Motorcycle Review — Benelli TRK 502. Is this the best value adventure motorcycle you can buy?
Welcome to my review of the Benelli TRK 502, a new A2 license friendly (in the UK) adventure, or more accurately, dual sport motorcycle.
If you prefer video to reading, then you can check out the video review on my YouTube channel here:
Over the past few years adventure bikes have become more and more popular. Initially I didn’t understand why. I thought they might be a bike that’s a jack of all trades, but master of none. However, having bought and lived with a Suzuki Vstrom DL650 for nearly 2 years now, I totally get why this style is so popular. Rather than having to have multiple motorcycles for different occasions, an adventure bike just does everything you want. If you’re doing a week long touring trip, put on the panniers, load it up, and it’s a great comfortable touring bike. For commuting, then just keep the top box on, and you can easily take your laptop and a change of clothes and it’s manageable and able to filter. And if you just want a Sunday morning blast then remove the panniers and topbox and it does that too.
One thing with adventure style bikes is that the looks often divide opinion. People tend to either love or hate them! While I had the Benelli, I put a picture up on social media. One person said it was the best looking bike they’d ever seen, another said they hated it and it looked like a child had designed it! I personally like the look of adventure bikes and the TRK 502 is very much of the current trend. Especially with the pronounced front beak, and the rear mudguard behind the rear wheel. To me, the Benelli looks like the lovechild of a BMW GS and a Ducati Multistrada.
When you first see the TRK (and most adventure bikes) it looks tall, and pretty big and intimidating, especially to a fairly new rider. It’s not at all though once you get on and get riding. I was out on the bike riding all day and found it easy to ride and well balanced. The riding position is very upright and comfortable, and the seat is really well padded. Talking of the seat, then for this style of bike it’s actually fairly low at 800mm. I’m 6 foot tall and could easily have both feet flat on the floor when stopped. Something I’d read before riding it, is that the bike was heavy. I didn’t find this at all, even when manoeuvring the bike with my legs while parking. After some research it appears that there was a mix up in the initially released specs of the TRK. They said it was 235kg dry but it is actually 213kg wet, so a huge difference. And for a largish bike with a big 20 litre tank it’s not actually that heavy anyway. For comparison, my Vstrom is slightly more at 220kg. I do think that some of the initial reviews were skewed by this perception of it being heavy, because of what people had read ahead of riding one.
As far comfort is concerned, the bike has really good wind protection from a decent size screen, that even includes wings at each side. It isn’t adjustable though which I’d expected, but for me at least, it worked really well. I actually found it to be better than my Vstrom, even when sat behind trucks in dirty air. The mirrors on the bike work really well too. They are positioned nice and wide, and I could easily see beyond my shoulders. There were no vibrations, or shake through them either, so I always had a good view behind.
All the switchgear is pretty decent and the standard equipment you get on the bike is impressive. The dashboard is LCD which works well, even in strong sunlight. The LCD display includes things like a tripmeter, proper fuel gauge, clock etc, and off to the side is an analogue rev counter. Around the rest of the bike, there’s a whole load of standard kit. You get handguards, the touring screen, a USB port, engine guards, and even a topbox rear rack, and side pannier carriers.
So what’s the engine and ride like? The engine is a water cooled 499cc twin putting out 49bhp so it’s A2 license friendly. This doesn’t sound much for what looks like a largish bike but I actually found it to be fine. Remember that this bike is made for comfortable touring at a reasonable pace rather than for blasting around trackdays. The engine is really free revving, and delivers it’s power smoothly. The exhaust makes a decent noise too without being overly loud. I even had pops and crackles from it on overrun down a fairly steep hill at one stage.
Handling wise, the bike always felt sure footed and well balanced through corners. It has chunky (50mm) upside down forks on the front and an adjustable rear monoshock. I found the suspension setup to work really well at soaking up bumps and giving a comfortable ride. There was only one particularly poor section of road where it struggled to keep on top of things.
Onto the price… This is where things get interesting. Brand new this bike is only around £5000 on the road (with 2 years warranty). There really isn’t any other adventure/dual sport bike I can think of that can compete with that. The closest is probably the Honda CB500X but that is over £1000 more for a basic spec bike. Once you add all the extra’s the Benelli has as standard, you’d be looking at quite a lot more.
As usual with my reviews, here are the 3 things I like best about the TRK: One, it’s comfort; Two, the great wind protection; And Three, the price, especially with all the extras as standard. The only negatives I found were that both the clutch lever and brake lever (though that’s adjustable) had quite a long reach, there was some vibration through the footpegs at high revs, and the rear brake wasn’t brilliant. But none of these things were really major issues for me though.
So in summary, I think the TRK is a really good bike, especially for the money. I think it would be well suited to new riders or A2 license holders who really want an adventure bike or something they can tour on. Or indeed anyone who wants this style of bike, but doesn’t want to spend upwards of £13k on something like a BMW 1200GS.
Finally, I’d just like to say a big thank you to the Benelli dealer who lent me the TRK 502 to review it. This is Ride Motorbikes who are based near Keighley in Yorkshire. Do please contact them if you’re interested in seeing or buying any of the Benelli range https://ridemotorbikes.co.uk .
Thanks
Richard
