SUZUKI V-STROM 800RE (2024 - on) Review

Suzuki’s middleweight V-Stroms have always been the best of their cross-over/adventure bike offerings. The V-Strom 650 is an unglamourous yet quietly popular bike thanks to a keen price, good manners in all weathers and 100,000-mile dependability. You can ride it just about anywhere, everyday, and all it’ll need is basic servicing (and a good wash to look after the finish).

2023 saw the introduction of the all-new V-Strom 800DE alongside the venerable 650, rather than replacing it. The 800DE is a true adventure bike, with a 21” front wheel, long-travel suspension, off-road riding modes and high-quality suspension that will handle a proper off-road ride, whereas the DL650 was more of a road bike with capability for gentler unpaved road and forest tracks, rather than deep mud or sand. It can probably be done, but it wouldn’t be your first option…

2024’s V-Strom 800 RE bridges the gaps between the two, sharing the core of the 800DE but swapping the long, fully-adjustable suspension for more basic Showa components with a 70mm reduction in wheel travel at either end, and the front wheel has shrunk to 19” as well as switching from wire-spoke to a cast rim with a subtle dog-leg pattern. Tyres are tubeless on the RE, reducing hassle and expense at tyre changes.

It’s not all ‘downgrades’ though, as the 310mm discs up front are now pinched by a pair of radial four-piston Tokico calipers, rather than the sliding two-pots on the DE. The shorter suspension and wheel swap has also chopped the 800DE’s lofty 855mm seat height by 30mm (to 825mm), so it’s more accessible to riders that don’t have legs like Peter Crouch. And a significant 7kg (15lbs) saving, partly due to the removal of the bolt-on lower cradle that carries the DE’s sump guard, only helps manageability and general performance.

There’s also minor styling tweaks to make it less ‘Dakar’ and more ‘daily ride’, the handlebars are closer and narrower for comfort, and the footpegs are aluminium with larger rubber toppers instead of steel, trading dirt-bike resilience for reduced transmission of vibration. They’re fractionally higher, and further back too. The screen is larger, though handguards are an option instead of standard, as on the 800DE. The seat is subtly reshaped to suit the new riding position.

Nothing earth-shaking, but it’s a markedly different experience to the V-Strom 800 DE – for the better, as a road bike. It almost feels like a roomier, more protected version of the Suzuki GSX-8S than a DE with bits taken away.

The adventure bike riding dynamic is always a compromise on the road – long travel suspension and a big front wheel makes for slower steering and less feel, particularly at lower speeds. The RE has a much more natural rate of turn and greater communication from the tyres, and switching trail-friendly brakes for road-worthy stoppers makes a big difference to confidence, too.

The riding position and larger screen enhances its everyday practicality and touring potential, but the street-biased chassis coupled with that weight loss makes it more entertaining, too. It’ll dive into low speed corners with gusto, taking advantage of the height and leverage afforded by the riding position but with enough feedback to be confident it will stick and hold a line.

The 776cc motor is as peachy as it is in the other models – modest peak outputs aren’t the whole picture. Strong punch from 4000-8000rpm and faux V-twin character from its 270° crankshaft make it potent and pleasurable in equal measure. It’ll sustain a higher gear than you might think, and the instant pick-up makes overtakes easy.

It’s hard to pick major fault with the bike, but it does have some limitations imposed by its price and position in the range. Cruise control is still deemed too pricey for bikes at this level, and the screen’s position can only be adjusted by unbolting it and refixing in a different position. That said, the screen is larger, though handguards are an option instead of standard, as on the 800DE. The seat is subtly reshaped to suit the new riding position.

The rear shock’s remote preload is useful, but our test bike had been wound to maximum when we went to make an adjustment. The spring’s support was fine for solo riding (with an 83kg rider), but there would be nothing left in reserve to compensate for pillion and/or luggage load, so it might flounder a little when you load it up.

Those points aside, there’s much to recommend it as a useful, easy-going yet entertaining everyday bike.

Most riders won’t feel the less-adjustable suspension is a downgrade, as the Showa separate-function, big-piston forks manage the neat trick of being cheap to assemble, yet offer plush damping and good control. The Showa shock offers a respectable balance of ride quality and support for spirited riding – it isn’t perfect and pronounced bumps and holes still jolt a touch, but that’s to be expected: this isn’t a premium bike with electronic semi-active suspension to react to every situation.

150mm of travel is around 20-30mm more than your typical road bike, so it still retains some of the ability to deal with rough surfaces without running out of travel, but it also doesn’t pitch back and forth, floating through its stroke like long-travel adventure bikes often do, so there’s good communication and feel from either of the specifically-designed Dunlop tyres. We found grip and feel levels to be acceptable on the launch, but that was on dry, grippy roads in the south of France. We’ll see how they fair on the UK’s neglected roads, and its inclement weather.

Handling is notably better than the DE on the road, with less effort required and greater accuracy. It’s sprightlier and more engaging than the V-Strom 650 too, and is almost like a (very) soft Supermoto if you really push it. Weight transfer to the front in particular is very good for a tall bike – loading the front tyre to gain confidence that it’s gripping as you’d hope doesn’t require you to compress inches of fork travel before that feedback comes, and opening the throttle out of bends doesn’t cause excessive squat from the rear, so it holds a line well. It proved 100% stable, no matter the combination of speed, lean and bumps, including some spirited riding following Suzuki’s guide rider, in a manner well beyond the design brief, and expectations of the target audience… Rest assured it has plenty of scope for weekend fun on the twisties as well as its more practical skills.

The Nissin brakes are leagues ahead of its 800 and 650 brethren, with all the power and good feel at your finger tips. The rear brake has the right sort of progressive feel and power to be useful for low speed control. The ABS is a very basic system, relying on wheel speed info alone to decide when to intervene. It only gets flustered if you combine a death-grip on the lever, with high speed, and very bumpy or rutted surfaces, when it can’t keep up. Intervention is a rare occurrence in most conditions, thanks partly to the suspension performance. Many budget bikes tend to have softly-sprung, underdamped forks which plummet through their travel on the brakes, and overwhelm the front tyre: the Suzuki’s above-average mechanical grip means it doesn’t need fancy electronics to sort it out.

The same is true for the traction control – it’ll do the job on dirty or wet roads, but turn it down to minimum (or off) and it doesn’t interfere in your riding.

The 776cc parallel-twin powering the V-Strom 800 siblings (and the GSX-8S cousin) exceeds the modest promise the figures make on paper. Chunky midrange (the 57ftlb peak is at just 6800rpm) over rev-chasing horsepower suits the middleweight trio down to the ground, feeling like a much more powerful bike, though drive tails off at 8000rpm and above 85mph. For the V-Strom duo in particular, it’s rarely a problem.

It's friendly from the first touch of the throttle at low rpm on the ‘B’ engine mode, which has a progressive torque delivery. There is a C-mode with super-soft response (though it still delivers the same peak power/torque figures), but it really isn’t necessary, unless you get caught in the snow, perhaps… Even A-mode, which cracks on with delivering the best of the motor’s throttle response early, isn’t spiky so can be used all the time by more experienced riders with finely-honed throttle control, and it’s the one everyone should choose at A-road or motorway speed, or for having fun on a mountain pass…

Overtaking and filtering is easier than it often is on rival like the Honda Transalp and the 790 KTM/CFMoto options, which tend to require more use of the gearbox and higher rpm to deliver their best. Town riding is a roll-on, roll-off affair for the most part, effortlessly picking off traffic and making gaps. It’s also not prone to emitting excessive heat over the rider when going gets slow in heavy congestion. Out of town, theres’s no need to wait for huge gaps, as it easily picks up a speed differential without a run-up to see you past cars and trucks.

80mph is the realistic limit for cruising, as vibrations become more noticeable over the 6000rpm required to hold that kind of speed. It’s better than the DE in this regard – alloy footpegs with different rubber tops transmit fewer high-frequency tingles to your toes than the DE’s steel pegs (which are necessary for resilience on the trail). They’re still there though: if you want to tear along European autoroutes, you might find it a bit lacking, but for slightly more relaxed tours, it’ll be just fine.

An up/down quickshifter is standard and works well, though the transmission does require a firm prod on the lever to shift. It’s not uncomfortable or clunky, but it does take more effort to select ratios in either direction, than it would with the buttery-smooth gearboxes that Suzuki was once known for.

We weren’t able to test economy on the press launch, but we’ve seen over 60mpg from the other models using the same engine: relentless hard riding might push that down to mid-40s, but with a 20 litre tank the V-Strom 800 RE should still get around 200 miles between fill-ups even at that speed – nearer 250 miles is likely to be typical in reality.

Reliability is not yet assured, given the platform is so new, but we’ve yet to hear of mechanical or electrical issues from owners of either the V-Strom 800DE or the GSX-8S, which bodes well for the 800RE. It’s a low-ish revving bike that’s not tuned to the hilt, and Suzuki rarely built fragile motors, so we’ve no reservations on that side of thing.

They’re also screwed together well, so bits dropping off or failing isn’t on the cards either. Paint and plated finishes are a historical Suzuki bugbear – the 800 family are all-new though, so fingers crossed they’ve increased their resilience to water and road salt. SOur long-term test GSX-8S is faring well at the time of writing, but the UK is approaching winter, and road salt season. The story may be different after that…

£9699 is considered good value these days, and is identical to the Honda XL750 Transalp’s asking price. The Honda retains a 21” front wheel and the appearance of off-road ability, but the sump, headers and oil filters are extremely exposed, so taking it too far away from the tarmac would be foolhardy. The dynamics are more road-oriented too, so the RE is realistically a closer rival than the DE. We pit these two bikes against one another AND the Triumph Tiger 850 Sport in our road-going middleweight adventure bike group test.

KTM’s 790 Adventure has shaken this sector up, bringing specification and features (94bhp, higher quality suspension and the scope for more sophisticated electronic options) from more expensive bikes to this more entry-level middleweight adventure/all-rounder class, thanks to production shifting to China for this model. The KTM is more dirt-focused though, and we have our doubts over the firm’s reliability in general, in their Austrian-built bikes as well as those outsourced to countries with a lower cost of labour…

Triumph’s Tiger 850 Sport is often overlooked, but is a great road-oriented, reduced-cost version of the superb Tiger 900 family. It costs a little more, though has a slightly higher spec to match. All things considered, the Suzuki fits the market well, and we’d expect the OTR price to be disregarded once the initial orders are fulfilled: Suzuki dealers are notorious for openly offering discounts, or deals on extras to make them more tempting. Panniers, heated grips and handguards would be the most desirable, in our opinion.

Servicing, tyres and fuel economy will be low, so it’s worth serious consideration for the commuters who are looking for a long-term commitment, expecting to put many tens of thousands of miles on with minimum fuss and outlay – a role the V-Strom 650 performs admirably, albeit with less of the sparkle of the 800.

The Suzuki is fitted with an appropriate level of spec and features for the price. It’s not let down in any area, but it’s not fitted with anything you’d consider premium or cutting edge either. It’s honest kit built to do the job and keep the price low. Bluetooth connectivity is the one thing you might consider an omission compared to the Honda Transalp, but smartphones/headsets don’t always warrant that extra connection anyway, so it’s not a critical issue.

There’s a strong genuine accessory offering and the broad similarity to the 800DE means existing aftermarket parts will also fit. The best of Suzuki’s own upgrades include luggage (chunky aluminium adventure boxes, or slightly smaller plastic panniers that tuck tighter to the bike for greater traffic-busting manoeuvrability), handguards, a centrestand and heated grips. There’s also RE-specific higher and lower seat options (reducing it by 20mm to 805mm, or raising it 30mm to 855mm), plus fog lights, the lower cradle/sump guard as seen on the 800DE and a taller screen.