the pace down the suspension's fine it's like it's a little over six and a half uh inches of suspension travel versus something like the ktm is like nine and a half um but yeah it's totally competent and able to do it i'm gonna be happy riding at home tonight it's got cruise control and heated grips so it's good for me you don't ever have to adjust your chain and adjusting your valves is a doddle they're hanging out there you can do it yourself yeah and this bike has a has a lot more technology on it than uh moto guzzi's have had in the in the past so it's a it's a good really cool bike for them new engine and everything so but guess what else is new the tiger 900 rally pro here it is there it is john what do you think we just did the triumph eight uh tiger 850 gt the other day which is the cut rate version of this uh this is the rally pro sells for 17 100 so it's got like 5 000 dollars worth of accouterments added on to it but i think they're worth every penny you got the big tft display a bunch of different modes including off-road and off-road pro which switches off to abs and traction control if you're an advanced rider off-road for me leaves the dirt abs on a little bit and uh i think for for me riding around in the dirt this is my second favorite bike pretty easy to control pretty good suspension but the horsepower is not really the story it's the the mid-range torque that this thing makes it really delivers good uh power that's easy to use in the dirt and it's fast on the street too you get cruise control of course uh is this one got heated seats heated seats for the rider and passes yeah you need a grip rider and passenger there's two electrical outlets uh the big tft display already said uh yeah the base 850 didn't have cruise control this does i should talk less about cruise control huh but it's a big it's just uh if you were practical and you wanted the best combination of dirt and street this is it i think yeah i wouldn't argue with you there i think the tiger 900 rally pro is it's kind of the top of line in that tiger range for them um the gt pro would be the more street approach to this motorcycle but yeah in my opinion you know i might have said this is my bag you know the ktm because it does well off-road but if you want something that does everything pretty dang well the triumph 900 is is one of the best by far because you've got a lot of touring comfort on that bike the engine is awesome the triple is great uh on-road and off-road yeah that's a really really good package what do you think evans um well i guess i'm just gonna go ahead and spoil my final thing right now and say that this is my my pick of the litter yeah uh i i love this engine it's mid-range grunt and you know going down up or down you know a canyon road is a lot of fun it handles nicely the brakes work well overall the package is something i like and it's got enough uh assistance for someone like me off-road that it increases my comfort level um putting it in the off-road mode not off-road pro yeah but the off-road mode really it it refines everything to the way i need it to be off-road and helps me from getting myself in over my head for sure john knape what do you think i'm gonna i'm gonna give it a single word and that is fancy it was a fancy bike but but let me you know let me um to really qualify it's a lot of the fancy features on that thing were really usable it has a link that you can use to to activate gopro i thought that was really good i rode that bike on on pavement and i was shocked at um a it's very very fast um but b it handles really well i was surprised it just turned in really well in the dirt i wrote it on rally pro and found uh with these tires again i was surprised at how well it was able to do with some pretty rocky i i should say not necessarily rocky but sandy climbs where there's rocks involved and it was pretty docile it was really pretty agile other than that i like the bike it would be if i was going to choose a long distance tour it would be one of the top two bikes of this test right on sean matic yeah that's a really cool bike i liked it a lot as well um i agree with you it's kind of like right in the middle what's the phrase jack of all trades master of none this it's pretty close to mastering some of the trays you know um the motors bitching the the quick shifter auto blipper works great handle's good turning's good on the pavement good brakes on it again and maybe it's the tires we're using as opposed to those tkc 80s didn't get that weird vague sketchy feeling and we were we were going pretty good on some yeah some twisty roads um and it was really competent in the dirt you know i was steering the thing with the rear one of the things i wasn't crazy about it reminds me of my own personal ktm super duke when you turn the bike off the lawyers made them put it back into road mode it's fine if you're going on a long ride but like when we're stopping the film and every time you turn the bike off and it defaults back to that it gives you a warning and says like oh you're you're in um road mode after turning off or something like that i forget the wording mike starts in road mode yeah right but it wasn't really an off-road probe no it's a that's what's weird about it is it it's a two-step process yeah you select the mode and then you have to hit a secondary check button which you don't have to do in the other modes and it's that right that confused me off-road pro in the center of the dash i'm like i'm good and then i'm like literally throttled to the stop you know doing a steady 12 miles an hour and some sand i'm like the traction control's working you also can't change while you're moving either you can't change it out of any of the street modes to off-road so you do have to stop to do that yeah and part of the reason i mentioned my super duke is because you can get a dongle for like 80 bucks and it'll remember the the you know whatever the setting you left it in and it won't put it back to the lawyer safe mode that bike could use that but if it was a newer rider or newer to off-road i could see when that traction stroll was going it does a good job of keeping the tires in line it keeps poodling along you can get sloppy with the throttle and you just keep chugging so that triumph's you know a really good all-around bike it does bring me back to something you were talking about the ktm and that low gas tank low slung gas tank that actually works putting the the fuel down here because that still is fairly fun and nimble but the places i noticed it's like you're coming up on a corner and there's suddenly there's a bunch of deep sand and these tires aren't so great in the sand and trying to get the bike kind of hauled down and to turn on that i could feel like this top heaviness that you didn't feel on these two bikes and interestingly enough they're both 5.3 gallon tanks just a different way of putting it on the bike yeah yeah so that i think that really works having it down low like that but i mean that really the only weakness i could save with the triumph and these the the new tigers lost like 30 pounds compared to old ones so they actually they made a big step in the right direction and on the road man this is got all the stuff that's more comfortable than that one yeah extra 30 pounds is accouterment it def it definitely is more comfortable on the road than the ktm and and i don't want to make it sound like i didn't think the bike was surprisingly really good off-road it's just that in that one place of getting on the brakes and with the sand you know trying to like push the top down i could feel it like still wanting to carry forward where i didn't feel it on these two bikes as much right on yeah i don't know the tiger again like i said it's kind of i think one of the best all-around bikes it's 17 100 so it is one of the most expensive bikes here uh not the most expensive but it's it's second place but let's get to the most expensive one at around 17.5 the bmw john well disclaimer is i have the big brother to this bike i've got an r 1200 gs adventure you know this bike makes 77 horsepower 56 pound-feet of torque but when you look at the value difference when i first got on it i was surprised how it felt comfortable i was on the road how comfortable it was for some pretty long and fairly quick street riding at seventeen thousand 500 as tested about it's um it's a great value and a ton of features you know it's got the tft dash i love it's got heated grips i love it's got cruise control which now i'm spoiled with cruise control it's um you know it's a porker off-road no question it's a heavy bike to ride in the dirt but also i was doing things on this bike you know kind of getting a little bit silly and i was surprised at how it would just snap right back into control i like it this is my number one choice as a road bike during this test and it's uh considerably lower as my choice for a dirt bike in this test but i like it great bike yeah i think because we have the gs the f 850 gs adventure here you know it has the presence of its 1250 you know older brother it is it looks massive and it's 552 pounds so it is the heaviest bike in this test but i agree on road uh and even a little bit of slower off-road it really handles pretty well and it's got a 6.1 gallon tank so it's bigger than the standard f-850 but and it is kind of high but it's almost if you keep the speeds a little lower on that it doesn't at least it didn't bother me so much uh the fork on that one's completely unadjustable but it does have the electronic rear suspension that is dynamic and it's kind of like a semi-active feature um so it's kind of got the the accessory catalog or the premium package thrown at it that's why it's quite a bit more over its uh 15.5 starting msrp but yeah i mean i thought the bike was pretty good and surprisingly uh comfortable on road what do you think shawn that's an awesome bike it's a beautiful bike what a great road bike you know and i was i i think that's probably the first parallel twin bmw ever rode and i don't know how long ago was i remember hearing about not the best about the the older iterations of that motor i think maybe it started out as 650 or something like that so my expectations hopping on to every kind of low and i was like oh no this thing can move you know you really rev it out on top it starts to peter off a little bit but great mid-range you know shoots you forward went with some friends with a couple of the ten or eight seven hundreds and that off-road and i was pleasantly surprised uh like john was saying the place where you do notice it most off-road is if you're coming up to like you know a rock or anything that's going to be a high-speed compression hit that's going to compress the suspension quickly it's going to blow through the stroke especially on the fork really fast the shock you can electronically stiffen the preload and that that helps but if you just keep that in mind and go okay i'm not gonna try to you know do any doubles or a set of whoops uh it's pretty competent off-road and then it's a very comfortable bike on-road and oh man who i don't know anyone if anyone doesn't love the dash on the new bmw's you got to get the head shots yeah it's so awesome so clear it doesn't matter if there's dust on it or the sun's hitting it you can read everything watch movies yeah yeah i'm waiting for my netflix to pop up on that the only thing about the interface that did throw me off a little was um it wasn't as intuitive figuring out how to like reset the odometer or something simple like that i couldn't always figure out how to get into some of the sub menus of the menu but that's something if you lived with the bike for a while i'm sure you'd figure it out but what a great interface really enjoyed the bike my girlfriend really enjoyed it she's like babe you got to get one of these just doing this test has got me it took me back to my roots because i actually learned how to ride in the dirt and you know as am as a teenager did a little amateur motocross and then left that life behind and now i'm all like asphalt and road racing and stuff but um taking that thing on the dirt last week it was just like wow there's something got you excited about it yeah something to ryan going out in the desert and disappearing you know mid-week and not not doing his stories for a few days this is why there are other reasons but yeah no the bmw's it's a pretty awesome package and and i think one thing for me that was it's a little deceiving because every time i put it in dynamic and get on it you know in the canyons i get scoot back in the seat and i think oh yeah this thing this motor is peppy for sure especially low to mid range and it's actually pretty small and compact too like kind of between your ankles and then you look forward and maybe even consider putting your foot out when you're going around a corner or something and you almost can't because there's so much girth in the front of that thing but yeah i mean right past all those crash bars it's pretty narrow still um john burns hi what do you think of that bmw it's okay it's pretty it looks almost big as the does the 1250 yeah yeah like if you're dr if you're going to be on on the freeway a lot if you have to go long distances if that's your adventure might be the best one for just droning along it's pretty comfy and all that bodywork takes it gives you a pretty big uh hole in the atmosphere which is nice but overall for me it's kind of meh i think it's parallel twins a little it's just not it doesn't turn me on as much as the triple and this thing does t-play and and the gucci's got its own syncopated thing going on it's you know it's just starting to do a lot a lot for me personally it's not the one i would take home not even with the bumblebee color 40th anniversary edition there doesn't do anything for you uh it's cool that it's got the 40th anniversary but i'm 20 years older than it so i'm not that impressed i don't need the reminder i'm not that impressed with 40 years okay evans if i had to sum up how i feel about the the bmw it would be a surprise because i went into this knowing that it's the heaviest bike here by a significant amount and you can't get past that giant gas tank so the first time i sat down on it i didn't have a it wasn't on a droning section it was a section where i was one of the last people to pull out of the pull out and i had to get on it and rush to catch up with everybody through a series of corners and i was stunned i was really really surprised at how how well it performed and then when you consider that the touring amenities it has make it a a really excellent long distance sporty bike sport touring bike however we get to the dirt and uh the bmw is the one i crashed this morning less than a quarter mile from when we left our campsite um so i'm not holding that against the bike you're going pretty quick beforehand though i was yeah that engine was screaming right before it seized um and so yeah i was i was feeling my oats and uh i got taught a lesson by the laws of physics but once i slowed things down as was said before i think by sean that it worked pretty well in the dirt despite the fact that you never forget how heavy it is yeah i agree i think that we all learned a lesson from that crash i think we got it on video so moving from maybe the biggest handful off-road to the yamaha tentare sean wow i was really pleasantly surprised what an awesome value this bike is i don't know maybe maybe i wasn't surprised you know there's been a lot of hype around it and from when it was announced but uh i would say it's worth the wait this thing felt the most to me like an actual real dirt bike maybe even more than the ktm you and i were talking on the intercoms about part of that is the handlebar the the ktm handlebar surprisingly uh narrow for a ready to race you know dirt oriented company and this one kind of feels more natural for off-road attacking and going back to what i was talking about the electronics earlier on this capacity of bikes and bikes was below 100 horsepower i'm not too worried about you know traction control and things like that for my riding so the fact that and also having to every time you stop go in like you i had to do on the triumph and go in the dash and figure out what mode it was in and am i in street mode you know either just abs on or off and that's it and that sort of simplicity if you're going to do a lot of miles in the dirt is really cool about this bike and it was just a blast and that the 21 inch front and the suspension you could hit stuff pretty pretty fast i mean i think this thing could hang with that ktm i felt like no problem and on the pavement it was good too you know it didn't it didn't feel super underpowered or anything um much like the ktm if the seat's a little narrower you're a little taller so if you're short or less comfortable with tall bike something you might want to consider but i didn't feel like that oh i've got to do a lot of miles with the girlfriend on the back and i'm just not going to want to do it it felt like you could do it on this it's not going to be as comfortable as those two bikes but it's not bad either so um and then the price tag it's was nine thousand hundred yeah ten grand i'm seriously considering one of these you know that thanks for you know re-lighting reigniting my dirt spark from my youth and um thinking about maybe moving out the super duke and the scooter and making space for uh adventure bike and with this price tag that's something to seriously look at so really impressed with the yamaha yeah no i agree and and it's cool that yamaha was able to bring something that you know is is this capable and at that price point 10 grand i mean you have the 21 inch front the 18 inch rear which you also have on the ktm the others differ a little bit with 17 inch rear tires but yeah that yamaha is set up really well and i actually took a trip with the tiger 900 rally pro and that bike to death valley and we had to do a lot of highway miles to get out there and i honestly think that that thing offers better wind protection for your legs and your chest i didn't have any issues with that and as long as i kept my legs against the bike it felt better than the wind protection on the tiger 900 so which it's surprising because it looks very smelt um and standing up on the bike it is it's only until you kind of start trying to get a lot of weight over the front tire that you feel that gas tank that is it's totally up high and it's only a 4.2 gallon tank so it's smaller than the rest of these but it kind of flares out of the front so if you're if you've got knee braces on and you're trying to get weight over the front tire it starts to feel a little thick but down here you know you're talking about it being a little taller it it is taller but it's not as tall as the ktm and it also the suspension sinks down a little bit easier so it's it's the spec sheet can be a little bit deceiving with that seat height because it does feel a little bit lower once you sit on it and right there at the seat it is really narrow um and yeah the punchy parallel twine is awesome it's also the lowest displacement 689 cc i believe on that one um but out in the canyon roads trying to keep up with everybody not a problem at all and the brakes feel good yeah it's a it's a great package john knave what do you think about it i'm gonna i'm gonna agree on value you know it's got a simple lcd dash it doesn't have any real electronics other than the ability to disable abs but that was the bike that i was really surprised standing up felt very very comfortable in the dirt there was a a time when ryan and i were kind of chasing each other and i got off the 890 which i thought was really quick and then i i got on this bike and i thought wow this is something that somebody who's a little bit more dork oriented would really like but day one this is the bike that i rode 90 minutes on the freeway and i was really surprised at how confident it was it was comfortable it had better wind protection i was kind of surprised it had better wind protection than some smaller bikes that i've ridden that it's a great bike i think the value again ten thousand dollars for that bike holy cow they should sell a ton of them because it's just kind of good everywhere with a good set of bags i could see a long cross-country trip on that bike yeah i liked it great motor yeah for sure john burns what do you think uh if it had cruise control i'd pay 10-3 that's all that's all you have to say if it had cruise control heated grips i'd pay oh the trump's got to heat the grips we mentioned that yeah we've mentioned that if you had heated grips and cruise control i'd pay 10-5 as it is i can't do it not interested we're gonna get a t-shirt made motorcycle.com this one has cruise control i could probably sell a few of them go like hotcakes evan's thoughts yeah this is this is kind of a funny situation in that i'm going to choose the tenere as my second favorite bike of this group and why would an avowed street oriented guy uh pick one of the more dirty uh entries in this field and it's first of all it's the it's the value that that's really important and i'm gonna steal a word that sean used earlier and say charming it's a really it's a charming motorcycle i got on it and every time i've ridden one of them i i've enjoyed myself the engine is capable on the street despite being a smaller displacement of the other bikes wind protection we've commented on and even without all the electronic rider age which you know my first choice is you know covered with um i found it really easy to ride in the dirt and i felt it gave me confidence it chugged through stuff that um i'm not sure the other bikes would even if they had even though they had larger displacement i just felt really confident and you know i also owe the ten array one since i've already i've now crashed a ten rate three times it's picked up dusted off and nothing's broken so that that carries a lot of weight with someone is incompetent in the dirt ride i mentioned last week that one of the folks had uh one of these and she went down twice and nothing but some scratches on the crash guards and that was it it's surprising how good that motorcycle is for only 64 horsepower yeah you know and that's the thing it's a again you can't just look at the spec sheet and the horsepower numbers because when we're going through the canyon roads i felt just as good on that one as as the ktm which was the most powerful one out of the group so yeah i agree um there's a few things that i would do to that bike and i'd be really happy with it foot pegs bigger foot pegs so you can get a motocross boot a little bit farther away from the right side of the motor and then a wider handlebar for me but yeah that's well and of course tires first thing tires but um yeah one more thing yeah heated grips they came in handy when we were all riding out i was on the beamer and i saved my fingers glad we all came out here and did this um so i think what's cool about this category again though is you've got a lot of different approaches here and they're kind of their own approaches you know if you're really off-road oriented you want the top-of-the-line electronics that you can really tweak the bike and adjust the bike with i think the ktm is a great uh bike for that it's not the most comfortable bike for the street you know you are kind of up on the handlebars a little bit more aggressively but it definitely has the chops off road the chassis and the suspension are great the moto guzzi's got a lot of character msrp on that one's around 13.5 i believe and the motor is a lot of fun you'll feel good feel cool around town it's it's got the heritage thing that's hot right now i dig it uh the triumph tiger 900 rally pro is got all of the top-of-the-line touring accoutrement it's got some serious suspension travel and i like we already said i think it's the most well-rounded if you want to do a little bit of everything it's really good the motor is is great and will kind of maybe be a little bit more towards people that are more in tune with triples or inline fours that smoother engine character that's the bike for it the bmw is great on-road you've got a lot of range with that 6.1 gallon tank it's kind of heavy off-road if you're cool with it that's fine if you're cool with keeping the pace down really doesn't matter good bike and then the ten array you know that's that's the newest kind of addition well aside from the engine displacement bump on the ktm but the ten array coming into this category it's the value you know the the ktm is 14.2 that thing's you know this is for 4200 bucks more than that and so that comes in as the value but ends up being a great street bike which we already knew because the motor from the mt07 or xsr700 but yeah so we already knew the motor was great and the first time i rode the xsr 700 i couldn't wait to ride an adventure bike with that motor in it so i think what we should do real quick is go through and talk about just real fast sean what's your favorite bike off-road ktm but yamaha is super close all right john knave i'm going to agree ktm but the tanner a is very close right on john burns i'm going to go to the ktms the best off-road vehicle okay i'm going to say the 10-array right on i'm going to stick with the ktm so what about on-road sean triumph john knave sorry bmw of course nice hat uh john burns i mean on-road going fast or on-road going somewhere both the ktm is faster on-road too what about going somewhere uh this one for going somewhere the triumph tiger for going somewhere evans i'm gonna go with the tiger i'm gonna go with the tiger as well so thinking about 14 200 thirteen four actually i believe on that one the tiger 17 one as tested the 850 is 17 5-ish 10 grand what would you pay to actually take home and put in your garage which one sean right now with all the money i throw that r1 and race tires i'm gonna get this yamaha it's such a good value good value john knave uh you know i owe bmw a lot of money for the 1200 so i'm going to go with the 10 array definitely john burns uh i would get the moto gutsy v85 tt right on i would go with the triumph yeah yep yeah well he's the boss he makes the big bucks so for me uh yeah it's going to be the ktm of course it's going to be so i've got a toronto i have i have an 1190 that i put quite a few miles on and this bike it just i don't mind spending the extra money on the bike to get the bike that i want that has the features that i want and again the electronics package in this and the suspension is is there for the 10 array uh the money you save you can do the suspension upgrade which is something that i would do and then foot pegs and a handlebar for me for the ten array but uh that pretty much wraps it up and if you guys watched to this point wait wait wait wait oh wait what do you want i think that i would be remiss if i didn't point out after he just dissed his boss about you know choosing the most expensive bike he goes and says um and this is close to a quote i don't mind paying a little extra for features that i like now yeah continue no actually another remittance oh man roast mode i only said that because i spent so much money on my other motorcycle hobbies but you know you throw me the keys i'm picking the ktm all day long so it's a great bike yeah the truth comes out okay all right well you guys have watched long enough sorry for making this video so long but you know there's a lot of bikes here we wanted to cover them all for you and kind of talk about how they uh compared thanks for watching the video if you like like comment subscribe uh check out the full story on motorcycle.com we'll have all the photography spec sheet side-by-side comparisons of that and uh thanks for watching bye bye bye bravo kim dandy [Music] so you

Channel: Motorcycle.com

Views: 338,709

Rating: 4.8499627 out of 5

Keywords: Motorcycle.com, motorcycle, bike, BMW F850 GSA, KTM 890 Adventure R, Moto Guzzi V85 TT Travel, Triumph Tiger 900 Rally Pro, Yamaha Tenere 700, adventure motorcycle

Id: rGCIKP9w7DE

Length: 45min 40sec (2740 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 02 2021