And my categories for how I choose a winner is simply what I like and why I like it. And you can tell me I'm wrong in choosing the winner because what you like might be different. And frankly, I wanna know what you like because I'll do future reviews of those, uh, bikes as well. But this is a bike that I think is fantastic for new riders, for returning riders, for people that just want a really lightweight, fun to drive bike. And I know a lot of people think that a 400 is maybe a little small and maybe it's something that you quote outgrow. Outgrow is not a term I use at all with this bike because it is just a bike that works really well for a huge range of riders. It's a ton of fun, it's got good technology, it's comfortable and being so lightweight, it's a lot of fun. 
You can use it on a track day and learn to improve your sport riding skills. It's just really, really good. So why didn't it win? Well, for me, I'm looking for a bike bike with a little bit more versatility, but value for fun and everything else. This is a bike that really should be in your must drive list, whether you are a new rider, whether you're an experienced rider. It's just so much fun and there's a ton of value here. So we're gonna leave this one out, but I have a couple reviews of this. Uh, the Ninja 400 versus the Ninja 650. I've compared it to the Z400, which Ninja 400, Z400, whatever your preference is, I happen to like the one with the faring. You might like the, uh, naked bike better. Those are in there as well. And I've done individual reviews of this bike, so make sure you check on my channel to see those reviews. 

And we're gonna come back and do more and more and more to, to continue to answer your questions and continue to just showcase it on the channel. But let's move on to our three finalists for my favorite bike that I've done, that I've reviewed this year. So I wanna make a couple quick disclaimers about the three bikes that are sitting here. First of all, I have not yet tested every Kawasaki bike. I've only been doing reviews since August. There's been some bikes that have not shown up yet. And in 2023 I will cover every single one. So, and pretty much every version of every bike. So don't worry if uh, you don't see the bike that you want here or maybe you think there's a better bike than these, you're probably right. But again, let me know on the comments which one you like. These are out of the bikes I've tested. 

These are my top three. Now you can see some similarities in design here. Uh, we'll talk about that. Uh, again, the category or the, the, the what it takes to win for me is something that I prefer, but I also wanna know what you prefer. So let's talk about what we've got. We've got the verses six 50 over here. This is kind of cheating. I used to own this bike, but I owned the 2018 model. This is the 2023 I believe. And uh, it has some updates that mine didn't have. Really like that bike, the Kawasaki Z 900 RS. Yes, I'm filming in Canada. We say Zed, you might say Z, that's fine. This bike is the best bike here, but it may or may not win for me. So we'll talk about that in a second. And then there's the KLR 650 a bike that in the past I never really considered, but it's had a number of updates through to this generation and the value is here. 
And we're gonna talk about why I like each one of these. Let's start with the Z 900 Rs. Without a doubt, this is the best bike out of these top three comparison and I'll spoil it right now. This one did not win for me. But again, it's not about what's the best bike overall, it's what I like the best. And this one is a bike that I really liked and didn't expect to like as much as I do. So first of all, you've got great style here. This is that retro styling that looks like an older bike. And to be fair, one of the reasons I thought I wouldn't like it is because you know, it's an older bike. I like the latest and greatest sometimes. However, this one has a great engine. It's got the great sound tuning right from the factory. So you don't need to put any aftermarket pipe on this.

It sounds fantastic. It's got good power, it's got good technology. We're gonna show you some of that. The four cylinder engine in here is super smooth and awesome. It's got really comfortable passenger seating, uh, as well. So you've got, usually most of the Kawasaki bikes are pretty comfortable for the rider, but you've got ability to take a passenger on and on a sporty bike. Sometimes the passenger seats are not great. So I love that it's got so much good. Let's take a little closer look before we say goodbye and get to our two finalists. So like I said, when I reviewed this bike, I was super impressed with it. You've got the full proper sport tires, you've got the adjustable shocks in here, the Oland shocks, you've got that horizontal backlink shock, which is, you know, the older bikes had sort of shocks over in this area. 
But that moves the weight forward, gives you a long shock. That is what they, they do on their sport bikes and the adjustability of everything is fantastic. You've got abs brakes here, front Brembo brakes on this bike, really good control, really good power. Full retro looks, but full modern componentry. Let's check out the dash really quickly as well. All right, we're dealing with some reflections from the lights here, but that's not gonna matter. I love the retro gauges here, the sort of chromed rim, that retro font that was super clear, super easy to read. It's just throwback gauges here when you have so many digital gauges now. But you still gain all the benefits of the digital gauges. Large gear position indicator, Kawasaki traction control is in there as well. Odometer, fuel gauge, temperature gauge, everything you need in here. And you've got the ability to cont to control all of this. 
Uh, and the information in it from your left side thumb. So you've got all of the retro looks with all of the modern technology that's really clean, really good. It's a bike I love a lot. The other thing I wanna show you on this bike is how comfortable it is. Check out how it fits me. Again, I'm about six feet tall, around a 32 inch inseam or so, but I sit square on this bike, fully comfortable. The tank fits nicely. Everything is good about this bike for me cuz I need a comfortable bike as well. So the question is why didn't it win? If I acknowledge that I really like it and I acknowledge that it's the best bike out of the last three, why didn't it win for me? Well for me I kind of like a bike that does a little bit of everything. 
This one absolutely can, but it has no wind protection, which is one thing, it has no built-in luggage, which again, you can modify and you can do things. I might be making a mistake but choosing one of these two bikes behind me. But this one for me, although emotionally I'm attached to it, I'm not sure if I would take it on all the things that I want to take it on, do all the things I would wanna do with it. It would certainly be fun for a whole bunch of riding and probably the most fun out of these three just with the power with everything else. But for me it's not the winner even if it is the best bike out of the three, let's talk about which one of these two is gonna win. So let's look at the last two contenders for the best bike that I tested this year. 

And in no particular order, neither one of these I'm not gonna reveal which one wins yet. This one is the klr. It is a bike that I had not really spent a lot of time with until I started testing them here. And the KLR is available in this full adventure model and it's available without the bags, without some of the lighting and all those kinds of things. And it's available in the new KLR S. The KLR S video has been a popular one with you guys. And uh, the S is a little bit shorter. So what it does is it carves out a little bit, uh, lower space in the seat. It also lowers the suspension a little bit to actually gives you a tiny bit less suspension travel, which I argued probably doesn't matter for most klr riders. Some of you have kind of fought back and say no, you want as much specimen travel as you can get. 

And I a hundred percent agree, but if you like a K LR to go down those dirt roads, those fire roads, those gravel roads and that's all you need, the off-road capability for if you're not going crazy offroad that K L R S gives you a little bit more approachable height, a little bit more approachable, uh, standover height and it basically gives you everything the klr is and I like what the klr gives you. This adventure model is a fantastic value under $10,000 for everything you see here, you've got good wind protection, hand protection as well. Here we're gonna take a look at the dash in a second. You do have luggage that comes from Kawasaki with this adventure model, even the rear rack, it's standard here and it's level with the seat. So if you're taking a tent or something else across here, you've got all kinds of space to sort of have this huge area to take whatever you need. 
The klr is a do-it-all bike. Where are its faults? It's a single cylinder. So a single cylinder's gonna have a little bit more thumping. They call them a thumper. So potential for vibrations. But in this redesign model, they've taken out some of those vibration issues. The redesign model is fuel injected. Now the older one was carbureted. So you've got a lot of those older sort of complaints it's already dealt with here. The only issue is it's not quite as powerful or as fast as the other two finalists here. This one being a uh, versus six 50, which is a twin cylinder. A little bit more highway, uh, high speed capable, not that this one's not capable on the highway, but that one has more high speed. And of course the Zed 900 Rs with that four cylinder, 900 cc, very, very highway capable as well. 
But for me, most of the riding I wanna do is country roads. Nobody wants to do, you know, interstate highways, freeway, highways the entire way. A lot of times you wanna do those country roads and this can do that and it also can take you anywhere offroad. So let's take a quick look at the dash here. I wanna show you the adventure model and what it comes with and we'll move on to the verses six 50 and we'll decide which one of these is best and why. So before we turn the bike to on and take a look at the dash, I just want to show you the adventure model here they have this USB port here, which is a little awkward to get to. It's a very soft rubbery case. And then there's another soft rubber piece down there. It's the kind of thing you're gonna have to stop to open and close because of the way it fits.

But it seems to offer some water resistance. And again, it's the one finicky piece to this that every time I'm filming I can't seem to get it back on like right now, but when I don't film it goes on the very first try. The point is it's a bit of a two-hander thing. Uh, it's crooked now, I'll fix that in a second. You also have your lights up here, which are your auxiliary lights. I don't know if you can sort of see them there. I guess you can kind of see them. Those are auxiliary L e D lights that is standard with an extra crash bar and extra crash protection on this adventure model. And then you still have a U or a um, 12 volt port over here. So you have your USB port over here, 12 volt port over there you have your um, extra lights there. 
You also have a generator that helps run all these extra accessories that has been enhanced in this redesigned klr, uh, compared to previous krs. So if you are taking a bike like this on a longer trip, whether with a G P S, whether you're keeping your phone charged and those kind of things, you can mount them to the handlebars. There's also a little amount uh, area right here underneath the windshield. You can put everything you need to do a proper adventure. And this is a great value adventure bike where the klr falls a little short for me compared to the verses is right in here. This is your dash which is totally fine, but in here I feel like you could have put a gear indicator, it's a five speed transmission. I like gear indicators on a modern bike it was redesigned that could have put it in also no tachometer. 

Now a tachometer is not the end of the world on this bike. It doesn't make uh, full power at the top end of the rev range. So you're gonna be shifting lower than red line anyways. Uh, but it's just to me, I'm familiar with having a tack on a bike. Anything that's a manual transmission, I like to have a tack and this doesn't have it to me. That was one miss that they probably should have put on here and especially when you consider the verses, which we're gonna look at in a second, they upgraded the dash to be fantastic. This one is a little bit lacking for me. Let's take a look at the verses and decide which one of these two is the best. So now let's talk about the verses six 50. And again, full disclosure, I've owned this bike before, of course I'm going to like it. 

But there are things that I really like about this updated version that mine didn't have. So we'll talk about some of the basics. First of all, although the last bike we looked at is a 650 as well, this is a 650 twin. This one has more of that power higher up in the revs, but it's still got very good mid-range power. This to me is much more of a sports tour. Now I've been told in the comments on the other videos I've done of the versus six 50 that people are perfectly happy with it as a full adventure bike to me you would want a little bit more protection underneath to protect that oil filter and I would want off-road tires. These are more sporty tires, sport touring in feel. You can disagree with me and you can be right, but to me how I view this is a sports tour with a very comfortable seating position as well. 
You've got bags built here in here on this LT model as well. These bags I'm a big fan of, although they open from the center out, which is sort of sideways means some things can spill out. They, when you open it, unlike the adventure model of the uh, klr, which opens from the top, were not, nothing's likely to fall out. These are much larger. They can fit a full face helmet and that makes it a real advantage. So having full face helmet here, full face helmet here, however unlike the Klr, no rear rack here, which you could get it as as an accessory. Um, but you don't have that sort of flat area built in from the factory and this does cost more than the klr as it sits here without any more options. So there is a price benefit as well. You've still got a windshield here, used to be adjustable with sort of little knobs that move up and down. 
Now you need tools to adjust it. I don't think that's the end of the world. I think I've found it, uh, on my old one that I kind of adjusted and left it. But the ability to quick adjust was nice in the past. You have a updated dash here and I wanna show you the overall look here, but you also have adjustable suspension just like the Z900 Rs. You have your adjustable preload down here. You have fully adjustable front suspension up here, um, which again, the Zed 900 Rs the, you don't get that in the klr. So you've got some advantages here that justify the little bit higher price including more speed, including larger bags including technology. Let's take a look at the dash right now because this is the big jump from the bike that I used to own, which was a 2018 model. 

So taking a look at this section here, you're gonna notice some similarly similarities to the klr. The difference is the Klr adventure model for less money than this doesn't have a plastic cover here, it's actually got that USB port. Same thing with here and here. These are plastic covers for where you could put auxiliary lighting and where you could put a 12 volt port. So you've got everything you need kind of roughed in but it's not completed. And again, this costs more. So these, uh, one thing I should mention is the auxiliary lighting on the klr and all of the head lighting is updated to L E D. So this is L E D lighting, which previous generations of the verse 650 were not L e D lighting. But what you do have is this, and I wanna show you that right now. So what you get in this dash is a fully top of the line dash. 

This is what you get in the top of the line sport bikes from Kawasaki. There's all kinds of views you can do here. So you do have traction control here. Now that is interesting. The Kawasaki website told me that you don't have traction control in this model and I think I told someone that you don't. It absolutely has traction control. Uh, so if I did write that comment in the past on your video, I was sitting at home and looking at the website, I thought it had traction control and it absolutely does. So you have multiple levels of traction control here with this six 50 cc engine, which we'll talk about in one second. But you also have all kinds of information in here. The dash is clear, it's easy to read in your camera. Some of the gray looks a little bit blue, but in real life it's uh, gray and everything in here is clear and easy to read. 
You've got a gear position indicator, you've got a good tachometer, you've got clear speedometer and you've got a number of other things like trip computers and that kind of thing in there. If you hold things down, you can uh, get into some changes in settings here, let me just change the um, the look there. You can go full lighter version or a darker version. Some people say this is a day or night version. I don't think it matters if it's day or night. Obviously a night that black background will help you for visibility. But I like it in the black overall. I think it looks cleaner, um, to me, but you can sort of choose that. And again, lots of options in there. Now let's talk about the traction control. This six 50 cc engine I have talked about as being a really perfect engine for the street. 
Gives you lots of fun, lots of power. Not too overwhelming for most riders, but certainly, um, the ability to have some fun. I don't think I need traction control on a bike like this. I've had pretty good control with myself, but there are a few times where I have slipped out. And the bigger thing is when you're driving this in cooler weather, which you're going to do because you have good wind protection in both the windshield and in the hand guards, which we'll show you in just a second. So you've got the ability to have some traction control, especially when your tires are still cold or the weather's not perfect. So it's just a nice feature to have. Final thing we'll talk about the Versys 650 is it is a tall bike with a large fuel tank. So put the kickstand up again around a 32 inch nc. 

My heels are just barely off the ground, but I'm very comfortable here. You do need to be a little bit taller to ride this or the regular K L R. The K L R S of course lowers things down a little bit and it's very comfortable. Here's that wind protection here over your hands. You've got good wind protection here over your legs. And again that windshield right there, which has this bar out here as well. So you can attach accessories like a GPS or other type of things both on the handlebar and on this. So I've gone on a long time about the verse six 50, is that our winner? Let's fade into what I chose as the winner this year. So the winner for the best bike that I've tested this year makes no sense. It's the KLR six 50. It's not the nicest bike, it's not even the most up to date bike, but there's a reason that this wins. 
And I think it's the same reason that most of us buy motorcycles, cars, all kinds of things. There's a bit of an emotional connection. To me, A motorcycle that's great is one you can use for everything. And the Versys 650 for me with always that bike. I could use it to go everywhere, A long trip, short day trip, bringing things to work and back because of the side cases and stuff. But this bike steps it up from that bike. Sure, it's not as highway capable, but most of my riding, like I said, is country highways at best. What I love about this is there is nowhere you can't go want to head down a dirt road, no problem. A little even like a not well paved side, road to adventure down to the coast or somewhere near water, no problem. Get through a little bit of mud, not a big deal. 
Heading out on the highway, you've got a good upright seating position, which I'll show you right here. Even on this one, it is a tall bike, but again, not a whole lot taller than the versus 650. So very good bike for that. It is something that is capable of taking your luggage in. While these bags are smaller, having this standard rack here means you can accessorize that up with anything you want. You could buy a case on here or you can just strap stuff across the seat and across here. And the value is here. This model is the most expensive one you can get. Even with abs, it's under $10,000, which is a good deal in the motorcycling world. And you can get the K L R S, which is what really makes this the winner to me. K L R S is that shorter version.

You can take some money off by getting rid of the adventure package with the lights, the crash guards and the bags here. But if you wanted the K L R S like that, you could still add these accessories back on and have it to be anything you want. So you could buy this bike in the non adventure model and piece together an adventure model over time if that's what you wanna do. The value is here and that kind of matters to me. Good comfort. All weather. Anytime you want to go anywhere, you can go here and anywhere you want to go for 2022, this is the best bike I've tested. Now if you disagree with me, let me know when the comments below and if you think there's a better Kawasaki bike, frankly, so do i, I just haven't tested it yet. So stay tuned to the channel, make sure you subscribe because we will have a whole bunch more Kawasaki reviews coming up and we can do that because of

Jim Gilbert's Power Sports, they gimme complete access to the full lineup of vehicles and I get to test them for you. So if you have questions, let me know when the comments below and make sure you subscribe because we'll have a whole bunch more comments coming up. We've still got Pedego e-bikes, which one's the best. We've got vehicles, we've got Kawasaki off-road vehicles, the best of what I tested this year. All those videos are coming up. So stay tuned and we'll talk to you soon.