I had a demo ride on one of these earlier today. Its a very capable motorcycle. More than enough power, very light, very agile and the tyres have no impact on its road ability, you wouldnt even know they were semi nobblies. Allegedly its 20kg lighter than a V4 but feels about 50kg lighter.
Love the Desert X, but the 'light' aspect disappears very quickly when used as intended off-road. Used to be road bike or trail bike, then everyone has tried the dual purpose, but still consider personally they are not one thing nor the other.
Without the requisite skills it’s only a fire road bike for the likes of me but the experts seem to be able to ride it off road.
I took some photos of the demo one at OYB a number of days back. It certainly did look a lot smaller than the enduro or multi's.
The fact that you can’t attach panniers if you have the secondary fuel tank for additional mileage kind of defeats the object doesn’t it?
This again is the not one bike nor another in the design versus reality. They want you to go miles and miles doing super cool off road stuff, but don't want it to look like a touring bike. I REALLY like this bike, but accept I would look like a complete tool at Devils Bridge tucking into a sausage and egg barm.
How is it any different to riding in on an R1, Panigale V4, Fireblade in full race leathers? This makes more sense as a road bike than any of those?
I doubt I could get on it. But a knobbly tyred bike on tarmac that’s that tall better than all the other sports tourers, utility bikes, sports bikes etc? Can’t see it. Ducati must have big marketing budget this year
I tried one last week. It’s brilliant to ride nothing and like what you would expect. I’m sorely tempted to chop my V4 Multi in for one next year.
The GS is a road bike made to look like an off road bike, so now we call them adventure bikes. Fine, but the Desert X is a road bike too. Very capable, but too over the off-road look line for me. I will say again - love it, but won't buy one.
Sponsorship?? To be fair to the magazine, they do choose bikes that are not always the obvious choice. The often go for those that are the most fun to ride rather than the high spec high power multi electronics options. Bikes with 100-150ho can still be ridden fairly hard on the road but once you get to 170bhp+ it’s impossible to get the very most from them.
I’m sure it’s an excellent bike, not many modern bikes aren’t. Bit better than all others? Can it do track days? Can it do high speed touring across Europe? Can it do big touring holidays? Of it can’t take panties, has small tank, part knobblies I can’t see that. All brands have a bike capable of that. Including ducati. And I doubt the X is it.
