BMW F650GS > Reviews > BMW F650GS

Author's product rating:   

Comfort	Excellent
Handling	Excellent
Looks	Excellent
Features	Excellent
Fuel consumption	Excellent

Advantages:	Has it all
Disadvantages:	Expensive to have serviced

Recommend to potential buyers:

yes

Full review

I got my GS December of '03. It had 4,000 miles on it and I bought it for $6,800. The odometer now has over 17,000 miles on it. I absolutely love it. A bit about me for the record: I'm 5'3 and female.

The whole dual purpose thing is fantastic and the 650 GS is the perfect dual purpose for someone who actually wants to use the bike on the street too. The street performance is excellent, it's super fun in the corners and thelarge front wheel handles all the potholes, bad pavement and such with ease. I can easily keep up with my sportrider friends. In the dirt it is also a great bike. I definitely wouldn't take it to the motocross track but I would take it on the Dakar. It is big and heavy (Touratech in particular makes a whole line of accessories to make it easier to handle off road) so that takes a while to get used to . I've taken it all over the place on little single track trails up mountains and over streams, rocks, treebranches etc. And then you don't have to stop, trailer the bike and drive home in the gassguzzler pickup truck. You go right from the dirt to the pavement without skipping a beat. The gas mileage rules too. It gets the most fantastic gas mileage I've ever seen from a motorcycle. It is however, extremely dependent on a few factors. When the weather is really cold (I live in Idaho and ride year round) the bike has trouble staying at temperature and runs the fuel mixture really rich to compensate. As a result you end up getting about 55 mpg when it's really cold. Riding it hard and fast has an effect too, I generally cruise at 85-95 on the freeway (hey, out here there's almost no traffic so don't get on my case!) going that fast in the summertime the mileage is about 65. If you take it nice and easy at about 50 you can match my best mileage for a tank of gas at 83 miles per gallon! Just commuting to and from going fairly slow in the summer you get about 75-80 it's absolutely insane.

Another nice thing about the bike is it's reliability. Although BMW maintenance is extremely expensive ( we're talking $50 oil changes and $500 for major services (brakes, filters, valves, checkover and moditech) but it never breaks down or has problems. However, the steering head bearings do wear out after fifteen thousand miles and they cheerfully put it on your excellent BMW warranty at no cost! The high maintenance costs are easily avoided by a little mechanical aptitude. The bike is a big single and beautifully made. It's really a pleasure to work on. And BMW is kind enough to make an awesome shop manual with step by steps on how to do everything you could possibly need to do on it. A full service takes me about 5-6 hours and is very easy to do, then I take the bike to the dealership and have them plug it into the computer and check that out. However, if you crash the thing, it does cost. Anything with the blue and white roundell stamped into it is going to cost you. Levers, turn signals and such are expensive so don't break them.

There are other big dualsports out there, but this one is probably the best ( also consider the KTM Adventure if you have long legs) It's pricy but can do it all with ease. It's comfortable all day on the freeway or all day on the trails.