Kawasaki Ninja 650 

 Street Sport Perfection!

Hey everybody, it's Peter. Today we're going to take a look at the 2022 Kawasaki Ninja 650. I am a huge fan of this bike and I think Kawasaki is as well, because they use this engine in absolutely everything. The Versys, the Z650, the Vulcan S, and the Ninja 650. But when they use the engine, what do they talk about? They talk about, it's the engine from the Ninja 650. They don't say something like Versys 650. So, in this video review, we are going to go through this bike in detail. We're going to show you everything we can, and of course, there's no way we're going to capture everything in the very first video. So, what we'll do is I'm going to ask you to subscribe to our channel and to let me know in the comments what you want to know about this bike because here's the amazing thing. I have access to the full Kawasaki lineup here at Jim Gilbert's PowerSports in Fredericton, New Brunswick.

They're an amazing destination dealer. They're actually the number one volume Kawasaki dealer in the country and they did that after just being the Kawasaki dealer for just a few years now. They are an absolute destination store, but they allow me to have full access so that I can help you answer all the questions that you want. Feel free to ask questions in the comments, make some comments there, and I'll address them and we'll make future videos to make sure you get the answers you want. But now, let's dig into the review.

From here you can watch Peters Video or Read What he says the choice is your enjoy... this is a great review ether way...

First of all, what is this? Well, if you're like me, you've dreamed since you were a little kid... I hope you're not like me. Hopefully you're much cooler and doing fun things. But if you're like me, you've dreamed of Kawasaki sport bikes since you were a little kid. The reality is, you get to a certain level in your life and you realize maybe certain sport bikes aren't for you. Maybe a super sport isn't for you. Maybe it's too race-focused. Well, what I love about this 650 is it gives you all the engine you need for the street. It's a little more comfortable than a super sport, actually a lot more comfortable than a super sport, and it also handles really well for the types of riding that you're going to do on the street. Now, you can take it to the track absolutely, but it's not a race bike for the street. It's a sport bike for the street designed from the ground up to be amazing for the types of use that most of us are going to use our bikes for.We're going to take an in depth look, talk about riding position, we're going to talk about why some of these things matter as far as the way this handles, what some differences are in design. Then, we're going to take a look at some of the details that make a difference to living with this bike. Let's do that right now.

 The first thing I want to talk about are some design details here that both make it look like the high end, top of the line sport bikes that are designed for the race track, but still make it functional for the street. You've got things in here like a little bit of extra wind protection here on your legs and your knees, and we'll show you that a little bit later. But, this does sit out just enough to give you a little bit of wind protection. You've got the light signal lights built into the body work. You've got nice body work over here with a little bit of venting in there.

You've got LED lights, and the nice thing about LED lights is they are both on when you're driving, Kawasaki used to do the right side on, or the left side, until you had the high beam on. It just didn't look right going down the road. So, you've got bright white LED lights. Couple benefits to LED lights, especially as we're talking about a road bike, that white light is a closer to daylight color. Which means when you're using the headlight at night, not just to be seen but also to see, that white light allows your eyes to instantly recognize what you're seeing because you're seeing it in the light that you're used to seeing it. You can identify things quicker. Bright white lights with a sharp cutoff really means you don't need to add any lighting at night to get a good view.

 Then you've got things down here, which are style and function, and I'll tell you about style and function for a reason. First of all, you've got the pedal style disc rotors here. It's a dual disc front side, so you are absolutely capable of going on high speeds, clamping on these brakes, and getting really good stopping power because dual discs is really what you need for that. That's not a style piece. What probably is a style piece is this pedal style rotor. They've gone away from this in this bike's bigger brother, which is the 1000SX. In the 1000SX, it actually has just a regular rounded edged disc rotor, whereas these ones are still a pedal style. Now, we were always told the pedal helps dissipate heat. I'm sure it does, but really the drilled rotors do. There's a lot of drilled rotors in there so they can handle quality breaking in here. 

 You've also got nice little design detail, little green line here. This is the special edition paint work, so it looks pretty good. If you've never seen a Kawasaki bike up close, you've got to see the metallic paint. It's really, really good paint quality right here. That's kind of the front view here. You've got the little windshield, you've got the mirrors there. We'll talk about them in a second, too. But let's move along the side of the bike, show you a couple other little design details that I really like.

Coming to the back of the bike, skipping the heart of the bike, the engine. We're going to talk about that in a second. You can see a couple cool little things down here. You've got the swing arm here that kind of curls around. They could have made it straight and whatever, but it's got some style here. It's just got just a cool look to it. That is all possible because you have the exhaust that cuts short and underneath the vehicle. This does a couple things. It is somewhat functional because the weight of all the exhaust system is central and low. That makes a sport bike feel better because you've got all the weight inside on the center line. It also gives you some clearance here to have some style, again. You can see your brake rotors on the back, which are the pedal style rotors, ABS front and rear, of course, on this bike here. It just kind of gives you the cool look whether it's chain side or exhaust side.

Speaking of centralizing the mass with the exhaust here, you've also got the different style shock in there. This is a design by Kawasaki and forgive me as I'm going off the top of my head, I forgot the exact name they used for this, but they do mention it and the idea is it the shock down here centralizes the weight, moves it forward and low. So you get good action on the tire, but you also have all of the weight low and center to the bike. You'll notice on something like the Versys 650, they still have that shock off to the side. When we talk about the Ninja being the one that they brag about, "This is the engine from the Ninja in all the other models," it's because this is where they spend their engineering time. This is the one that really stands out with this engine.

Let's talk about this engine. One thing is, it's a parallel twin. They've used parallel twins in motorcycles for a long, long time. One of the things that does, again, is it centralizes the mass. It keeps a very compact engine and a 650 CC is good power, or good size to create good power. Again, there could be really a lot of variance in how much power an engine makes and also how you tune the engine. This engine is tuned very well to give you good road power. Now, they don't publicly state horsepower and torque numbers, so I'm going to leave you to Google those. They're right there. But, what I will tell you is that you have good power high up in the revs like a sport bike, but you still have good mid-range power, which is how you're going to drive this thing most of the time on the roads.

Again, centralized and narrower and a lot of sport bikes are four cylinder bikes across, so you have a wider engine bay. This keeps you narrow, keeps you nimble, and basically what that means is if I was to compare this to a car, I kind of compare the Ninja 400 to a Mazda Miata. It's not all about the power, but it really handles well. This one would be stepping up to something like a Porsche Cayman. So again, there are faster vehicles out there, but this thing really dances and handles well because of some of those design details. 

 Speaking of being narrow and comfortable, on a typical sport bike, you've got your clip-ons kind of down here. You're just really tucked into the tank, you're really low, they're kind of back. It's just not a comfortable long term position. But you can see here, when I jump on, foot on the brake, couple things I like about this over the Ninja 400, you've got a little bit more heel room. Again, the heel, if I put my feet way back on the Ninja 400, would sit right near the heat shield on the exhaust. Here, because the exhaust is underneath, centralized weight, I've got a really good seating position here for comfort. My legs are still tucked up, and you want that in a sport bike because you're going to be able to lean this way over. We're going to talk about why you can lean it over in a second. But, you want your legs kind of up.

You've got that wind protection in here. Again, keeps about two thirds of my legs covered there. You're tucked in underneath the tank here, which has a nice shape to it so you can really grip that bike with your legs. You've got upright riding position with the clip-ons that are kind of back just enough to be comfortable but still allow you to move back on that seat and get really down into the tuck, so if you want to ride this like a true race bike, you can do that. But as a general sport bike, it's very comfortable as well. So, really scoring on all points here.

I will point out if you get something like the Z650, your mirrors are coming off your handlebars over here. On the Ninja, they're out in front of you and they're wide. What I like about that is, I don't see my elbows at all in them and I can see behind me. It's more of a highway view. When you get the Z650 and they're closer, it's more of a street view. You can see a little wider angle. But, this is a little bit straighter behind you but nice and because they're out front, it's within your line of sight. Whether you're tucked or whether you're straight, those mirrors are in front of you. Whereas on a Z650, if you start tucking, you lose those mirrors. So, there's a reason that those mirrors are out on that body work way out in front of you. It helps for the type of riding you're going to do on this bike. We're going to talk about the dash in here as well cause it's really impressive, and don't forget to let me talk about the tires.

We'll get to that in a second as well. All right, so here's what I love about the dash. You can see that there's a lot of sunshine today. There's a lot of glare. You can see my hands moving there. What you can't tell though is when you turn this on, you can't really realize how good this screen is. Even with all kinds of glare, it is really legible. I'll tell you, when I say really legible, a camera can't film a screen nearly as well as your eyes can see the screen. So while you're still seeing quite a bit of glare on the camera, you really don't have any issues at all with this.

I will point out if you get something like the Z650, your mirrors are coming off your handlebars over here. On the Ninja, they're out in front of you and they're wide. What I like about that is, I don't see my elbows at all in them and I can see behind me. It's more of a highway view. When you get the Z650 and they're closer, it's more of a street view. You can see a little wider angle. But, this is a little bit straighter behind you but nice and because they're out front, it's within your line of sight. Whether you're tucked or whether you're straight, those mirrors are in front of you. Whereas on a Z650, if you start tucking, you lose those mirrors. So, there's a reason that those mirrors are out on that body work way out in front of you. It helps for the type of riding you're going to do on this bike. We're going to talk about the dash in here as well cause it's really impressive, and don't forget to let me talk about the tires.

We'll get to that in a second as well. All right, so here's what I love about the dash. You can see that there's a lot of sunshine today. There's a lot of glare. You can see my hands moving there. What you can't tell though is when you turn this on, you can't really realize how good this screen is. Even with all kinds of glare, it is really legible. I'll tell you, when I say really legible, a camera can't film a screen nearly as well as your eyes can see the screen. So while you're still seeing quite a bit of glare on the camera, you really don't have any issues at all with this.

Again, the tachometer stretches from the very edge to the very top. There are some bikes with larger screens in different classes but they don't take advantage of the screen the same way Kawasaki does. You've got really clear large information where you need it. Again, your speedometer you can see is right there. I've got to set to the light, the white color right now. You can also invert it so the white is black and the black is white. Depends on what you want and you can change that up. So, really nice display here. Again a nice step up from that 400. But again, compared to the Ninja 1000SX, a few less features there. The 1000SX gives you things like lean angles and rider things where you can cut back the power. This one you don't need to really cut back the power, it's just kind of an appropriately powered motorcycle as it is.

I know we said remind me to talk about the tires and I really do want to talk about the tires here because this is one of the differences, too. While the Versys 650 handles quite well and other bikes handle quite well, even sharing the engine, what you don't have is the same tires as these. One thing to remember on a street bike is, when you're buying a super sport bike, those tires are often in need of a lot of warming up to really give you good handling and they don't balance. Sometimes you have a more street oriented tire that gives you the grip you need at street oriented temperatures. You don't have to really warm up to get a lot of grip, and that's what these are. They're just really grippy as they are. They really allow that lean going right over. They have good sport bike style tires so you can really get over on them, but they're not the super sport tires that, wow, when they're very, very hot, they're very grippy. When they're cool, they're not that grippy. Not really that grippy at all. These ones are really good balance to the bike. So, for the type of riding you're going to do on this bike, both front and rear, you've got a lot of rubber here, you've got a lot of angle to go really way over on lean angles. We've also got good grip at street temperatures, which really matters when you're driving on the roads.

A couple things worth noting when you're living with this bike is the seat comfort as well. It's a two piece seat here. You've got the driver's seat here. It is a nice wide seat and it's relatively cushy. So, compared to some sport bikes where they I guess try to save weight or something, this is still a very comfortable seat and so is the passenger seat. A lot of sport bikes, the passenger seat is a lot more style than anything else, but you could seat a person back here comfortably. Now, if you're looking for a 650 that's going to carry a passenger the best, I would go with something like the Versys 650. But if you're going to be primarily sport riding, primarily alone, on the odd time to take a passenger, you've got the option here.

Same thing with the Versys. The Versys has the hard bags that can mount here. This one you still have the ability to tie down over here. On the Ninja 400, there was an extra hook here for a tail bag that could mount here and here, tie down there. This one, you'd have to wrap it around here or wrap it around the seat. You can still put a tail bag on there if you wanted to. You've got room to do it. Tank bag is another option if you want to take a little bit of stuff with you.

When we talk about living with the bike, I've got a bit of a weird angle here to show you the controls, but I think most of you can see the horn there, which bike's off, so you can't hear it. You've got your good feeling signal light switches here. Again, high end type feeling. A lot of bikes have real chintzy, clicky kind of feel, but this is a real solid feel. You've got your high beams on there, your low beams on there.

I'm showing you this angle for two reasons. One, there's your flash to pass. So, you don't have to go like this and that if you want to just sort of flash at someone. You can sit there and just trigger that to flash to pass. Then, you do have this little adjustment on both the clutch lever and on the brake lever, which allows for an adjustment of reach, which is nice.

Now, the other thing you're going to notice with this clutch lever here is it is an assist and slipper clutch. That makes this clutch lever a little bit lighter here, but the bigger thing it does is, if you mess up a downshift and you didn't match the revs very well, sometimes you can end up with a rear wheel slide which sends you kind of crazy. This slipper clutch will allow the clutch to slip, which will help prevent the tire from slipping as it gains traction in the downshift. So, really nice thing to have with full adjustment here so you can get the reach you want. The assist clutch, which makes it nice and light in town, and that slipper clutch, which allows you to, if you mess up a downshift, cover for you as best as possible.

The other thing that's kind of nice is four-way flashers. I think more bikes should do this, just if you pull over the side of the road, having a little extra visibility, a little extra stuff. Especially if it's bad weather or something like that, you've got a little extra visibility, you can just turn those on easily.

Let's check the driver's side just for a second or the right side of the bike. I continue to say "driver's side" when there is no driver's side on a motorcycle. Again, your throttle right here, just a typical nice grippy gear shift there. Kill switch there, start switch there. Again, the brake lever is also adjustable for reach so you don't have to worry if your hands are smaller or larger. You can really customize this bike to fit just like you need it.

Who is this bike really for? Well first of all, I think it kind of bridges a lot of gaps within not just the Kawasaki lineup but just the motorcycle industry. If you want a sport bike that is comfortable, that you're going to be driving on the street most of the time anyways, this is really perfect for that. It's comfortable. You can get in that sport bike tuck if you need to, but you can ride around like you would for a regular everyday kind of bike.

The level of power here is plenty to be fun, but not so much that it's going to get you in a ton of trouble. Now of course, any motorcycle can get you in trouble. You got to make sure you're thinking here and keeping an eye on everything and paying attention. But, this is a bike that you can have a lot of fun. You can go full throttle upshifts and that kind of thing. You can not be so far beyond legal speed limits and get into corners where you can really lean it in the corner, really have that control, that lighter weight feeling is really there. That's one area, comfort while on a road sport bike.

The other thing is, I had someone tell me that the 400 Ninja is just not enough power for a beginner, that you outgrow that bike. Now I will disagree with that, but it depends on the kind of rider you are. If you just want to have fun going around backroads and those kind of things, the 400 is a great bike and so is this. If you know that a lot of power is more important to you than just having just fun, this is a bike worth stepping up to because now you've got good power for the street beyond what the 400 has. You can certainly reach higher speeds, you can get up to speed a little bit quicker than even that bike can, but you still maintain most of that light weight. The 400 is still a little bit lighter, more flickable bike, but this is still very much that. Both bikes are good to learn on. I think the 400, you'll learn to ride a sport bike quicker than on this, but I don't think you'll outgrow this kind of bike if you intend to keep your sport bike riding on the street.

If you want to move to the track, that's where you start looking at Superbike type stuff because on the road, those are just less comfortable. They're pretty fun, but they're also really designed to have that full track experience. So, it depends on what kind of rider you are. It's a very versatile ride. Like I said, if you like the engine, you have lots of options.

If you're going to be doing touring and you want a comfortable bike like this, Versys 650 way is the way to go. It still keeps a lot of sport, but it doesn't have the limitations of no bags. It has better passenger seat, that kind of thing. You can also go with the cruiser. Vulcan S is a sport cruiser. If you like the cruiser look, but you want to have kind of that little bit of revving engine, a little bit more fun, Vulcan S is a really good option. Then the Z650, where I think it's different is a little bit more in-town riding, a little bit more upright, and if you just like the styling better, having those mirrors closer. It's not really designed to be in a tuck position as much, but it is a very similar bike to this as well. So, a lot of options. But like I said, Kawasaki takes this...

I didn't even mention the 650RS. The Z650RS is the retro sport, gives you that retro look with the same engine. But this is really what, like I said at the beginning, Kawasaki views as the peak bike with this engine. From suspension, from tires, riding position, technology, suspension design, swing arm, exhaust, centralizing the mass, bringing it low. This is where they focus. Like I said, they talk about the 650 coming from the Ninja, not coming from the Vulcan or the Versys.

Those are your options. If you want to know more, let me know when the comments below. If you want to see this bike in person, swing on down to Jim Gilbert's PowerSports here in Fredericton, New Brunswick. They're amazing. Oh, sneeze. I tried to get that in at the end. Thanks everybody for watching.