Honda NSR125 > Reviews > A great first bike

Author's product rating:   

Comfort	Satisfactory
Handling	Good
Looks	Excellent
Features	Good
Fuel consumption	Excellent

Advantages:	Quick off the mark, superb feel, looks the business .
Disadvantages:	Fiddly design makes routine maintenance awkward .   Turns like a bus at low speeds .

Recommend to potential buyers:

yes

Full review

I passed the Compulsory Basic Training about a month ago, and picked up a brand new NSR125 the same day. I looked at a couple of bikes, but being 6ft3 and built like a brick out-building, my choices were somewhat limited.

The NSR125 looks like a 500cc, the only real give-away being the scaled down exhaust. It's a two-stroke engine which is great for being first away from the traffic lights!

Being the only bike I've ridden, aside from the Yamaha I passed my CBT on, the NSR125 probably isn't the most comfortable bike you'll ever ride. You always seem to have a lot of body weight resting on your arms, and this can be fairly uncomfortable after a while. But, maybe I just need to relax more. :)

Routine maintenance of this bike is a little fiddly. If you don't know anything about bikes, a 2-stroke engine uses oil, just as it uses petrol. Therefore you have to put more oil in periodically. The oil filler cap is situated underneath the petrol tank, which for a manufacturer like Honda, is a very strange design! You have to remove the seat, undo a bolt with a hex key and lift up the petrol tank to gain access to the oil filler cap.

Fuel consumption is excellent, by my calculations I'm currently getting nearly 90 miles/gallon out of it. Road tax for a bike like this currently costs £15 for the year, and my insurance premium is £100 cheaper than it was for my 1800cc Mondeo too.

Everything else about the bike seems fairly standard. It is very nice to ride, but does suffer a little at low speeds - a U-turn on a single carriage way is nigh on impossible. It's also pretty weighty for a 125, which certainly makes you feel like you've got your money's worth if nothing else!

I think I made the right choice. The NSR125 is fun to ride. Maybe when I've ridden a few more bikes I might be a little more critical, but overall at this moment in time, I don't think I can really fault it.