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Test rode the 2025 KTM 390 Adventure today. Here are my thoughts:

Power: More than enough for Indian highways. Delivery is linear and the KTM Duke type madness is missing. Thankfully.

Weight: Feels much lighter than it is. Advertised kerb weight is 183 kgs. But it feels like 160 kgs. This is quite noticeable at 120 kmph as the bike feels shaky like a dual sport at that speed. 90 to 110 kmph is the sweet spot, which is relatively safe for Indian highways.

Brakes: Awesome. The ABS on the rear kicks in late, which is good. The front brakes are pretty sharp, as they should be.

Suspension: Works just fine. Soaks in potholes well. Its fully adjustable. But I didn’t have the time to fiddle around with it.

Clutch: Surprisingly soft.

Riding Posture: A six footer like me will need risers while standing. Otherwise when seated the posture is upright.

Seat: Quite narrow and a little stiff. Will need an air seat for long distance. Pillion seat is quite narrow and won’t be enjoyable.

Seat height: Low. Perfect for inexperienced off road riders. The narrow seat adds extra benefit.

Gearing: Perfect. No weird gaps in the ratios. Quickshifter works well. Gear shifts are smooth.

Tyres: Tubeless spoked tyres. A must have for tension free advenure touring. Spokes go though the centre of the rim, not the sides, making them stronger. Some KTM patented stuff.

Console: 5 inch TFT. Well lit and laid out. Raised so you don’t need to look down all the time.

Windscreen: Tall and very effective. The overall design style of the motorcycle is inspired by a rally bike and the tall windscreen does give the motorcycle an awesome road presence.

Cruise Control: Amazing to see this feature on a motorcycle in this category. Will be awesome for long distance touring. Works well.

Crawl Feature: This really surprised me. On a flat surface its impossible to stall the motorcycle in first and second gear. The onboard computer automatically feeds fuel to keep the motorcycle and engine running. Even at standstill. I mean if you stop the motorcycle in first gear with the clutch pulled in and then slowly release the clutch without touching the accelerator, the engine will rev up automatically and the motorcycle will move ahead. Then if you shift to second gear and again without touching the throttle, the engine will automatically rev up again to keep the motrocycle from stalling. From thrid gear onwards this behaviour stops. People new to geared motorycycles will basically just need to learn to balance and release the clutch. The engine will do the rest automatically.

Off-road manners: I didn’t get a chance to take the motorcycle off-road. I just smashed through a road under construction. I see no reason why the motorcycle won’t be great off-road. I mean, its a KTM after all. The crawl feature works well off the tarmac as well. I wonder if this will make off-roading easier for newbies.

Luggage: Tail rack doesn’t exist, which is weird given that this is an adventure motorcycle. So after market accessories will be needed.

Summary: I just booked one. I think that’s a good enough summary.

Today I test rode the Royal Enfield Super Meteor 650. Here are my first impressions. Bear in mind that I have owned a Harley-Davidson Fat Boy since 2013 and have ridden it a fair bit around India. My longest ride was a 14 day, 6,500 km solo ride around the Golden Quadrilateral back in 2015. So I like to believe that I know a thing or two about highway cruising in India.

Power: The engine puts out a decent amount of torque, fit for a cruiser. Power delivery is linear, not jumpy. Makes for smooth and controlled riding.

Weight: Perfect for cruising. It’s heavy for sure. But there is a very good reason why cruisers are and need to be heavy. It makes them stable and planted at highway cruising speeds.

Brakes: Stellar. The motorcycle stops surely and in a controlled manner. ABS kicks in at the right time and in the right manner.

Clutch: The 1.5-year-old test-ride motorcycle had a sticky clutch. The new motorcycle in the showroom was a lot easier to squeeze.

Gearbox: Smooth. Good gear ratios. Complements the linear power delivery pretty well.

Seat: I rode the middle Interstellar variant which has the regular seat. I found it to be quite comfortable, although the ride was a short one. The Celestial variant in the showroom had a much more comfortable seat.

Ergonomics: Almost perfect. Almost because I’m 6 feet tall and I need to lean slightly forward to reach the handlebar, something that can be fixed by adding risers leaning backward. The position of the foot pegs is that of a proper cruiser.

Suspension: Stiff, as a cruiser’s suspension should be. Minor tarmac disturbances are handled surprisingly well.

Instrument Console: Very basic. For that price, one would expect something better. But frankly, being a Royal Enfield, the less stuff there is to fail, the better, if you know what I mean.

Exhaust Sound: Simple and clean. I quite like it. The Royal Enfield thump died a long time ago along with rattling and vibrating mayhem that came with it. Good riddance.

Highway: Minor vibrations start only after 100 kmph, which is ok. I couldn’t go past 110 kmph on the test ride, but the machine didn’t seem stressed at that speed. On Indian highways, a safe cruising speed is 100 to 110 kmph. I could sit in that range all day on its motorcycle.

City: Surprisingly easy to ride in crowded traffic. You can’t flick the motorcycle around the place, but it doesn’t feel like you are navigating a ship like my Fat Boy does.

Part Quality: Although the finish seems premium, I understood the real story when I compared the brand new motorcycle in the showroom with the 1.5 year old motorcycle that I test rode. Check out these pictures.

Hand grips were severely deteriorated

Red ignition switch faded. Marking on the switch gear vanished.

Left indicator arrow and high/lob beam indicators vanished due to constant finger contact.

Engine casing looks a little sad

Summary: Back in 2013 I bought a Royal Enfield Thunderbird 350 and rode it all around the place, including to Marsimik La (18,953 feet) in Ladakh and trails in the western ghats. Back then Royal Enfield was touting the motorcycle as a cruiser and nobody believed them, because it was not a cruiser. It was just a regular motorcycle with a different handlebar, that’s all. The engine, suspension, ergonomics, absolutely nothing resembled that of a cruiser. Over the years, the Thunderbird evolved in different ways and none of the evolutions resembled a cruiser. But today, as an owner of a Fat Boy, I can say that the Super Meteor 650 looks and behaves like a proper cruiser. This is why after I rode the motorcycle back to the showroom I booked a Celestial Red Super Meteor 650. I’ve been good boy this year and Santa has decided to gift me this beauty for Christmas.

So why am I buying a Super Meteor 650 when I already have a Fat Boy? Well, I need a lighter and simpler cruiser to ride with my nine year old daughter. The Fat Boy is too huge and intimidating for slow and easy village rides around Goa. My other motorcycles are meant for other activities. But most importantly, when Santa wants to give you a gift, you don’t say no.

I do hope that Royal Enfield improves their part quality. But then, I’ve been hoping for that ever since I bought my Thunderbird more than a decade ago. I’m not sure how long I will keep the Super Meteor 650. I’m buying it to serve a specific purpose for a specific period of time and I will most probably get rid of it before it starts disintegrating, as all Royal Enfields do, sooner than later.

But people are quite excited at the prospect of owning something that works like an action camera but costs a fraction of an action camera. Hero Electronix’s marketing isn’t helping the situation either. On their web page, they have listed “Journey Vlogs” as one of the camera’s uses with a picture of a person riding an adventure motorcycle in a valley surrounded by mountains.

My curiosity got the better of me and I decided to use the Qubo Dash Cam Pro as an action camera and see how well it worked. I had mounted my Qubo dash cam on my handlebar and the vibrations resulted in horrible video footage. So I decided to mount it on top of my helmet. Since I didn’t want to replace the action camera mounting pad on my helmet with the Qubo one, I designed and 3D printed an adapter that secured the Qubo helmet mount to the action camera mounting pad. Maybe Hero Electronix should offer this as an accessory.

I recorded part of my morning ride and edited the footage in Adobe Premier Pro. I did a few things to the footage:
1) Replaced the audio with music. The wind noise recorded by the dash cam is just horrible.
2) Stabilized the footage using the Warp Stabilizer feature (Smoothness = 100%, Method = Position)
3) Color-graded the footage.

I couldn’t find a way in the Qubo app to disable the Qubo logo watermark and the time stamp at the bottom of the footage. The reason the logo and the watermark are shaking in the video is due to the stabilization which moves and crops the frames of the video to smoothen it out.

Watch the video and decide for yourself. As someone who has owned several GoPros in the past and has now switched to the DJI Omso Action, I will not use the Qubo Bike Cam Pro as an action camera. But that shouldn’t stop others from doing so.

I did find one positive though. Since the Qubo Bike Cam Pro records everything all the time, I could truly enjoy my morning ride uninterrupted instead of turning my action camera on and off all the time.

I already have an action camera mount stuck to the top of my helmet. I didn’t want to stick a second mount. Also, I wanted the bike cam to be mounted to the handlebar so that the bike battery could always power it. So I quickly designed a RAM-style adapter for the bike cam’s mountin clip and 3D printed it on my son’s 3D printer. I filed off some of the plastic on the flat base to match the surface of the bike cam’s curved mounting clip. It’s not pretty, but it does the job.

The Qubo Bike Cam Pro is a very simple and straightforward device. It doesn’t have any on/off or start/stop buttons as it’s supposed to be on and recording all the time. Once you slide the camera into the mounting clip, it clicks into place, turns on and starts recording. Remove it from the clip and it will stop recording and subsequently power off.

Update (4-Aug-2024):

Here is a video showing how I mounted the camera to the handlebar

Update (5-Aug-2024):

Some viewers of my previous video requested that I post footage of the Qubo Bike Cam Pro while riding at night.

Update (12-Aug-2024):

One of my followers on YouTube brought to my notice that the handlebar mount for the Qubo Bike Cam Pro had gone on sale on their web store. So I ordered a couple of them for my BMW g310 GS and Triumph Tiger 800 XRx. It works well on the GS. But on the Tiger the windshield is quite large and positioned well ahead of the camera. So the windshield occupies the left half of the camera frame. I think I will revert back to my RAM-style handlebar mount for the Tiger since I can position the camera way out in front of the handlebar and minimise the obstruction by the windshield.

Long story short, Qubo’s handlebar mount works best on bikes without windshields.

Now that I have extensively used the DJI Osmo Action 4 on my two-week ride in Spain, I can compare it to the GoPros I have used over the years. Three words. It just works. Three more words. All the time.

No hanging up. No stopping the motorcycle to remove the battery and shove it back in to reboot the camera. No abrupt disconnection to the remote control. No getting stuck into an infinite loop trying to find the remote. No heating up.

Turn on the action camera and remote in any order. They find each other and shake hands. Every time. No exceptions. This is how electronics is supposed to work.

There is just one thing I don’t like about the DJI Osmo Action 4. The wind noise reduction. To fix that I apply the DeNoise effect in Adobe Premier Pro. It’s not a deal breaker. Frankly, I wouldn’t mind if DJI didn’t do anything to this product. Just leave it as it is.

It just works. All the time.

This IP67 waterproof touchscreen lets you use Apple CarPlay and Android Auto wirelessly while riding your motorcycle. It can be powered by your motorcycle’s battery or USB port. You can even power it using a power bank placed in your tank bag. It has replaced my X-Grip mobile phone holder which I have now moved to the side. I’m not sure I need the X-Grip anymore because my phone now sits in my pant pocket and talks wirelessly to the device and my Bluetooth headphones. So I can listen to navigation instructions or music on my headphones and navigate using a large 7-inch screen on my handlebar instead of a small mobile phone screen. The touchscreen works with motorcycle gloves. IP67 means it’s dustproof and waterproof.

For now, I have connected the device directly to my motorcycle battery. But I could wire it through the ignition so it starts and shuts down with the turn of the key. But I’m not sure I want to automatically start the device every time I start the motorcycle. I prefer to switch it on and off using the power button on the device. Long pressing the power button starts the device and it automatically connects to my iPhone and starts Apple Carplay within a few seconds.

The back of the device has a one-inch RAM ball. So it can be secured to any RAM ball mounting system. If I buy additional power lines I could connect them to the batteries of my other motorcycles and move this device easily between motorcycles. After a day’s ride, I would disconnect the waterproof connector and take the device with me to my hotel room leaving the rest of power line wired to the battery. Or if I have powered the device using USB, all I need to do is unplug the device and take it with me, pretty much like how I would remove my mobile phone from the X-Grip.

I absolutely love using Apple CarPlay when driving my cars and now I can use it when riding my motorcycles.

Product Link: https://deelipmenezes.com/product/carpuride-w702-motorcycle-touchscreen-with-apple-carplay-and-android-auto/

Note: The light thumping and scratching sound you hear is my wireless mic bouncing around in my waist pouch. I should have turned it off since the camera’s mic was sufficient for this video.

Link: https://amzn.to/3uJ4Qdj