2022 Suzuki Burgman 400 | The Argument for Maxi Scooters (& Why You Need One!)

you should push the key in and you turn it you hear a click now we can open the rear storage so this pops open here let's see I don't know what this is hmm okay Steve we're gonna go as fast we can here 65 70. 75 I gotta slow down 80. so the acceleration is as adequate I think you know I just wanted to hello everyone my name is Ian you're watching Big Rock Moto and thank you so much for tuning in today so here's a question I have for you all is there a point where something is actually so uncool so unsexy that it actually becomes cool and kind of a quirky way I think that maybe the Suzuki Burgman and scooters like this are a perfect example of this question now some of you may not ever be caught dead riding a bike that looks like this however some of you will also be willing to sacrifice the good looks for the enormous practicality that a maxi scooter like this provides Maxi scooters like the Bergman 400 here are not a new phenomenon the Birdman came out in the late 90s and quickly became its sensation and gathered quite a quote like following especially when they had the somewhat crazy 650 CC model bikes like the Honda Silver Wing which was a bike very similar to this also had quite a bit of success during their production run so today we're reviewing the Suzuki Burgman 400 the updated 2022 model and I'm going to also take this as an opportunity to discuss us the pros and cons mostly the pros of course of choosing a scooter for your transportation so here's how I'm going to break down this review we'll start by showing you the riding position the seating position the seat height then I'm going to take you on a tour show you all the interesting kind of features uh unique features and specs of this bike then we're going to get it out on a highway show you how it works you know out on the road in the twisties all those sorts of things then we're going to come back here and talk about the pros of scooter ownership and what a scooter really has to offer we'll talk about some of the competition to this Bergman and then we'll have some final thoughts so with that let's go for a ride all right so let's take a look at the seating position on the Bergman 400 so I've got the bike up here on the center stand so let me show you the seating position first so you have two different places you can put your feet you see you can put your feet on the flat four board here and for me so I should give you my Dimensions I'm 5 foot 10 or 180 centimeters I weigh about 85 to 90 kilograms around 190 to 200 pounds depending on how many burritos I ate that week and yeah so those are my dimensions and I have a 32 inch inseam so I'm fairly tall and a pretty good sized guy so if I put my feet here you can see I do my knees are up a little bit but it's not uncomfortable at all but what I like to do usually when I'm riding is take advantage of the forward foot position here which is very comfortable allows my legs to really stretch out and I can really you see here push my legs almost straight and kind of push my butt against this backrest if I really need to stretch my legs out because I do get sore on longer rides so you have two different kind of positions here and they're very very comfortable the handlebars are in a very comfortable position as well you can see it puts your elbow at a slight Bend which is what you want to see and overall it's an extremely comfortable bike to ride now the seat height let me take it off the center stand here show you the seat height so it's a 29.7 inch seat height and I'll put the millimeters here but it's very low for a motorcycle or a scooter right and so at my height I have tons of room to flat foot the bike on both sides move it around it feels very maneuverable doesn't feel taller top heavy at all right let's take a tour around the Bergman 400 and briefly talk about inspection features as we go but I do want to show you all the cool interesting quirks and features of this bike that really has kind of some cool stuff going on so you can't really see the engine or any of the running gear because it's a scooter and they cover all that with plastic you can kind of see the engine poking out there so what we have is a 400 cc four-stroke liquid cooled engine and the engine puts out around 28 horsepower and around 25 26 foot pounds of torque it's a low compression engine 10.6 to 1 so you only have to use regular 87 octane gas and of course it's hooked up to a CVT or continuously variable transmission which you can see a lot of that stuff is going on inside here and of course it's it's in there it's driven by a belt as well and then you do have a final drive here kind of a more of a shaft System final drive and you do have oil in that shaft drive there let's talk about sort of the chassis the suspension brakes tires and wheels so the tires you do have a 15 inch front tire which is pretty big for a scooter and on the rear it's actually a 13 inch tire which is typical for a scooter like this the rear is a 150 width which is pretty wide and the front is the 120 width so you actually have pretty wide pretty grippy tires so on the front of the bike you actually have pretty strong brakes for a scooter so you have twin 260 millimeter discs and you've got two piston calipers not four piston just two piston but you have of them on each side and then in the back you've got a 210 millimeter disc and I believe it's a single piston yeah a single piston caliper there suspension is pretty basic on a scooter like this so you have a normal right side up you know traditional front fork and you've got around four or four and a half inches of travel on the back you do have a model shock which you can't really see and you have about three and a half to four inches of travel on the Monoshock now the suspension does not have any adjustments which is pretty typical on a bike like this the fuel tank which I'm going to show you here in a second is 3.6 gallons or about 13 and a half liters and in typical riding conditions that's going to give you a range if you're getting around 60 miles a gallon which I do a range of around somewhere around 150 to 200 miles somewhere in between there which I think is pretty good for a scooter now the weight we have to talk about the weight because it is a pretty heavy bike for a scooter so you've got a lot of stuff going on here and then the weight adds up so it's 480 pounds or around 218 kilograms so it's not a lightweight scooter but because the engine lays down inside here and all the weights really low it doesn't feel heavy at all when you're riding it around or even pushing it around parking it now of course we should mention price the price here in the US for 2022 is 8499 which is definitely on the high end for a scooter and we'll talk about some of the competition later in the video so for 2022 sudoki did make quite a few updates to the bike so let me uh kind of list these off real quick just briefly and Apollo please accept my apology for looking at my phone here it's just too difficult to memorize all this stuff so they made the bike Euro 5 compliant so they made small tweaks to the engine they added dual spark plugs they revised the fuel injection did some things like that they did revise the dashboard which I'm going to show you in a second it has a different ABS module has a different exhaust it has new LED lighting which is nice to have that you have a larger 15 inch front wheel the old model had a 14 in a short wheel so a little bit bigger there for better bump absorption better handling and let's see what else and then you've got a also what they've done is they've added traction control which is defeatable you can turn it off so it's kind of a nice thing to have so that's about it for the updates for 2022 you all right now one of my favorite Parts in the review I get to take you on a tour and show you all the cool interesting features of the bike so starting at the front you've got this big swoopy body work these large headlights which kind of remind me of some of Suzuki's other models like the V-Strom you can see their LED high and low beam so very very bright very nice to have that you have inkenders and turn signals built into the Bodywork here some sort of little vent or some sort of effect there you can see the radiator squish way down in there big front fender here uh we've talked about the chassis and all that stuff already so no need to cover that again the windshield is non-adjustable now keep in mind this does not come with the bike I added this to quiet down I was getting a lot of wind buffeting wind noise and so for filming I need to add this to make the the audio come better through the helmet a little bit smoother working our way around the sides here you can see it's got these front foot positions and you've got the floorboards uh down here the passenger pegs pretty nice pretty big very well very nicely cushioned Rider seat with a little bit of a backrest and a very big nice comfortable seating area this is very comfortable for the driver and the passenger for seating you can see here the rear grab wheel for the passenger rear fender the pretty large exhaust which all bikes have nowadays you can see the engine and stuff down in here that's your oil fill area let's see what else do we want to look at so coming on the back here you can see you've got LED tail light and these turn signals I think they're incandescent bulbs but they're built in below here nice Suzuki logo there coming around to this side you can see the large Drive Unit sort of the final drive and the CVT and the belt drive and everything's in there Center stand which comes centered side stand all the stands work really well of course foot pegs there now let me show you uh let's start by showing you the dashboard and stuff and then I'll show you the storage which is really nice on the scooter so for our controls and dashboard it's very simple very well laid out easy to use so let's start here non-adjustable Clutch and Brake levers no adjustments there for the reach passing switch for your high beam high and low beam switch let me turn off the hazard lights here for a second turn off low beam the turn signals horn pretty weak little horn pretty good mirrors nice adjustability they give a good clear view behind you can see the brake master so are the brake reservoirs there so that's good now I should note that being a scooter it does not have a clutch it has a CVT transmission so instead of this being a clutch this is actually your rear break which takes a little bit of getting used to for sure when you first jump on it moving on here this is a parking brake so how that works is it's connected to the rear brake and you you can hear it click you push this down and then to release it there parking brake is very very handy to have on a motorcycle parking any sort of uneven surface the bike won't roll away and fall off the side stand let's see finishing up the controls the dashboard you can see you've got a nice analog speedometer tachometer and in the middle you've got things like a clock a fuel gauge a range trip computers and you can also adjust what you want to see here with different things you've got miles per gallon average fuel economy let's see yeah so you've got some different different readouts you can get there temperature so yeah I like the dashboard very easy to read now traction control the start button so to start the bike you actually have to make sure you have the kickstand up and then you can start the bike here starts very smoothly kill switch hazard light switch nice to have the hazard lights this also when the bike is running you can hold this down and it'll turn off the traction control system so that's interesting it's the switch has two different features so now let me start to show you some of the interesting kind of features of this bike being a scooter the first thing that's kind of interesting is you see the key here it has this little uh kind of plastic knob here and this is open and shut so what this does you put the key this little thing here and you turn this and what it actually does let me see if I can show this here on the camera what it actually does is you see how you can put the key in right there if you shut that it shuts that so you can't like stick a screwdriver or something in there a thief can't stick a screwdriver I've never seen a bike that has that so it's kind of interesting interesting feature there now let's look at the storage so being a scooter you have all this built-in storage it's a huge Advantage the left storage is pretty sizable you could put phones wallets uh you know gloves whatever you want in there it's a nice nice front storage I don't won't see any way to lock it however so I wouldn't put anything too valuable in there the right hand storage is even larger and you have a power outlet in here as well it's a 12 volt cigarette style this is a great place to keep a lot of stuff as well so really good storage now we talked about the gas so to get gas you pop this open put the key in open that and you get gas that's no problem now the big storage and the big feature of these scooters is the under seat storage and this Bergman does not disappoint so to open that what you do is you push the key in and you turn it you hear a click now we can open the rear storage so this pops open here let's see I don't know what this is okay well disregarding that I'll put that here for now let me show you the storage so you've got they they say you can fit two full-size helmets I'm not so sure about that I think maybe one in this deep part maybe if you had a smaller helmet I'll put the leaders here it's a pretty big pretty big amount of storage you can put a lot of stuff in here and it's gasketed so handy to have this I mean helmets you want to go shopping put your groceries in here you want to carry stuff for a trip you know running errands it's awesome to have this much storage underneath the seat so I like to talk about maintenance requirements in my video what is it going to be like to own well I've done some research I can tell you that they want you to change the oil every 3 500 miles and the oil change from what I've looked up online is fairly easy with some drain plugs a little bit finicky to access some stuff with all the Tupperware in the way but you've got to fill here and you've got a drain on the bun pretty easy to change that they want you to change the filter I think every two oil changes some people change every oil change but again it's not a huge deal to change the engine oil if you're going to have to do stuff like air filters and spark plugs which doesn't come along very often you will have to remove a lot of this body work which is going to add a little bit of time to that but it's not that big of a deal the final drive does have oil in it but that's fairly easy to change and some so consumable so like brakes and tires so the owners have reported that the brakes and tires last a very long time on the Bergman probably because it doesn't have a lot of weight it doesn't have a lot of power the brakes aren't super powerful so you're just not wearing out those consumable items and it uses the Dunlop uh no not Dunlop what are they yeah Dunlop scoot smart tires I just laugh at that name scoot smart I think that's hilarious so yeah that's just a brief overview of the maintenance but it seems to be a very easy bike to own all right let's go ride the Bergman 400 and see how this Beast does out on the open road so I've got my insta360 1x2 mounted up here a big thanks to them for their support and sponsoring the Channel with one of their cameras uh so we'll put this passenger peg in so the bike has a very low seat height very easy to get on and off the experience of getting on it is it doesn't feel heavy at all despite being 480 pounds it really doesn't feel that heavy to me uh now again as we go through this video just keep in mind again this is not part of the bike it's not stock I have this on here to quiet down the wind flow so to start the Bergman you have to have the kickstand up you cannot start it with a kickstand down and then it's simply a matter of turning the key on and then holding one of the brakes thumbing the starter button and there she goes so the engine starts up very quiet and very smooth the overall experience of the Bergman is it's very smooth and quiet and refined to ride and you don't really feel hardly any of the engine vibration coming through the bike at all now one thing you cannot do with the Bergman because it's a CVT is Rev the bike like at a stoplight or something if you do that the bike is going to want to go forward because the transmission is automatically engaging all right now to set off on the Bergman without a clutch what you do is you simply start to twist the throttle and the bike starts to take off on its own so very very easy to ride but if you're coming from a normal motorcycle with a clutch it can be a little bit hard to adjust to it first and keep in mind that this is not a clutch but it's actually your rear brake now I actually really like that but that's just a personal preference thing it's kind of nice to have the breakup on the bars like on my mountain bike oh now when you have to come to a stop because the bike is so low and it feels light it's not intimidating at all and then when there's a gap in traffic all you do is you simply open the throttle and you feel the transmission kind of slipping and then it engages and you can see the acceleration for moving around town it's actually pretty good zero to zero to 40 is pretty fast and you can keep up with just about any normal traffic that you would encounter foreign so I've actually taken this bike on some longer rides and I really find it to be incredibly comfortable for uh long distance riding which you wouldn't think of with the scooter but because you have you know a lot of a lot of leg room here you have good ergonomics you have a lot of wind protection on this bike um it's very comfortable for riding long distances and you could really Tour on this bike and a lot of the owners do [Music] one of the things that I do notice about riding the Bergman uh and you know it is a scooter this is what you expect the ride is a little bit a little bit more rough than some motorcycles just because you've got those small wheels and tires and you don't have a ton of suspension travel but it's not bad at all and it does a pretty good job considering the equipment you know that it has there's nobody behind me so let's talk about the brakes so again uh let me just use the front brake and show you so the front brake this bike has abs so it stops very quickly and very confidently if I use the rear brake I can feel the lever pulsing really hard by the ABS kicking in and if I want to uh the bike does not have link breaks so now if I want to accelerate to speed and then stop as quickly as possible I have to use both levers this was both levers all the way and very very good braking there to make sure traffic's not behind me that's not a good thing to do so the overall experience of riding the Bergman 400 is really it's a luxury scooter so I know it sounds kind of crazy but what I mean is that you have really good wind protection the engine is very smooth you have enough power to travel at highway speeds which I'm going to show you here in a minute um it's comfortable you have I love putting my feet forward like this it lets my knee angle really relax and is very comfortable for my body for my longer legs at uh five you know 180 centimeters or five foot ten five foot eleven it's very comfortable for me if I put my legs here my knees are a little bit higher than I want so usually I end up riding like this to to kind of stretch out the handlebars are in the perfect position keeps my back very straight it's a very neutral upright position very comfortable there I I really don't feel much wind or much wind buffeting I mean it's just super comfortable and the engine has plenty of power to do this now what about the handling so it's a scooter so it handles it turns very quickly it handles very well you're not going to ride it like a sport bike it's not intended to do that doesn't have enough grip or the suspension really set up for that but you can get through these twisties pretty well and I find myself riding it uh it's just fun to actually kind of write it a little bit in a sporty manner just because it feels it feels fun and kind of silly to ride a scooter like like you're pretending to be a sport bike you know so I find that part to be very engaging uh you don't feel any vibration from the engine really like the engine tends to run anywhere between three to six thousand RPM when you're accelerating so if you go Full Throttle it'll be around 5500 RPM is where it tends to keep the transmission and from that point you have really good roll-on power here all right acceleration on the Bergman slightly uphill Full Throttle Full Throttle acceleration again we're at elevation and slightly uphill so this is a pretty difficult situation for this bike there's 60 miles an hour that was probably around 10 11 seconds and we're still accelerating now I have to slow down for this corner okay so now slightly downhill acceleration Full Throttle 35 40 45 50 55 60. we're going to go as fast as we can near 65 70. 75 98 I gotta slow down 80. so the acceleration is as adequate I think you know I just wanted to show that um now this bike so cruising speed on the highway so I have taken out on the highway and I find you know 75 to 80 is a realistic speed you can pretty much pin the throttle and you don't get a lot of vibration or anything but yeah it'll be around 75 to 80 miles per hour and what is that in kph around 120 130 we'll put the exact here I think that's a realistic cruising speed which was pretty good for a 400 and allows you to travel on the freeways here where I live in the USA where traffic tends to be at least 70 to 80 miles an hour sometimes even more than that so you keep up with three-way traffic here in the USA depending on where you live it's going to be different for you okay so what happens if you try to sport ride the Bergman 400. full power Let's Go full power we're uphill here riding a little more aggressively again the bike's not really built for this so don't try this at home but actually it's pretty fun to do this on because it has a surprising amount of grip and stability uh you know for a scooter right with those wider tires but you don't want to push things too hard because you'll start to scrape stuff or you'll just kind of find the limits of the chassis but you can actually ride this thing pretty pretty quickly you'd be surprised and it's a lot of fun to do it because that's not really meant for this but man you can really carry some pretty good speed with this thing all right so I hope you all enjoyed going on that ride with me on this beautiful summer day now what are the pros of owning a scooter versus a motorcycle well I think the first one that stands out to me is the overall practicality and usability on a daily basis so whether you're commuting or touring or just getting around the things that make it nice are all the built-in storage I showed you the storage compartments in the dash in the front which you can hold all sorts of things and then a huge storage compartment under the seat it means that you don't have to attach luggage to the sides of the bike keeping the bike narrow and making everything very easy and this luggage compartment of course locks with the key so you can keep valuables in there while you're in doing your shopping or at work or whatever you need to do going along with that practicality are a few more things one being a continuously variable transmission all you do is twist and go for people who maybe aren't as experienced or even for more experienced Riders who just want something basic to get around on as more of a transportation Appliance twist and go makes it very very easy no having to use the clutch and no having to shift gears also the Bodywork and the floorboards and all this are designed to keep the weather and the water if you have a wet climate riding in muddy roads things like that they're designed to keep that off you now is it perfect no you're still going to get wet you're still going to get some dirtiness but not as much as you would on a motorcycle because you have quite a bit of protection here from the elements especially with the Bergman with its expanded weather protection over a smaller scooter some other Pros to owning a scooter they typically get better fuel mileage than a motorcycle so I'm actually behind the camera right now I'm looking at the Harley-Davidson Low Rider ST which I'm also reviewing I've got around 40 miles a gallon on that bike on the Bergman 400 however I get around 60 to 70 miles per gallon of course these are in U.S figures but overlo over the time you do save a lot of fuel and a saving fuel is important to you then this is something you should look at also the cost of ownership on a scooter tends to be fairly low relative to a motorcycle the consumables the tires are not super expensive because they're smaller they also tend to last a long time so that's something to keep in mind another thing that's great about scooters and even these Maxi scooters these little heavier scooters like the bergmans or the other 300 400 500cc scooters out there is the weight although the weight on paper looks pretty high you know four or 500 pounds somewhere in there the weight is all very down low so the engine lays down flat under here under the Bodywork the transmission is very low so when you get on the bike if you're a newer Rider or if you're not that tall you're not that strong it doesn't feel like a heavy bike to muscle around when you're parking at getting it off the side stand doing those sorts of things so it's not intimidating to ride and it makes it easier for more people makes it more accessible for more people to ride all right so what are the main competitors to the Bergman 400 well there are some pretty strong competition for this bike to be honest so you have the Bergman 200 in Suzuki's own lineup which is quite a bit less power it's a smaller bike it's a lot less expensive it has less features but that is something you can look at but with the Bergman 200 you're not going to be going 75 80 miles per hour or 120 kilometers per hour like we showed you can do on this now the bourbon 650 which was kind of famous for being this crazy big scooter with a lot of power that has been discontinued I I don't know what the exact reasons for that are but they don't sell that model anymore at least not here in the USA I think one of the strongest competitors to this bike and what a lot of people are choosing to buy is the yamaha's x-max 300 so the x-max 300 has similar power similar performance similar features and specs to the Bergman 400 despite being a smaller engine but it costs quite a bit less money now if you want something a little little bit more upscale but keeping in a similar price you can look at BMW c400 GT so that BMW scooter is very similar in performance specs power and everything to this Bergman but you get a TFT Dash you get a little bit more electronics and of course you get the BMW badge and the price on the BMW is very similar to this Suzuki so that's something you really really should look at so I think the Suzuki despite it being a very quality proven unit and something that's going to serve you very well it is definitely coming in it's somewhat of a premium price in the segment final thoughts on the Suzuki Burgman 400. a lot of people will say that a motorcycle or scooter like this is uncool and unsexy however I would argue that that may be true but also it's incredibly practical I mean you have to look at the storage the performance to go on the highway the weather protection the price the ease of Maintenance the ease of use so for a lot of people yes this is going to be more of that Transportation Appliance and not something that connects emotionally or has a a soul or has some of those things that a lot of people are looking for in a motorcycle however if you're looking for that practicality and that sort of Transportation Appliance kind of thing then something like the Bergman or another Maxi scooter like it should be right up your alley this is an excellent bike I've really enjoyed my time with it far more than I thought I would have it's fun to ride it's practical it does everything you really need a bike to do except maybe for going off-road or riding as a sport bike but for everything else it will meet a lot of different needs so if you're looking for something practical to get around if you're maybe you're driving a car or a truck and you're looking to save some gas a scooter is definitely something you should look at and these large scooters like this give you that Highway ability at those higher speeds so I really hope this video has been useful I hope you found it informative if it has been please support big rock Moto and there's a lot of ways you can do that down in the description below other than that please ride safe we'll see you out there see you in the next video

Channel: Big Rock Moto

Views: 192,941

Keywords: motorcycle, adv bikes, dual sport bikes, adventure bike, big rock media, big rock outdoors, maxi scooter, scooters, burgman 650, fortnine burgman, burgman 200, honda silverwing, yamaha xmax 300, xmax, bmw c400, bmw c400 gt, scooter vs motorcycle, scooter advantages, best scooters

Id: MjwBQAPT0CY

Length: 27min 43sec (1663 seconds)

Published: Mon Oct 31 2022