A Phenomenal Road Bike That Drove Me Nuts

The last time I rode an Africa Twin, I loved it. So when Mountain Motorsports rolled this one out with the red front end, I was sold before the engine even turned over. It's the best looking Africa Twin Honda has ever built. That one isn't up for debate.

This is the Adventure Sports ES, the road-focused version. It gets a 19 inch front wheel where the standard bike runs a 21, a 6.6 gallon tank that makes the whole front of the bike look enormous, and Showa electronic suspension you adjust from the dash. On paper, it's a big comfortable ADV bike built to eat interstate.

In practice it's exactly that. It's also the most frustrated I've been on a Honda in a long time, and almost none of that frustration has anything to do with how it rides.

Performance Highlights

The engine is Honda's 1,084cc parallel twin, good for 101 horsepower and 83 lb-ft, and I love that engine style. It sounds great stock. The problem is it never felt like those numbers. Roll on and there's a half second where you hear the revs climb before anything actually happens, and then the torque shows up. It isn't slow. It just isn't the shove a twin like this should give you.

The 40-80 backs that up. I ran it in second gear in a mode I built myself, power at max and traction control at its lowest, and it went 4.09 seconds. That's decent for 535 pounds, and the bike only had 27 miles on it, so the engine wasn't broken in yet. But I watched the traction control light flicker when this thing should have been lifting the front, and I never found a way to switch it fully off. I'd bet money that's what's holding it back.

Where Honda nailed it is the modes. Change a setting on most bikes and you wonder if anything happened. Change one here and you're riding a different motorcycle. Put the suspension in hard and the Africa Twin actually gets sporty. It leans over clean, holds its line, and turns a back road into a good time. Leave it in medium around town and it's too soft, diving hard every time you slow down.

The brakes don't mess around. Even with 535 pounds on board, grab a handful and it stops, nose dive and all. Direction changes take a beat, because this is a big bike and it needs a moment to commit, but the wide bars make it easy to start the turn, and at walking pace in traffic it balances better than I expected.

Rider Experience & Tech

The body position is pure road trip. Upright, relaxed, with bars so wide they somehow feel wider than the tank. The seat is firm and narrow, which feels strange at first and then clever, because it makes a huge bike feel smaller between your knees. After a full day I'd want an aftermarket seat, but that's the only thing I'd change. On the highway the tall screen takes the pressure off my chest, the mirrors stay clear, and heated grips come stock. You could ride this across the country and not even flinch.

Then there's the tech, and this is where it falls apart. Honda gives you cruise control, Apple CarPlay and electronic suspension, and then hides all of it behind a menu that is borderline Kawasaki. The left switchgear is packed with buttons that don't work like any other bike, it took me forever to find the user modes, and I still couldn't turn traction control off. I know, read the manual. A user friendly motorcycle shouldn't need one to change a riding mode. The cruise button also sits too far out for my thumb to reach off the throttle, and the adjustable windscreen takes two hands and can go up crooked.

The gearbox, on the other hand, never missed. No false neutrals, no wrong gears, just clean shifts all day. I'd still like a quickshifter at this price.

The Chase Score & Final Thoughts

With a Chase Score of 68 out of 100, the Africa Twin Adventure Sports lands in Good tier, tied with the Harley-Davidson Pan America and one point ahead of the Yamaha Ténéré 700. The ride side and the usability side both came in at 34, which tells you how evenly the good and the bad are spread across this bike.

Buy it if you want a big, comfortable ADV bike for long days on pavement. At $17,799 with electronic suspension and CarPlay, that's a steal. Skip it if you want the raw, torquey twin the spec sheet promises, or if you plan to leave the pavement. The standard Africa Twin with the 21 inch front is the one for dirt.