Owned one for around 2 years was a great bike , it did just about everything i asked of it ,went off road, toured , and went back and forward to work on it and it just never failed , with a few cheeky mods made 68hp , and that made the bike quick , the only thing i would grumble about would be the fuel tank being smallish but then again their is petrol stations every 5 mins down the road , would i buy one again ? i would say yes , would i be happy to load it up with gear a bugger off around europe for 2 weeks ? yep sure would , it will just go and go .

got the bike new from cmc in cannock they did a great deal for cash , it was one of the last white and red ones , the bike it self looks great but is let down by the likes of the seat and cheap coatings used on the frame and swing arm oh and the cush drive rubbers are made of cheese , with the bike being a big single you do get vibes through the bars but can be sorted , i did over 4000 miles in just two weeks in france and it turned over 65 mpg and sat at 80 mph on longer roads (105 mph flat out, dont know where 120 mph in test came from)it never missed a beat it just kept going , i wouldnt tour with a passenger it just hasnt got the power to deal with it fully loaded , talking of fully loaded the standard alloy yamaha panniers are crap , they drop to bits , my first set the locks played up and started to come apart ,they were replaced by yamaha . if the bike had the same sort of power and cc as the 800 gs it would have been a monster of a bike but yamaha made the 1200 and made it out of most people price range , shame

i had my dl650x for just over a year and did 2 tours of france about 8000 miles all in told , it was very quick for what it was and killed the miles off when we had to , handled off road fooling around no problem , good on fuel if you dont have a heavy right wrist , service costs are low .all in all a very good little big bike .