Long-Term Honda CRF250L Review: The Dual Sport Motorcycle That is Great at ALMOST Everything

Hello everyone and welcome back to the dork side. I am the Dork in the Road and today it is my three and a half year review of my time on this baby right here, the Honda CRF250L. That's right everyone, I am the Dork in the Road and I want to be your internet writing buddy. And I'm better than your regular writing buddies because I'm available whenever you want and I come with the mute button. So please consider subscribing and don't forget to turn on those notifications so that you don't miss awesome new content just like this. As I mentioned, I have owned this motorcycle to my right, the Honda CRF250L, for three and a half years now. Seems like it was only yesterday I brought this sweet baby home in March of 2017 and took my first toddling steps into the wider world of off-road riding. It was the second motorcycle I ever owned and my very first dual sport or off-road motorcycle at all. I had many firsts on this bike. My first trail riding experience was on this bike. My first off-road riding experience at all was on this bike. My first drop was on this bike. My first solo adventure into the wilderness by myself, terrifying the first time actually, to be miles and miles and miles off the beaten path on my own, that was on this motorcycle. First bike I ever loaded in the back of a truck was this bike. It is in many ways the bike that sparked the transition of this channel from a regular old run-of-the-mill motorcycling channel to an off-road riding focused dual sport juggernaut that it has become. Juggernaut is maybe an exaggeration, but dual sport channel, I guess. Whatever it is. I don't know what it is. You tell me. And I have put thousands of miles on this motorcycle on and off-road, mostly off, and I honestly, to this day, wish that it was the motorcycle I had started on. It was my second bike, but I really, really wished it had been my first and I think it is a great, if not the greatest, first motorcycle out. So if you're unfamiliar with the bike, a few basic things to know. It's a 250cc dual sport motorcycle. It's a single cylinder thumper. It's fuel injected. It has six gears. It has a two gallon tank. It has 22 horsepower, top speed of 75 or so. I've ridden it on the freeway. You can see that in a video. I'll put that up here. It's one of the two. It has a fuel gauge, which is pretty rare on a dual sport, and the rear suspension is preload adjustable, but otherwise not adjustable, and the front is not adjustable at all, and the bike weighs 317 pounds. It's heavy for an off-road motorcycle. So those are the basic specs. So here are the pros of this motorcycle, the things that I would call positives in its column. Fuel injection is a huge plus, especially in the dual sport world. This thing starts right up every time. It doesn't really have to warm up. It just pretty much starts up and goes. There are no concerns about changing elevation or any of that. There's no petcock to worry about for getting this turned on and off. You don't have to choke it to start it. None of that. You just turn the key, hit the button, and this motorcycle goes. No matter the elevation or the temperature, it just starts right up, and you are off and on your adventure as quickly as you want to be. It's a bulletproof, reliable engine, proven. It's really, really hard to kill one of these. It will not leave you stranded, at least not for mechanical failure. It might leave you stranded if you do something dumb like puncture the oil filter cover in a freak drop or something like that, ask me how I know. But it's not a bike that you're likely to have many mechanical issues with. This motorcycle is exceptionally smooth and easy to ride. It's so easy to ride. It's forgiving of your beginner mistakes. It doesn't really have enough power to get you in trouble. If you do something dumb like drop the clutch unexpectedly or over-rev or whatever, it's got enough leeway and freedom that you're going to be fine. You can catch it. You can stop it. You can correct what you're doing. It's easy to ride and shift. My daughter, like I mentioned, I taught her to use a clutch and shift on this bike, and the weight was a little bit of a problem for her, but as far as riding it, shifting and all of that, never had a problem. I was really impressed how quickly she took to it, and a lot of that is because this motorcycle is just really, really easy to ride. It's a great, easy to ride bike, and if you were a new rider, it's a great bike to start with. It's very confidence-inspiring and capable. This bike has outperformed me as a rider on countless occasions. It can climb a tree. It's very capable. It can handle a lot of off-road situations that you wouldn't think it would be able to. Not quickly, necessarily, but it can get you there. It'll do basically anything that any other dual sport will do, just slower and less comfortably in most cases. It's totally a jack-of-all-trades. This bike is pretty okay at basically anything you ever asked it to do. You want to ride on the highway? It's okay at that. It's not super comfortable. You want to ride around town? I mean, it's okay at that. You want to put a bunch of gear on it and go in the backcountry and camp? You can do that, just slowly. You want to ride it off-road on trails? You can do that. Just kind of okay, right? The bike does everything that you could ever want it to do, so it's a great bike if you don't know what you want to do, because you can actually try basically everything on this bike and figure out what kind of riding you want to get into. That's what I love about dual sports, and that's what I love about this one in particular. It's very affordable, both in terms of purchase price. You can get a new one for less than $6,000. Insurance is super cheap, and they hold their resale value, from what I can tell, relatively well, especially around here in the Pacific Northwest. Dual sports really hold their value, but you're not making a massive financial decision or potentially a massive financial mistake by purchasing one, because they're not hard to get into money-wise, and they're easy to get out of, because they're popular. It may be, like I said, the best first motorcycle of all time, capable, easy to ride, inexpensive, and opens up a world of possibilities. You can do any kind of riding you want on it, and so that's a massive plus in its column. If you're a new rider or even an intermediate rider, it's a fantastic bike. You will be wildly impressed with it, and it will do anything you could possibly want it to. That's what I like about it. After riding it for three years, I can tell you there are some things that I don't like about it. Here's a few cons, a few negative things about the bike, because I'm trying to give you a well-rounded impression if you're thinking about buying one. First of all, the gas tank is super small. Two gallons is a small tank. As I go down this list, keep in mind there are aftermarket parts that you can buy that will remedy basically every single one of these. I'll talk about the small gas tank, it's only two gallons, where you can get an aftermarket tank that's much bigger, or add a Rotopax, or carry a Giant Loop gas bag. These are things that you can do, but I'm going to talk about the bike in stock form and the things that are less than ideal about that. It's not super comfortable, no dual sport is. The seat in particular is not comfortable. You're definitely going to feel the vibrations on the highway. There's not any wind protection, so those things all factor in depending on how fast. If you're just riding in the woods, you don't notice it as much, but if you're on the highway, you definitely will. I mentioned before how it's smooth and forgiving in its power delivery, but that can actually be a disadvantage off-road and in certain situations when you need a lot of power quickly, such as you come around a corner and there's a hill climb, or you need a little bit of a bump to get the front wheel up over an obstacle. It's nice to be able to get power quickly, and this bike is not really good at that unless you really pop the clutch and rev it a lot. While it is very forgiving of your beginner mistakes, it doesn't have a lot of torque and it can't save you in those situations the way a more torquey motorcycle would do. You can change out the sprocket on the rear. That'll give you a little bit of extra pop, but again, that's one of those aftermarket modifications I talked about, and you're sacrificing some top end when you do that. It's got a weirdly laggy kind of power delivery. It takes a second. There's a perceptible lag between when you twist the throttle and when the bike starts to accelerate. Not a huge deal riding around town or on the highway. Definitely a huge deal off-road in a situation where you need that power immediately, and so you have to plan ahead more, and it's just a little bit annoying. It's pretty heavy. I mean, it's a lot heavier than a dirt bike, obviously, but 320 pounds is not nothing, especially when you're trying to throw it around the trails or turn around or if you drop the thing. You definitely feel it when it starts to tip. It's a lot harder to hold up than a lighter bike, and I feel like it wears its weight in a weird way. It feels weirdly top-heavy and I have to fight it sometimes in off-road situations, whereas I don't feel that way on other motorcycles that I've ridden. The suspension is really not awesome. It's probably the biggest weak point of this bike. I mentioned before it's not adjustable except for the preload on the rear. The front suspension dives. It will bottom out on you. It will deflect weirdly off of rocks, and there's nothing you can do about it without making modifications, so there is a limit to this bike's potential, and the limit is the suspension. I said it will do anything you want it to do, and that's true, but the speed at which you do those things will be dictated by the suspension, and you'll probably be doing them slower than you'd like to be, depending on how hardcore of off-road riding you're trying to get into. It's fine on the road. It's fine on the street. It's fine on a light gravel road or a fire road, just putting around exploring the woods. Totally fine. You're not going to notice it. In fact, it makes it more comfortable, but in those more spirited riding situations, it's definitely a weak point, and because of that, I don't think it's a great trail bike. I have a whole video on that that you can check out. So overall, in my opinion, the CRF250L is a fantastic motorcycle for a beginner to intermediate rider looking to get into the world of off-road riding. If you've never ridden off-road before, or you want a bike that kind of does it all and can get you off-road but also get you there on the road, great bike for that. Fantastic motorcycle. It's capable, forgiving, and can be had for a reasonable amount of money. The aftermarket is huge. There's tons of accessories, like I said. Parts that you can add to rectify basically all those weaknesses I talked about, but also just protection mods, cosmetic mods. The community is huge, both on Facebook, various websites, Thumper Talk, places like that. And here on YouTube, in fact, there's lots of great CRF250L YouTubers out there you can learn from. It's bulletproof, reliable, will never let you down. It's almost a perfect bike for beginners because it's easy to ride, forgiving, capable, will last forever, is inexpensive, and is capable of all kinds of riding from around town to motocamping loaded down with gear to trail riding and exploring the backcountry. If your goal is to get out and explore the woods on fire roads, logging roads, if you want to get out into the wilderness on sort of semi-abandoned road type situations, this bike will always be great for that. It's a fantastic bike for that. If you want to get into more spirited, less developed type riding on trails or cross-country or whatever, it's maybe a little bit less good at that. It's not necessarily the bike that I would recommend if you know for sure that you want to ride trails and a little bit more technical, a little bit more complicated, difficult, spirited type off-road situations. If you're going to be mostly off-road, there are probably better dual sports out there for you. If you know you want to ride on the highway and do some kind of forest roads, it's a great bike for all of that. So I love this motorcycle. It may be my favorite motorcycle of all time. Top two or three for sure, but definitely in terms of bike that I've had the most fun adventures on, learned the most on, and grown the most on, for sure my 250L is that number one for me. It took me many amazing places and taught me just tons of things about how to ride and how I want to ride. It allowed me to experiment, try all kinds of different things, and really narrow down and figure out the types of riding that I like the most. And without it, I would not be the rider or the video maker that I am today. You can't understate its impact on this channel and the direction that it took. It's the reason why I make off-road riding videos, so that is a huge endorsement in my mind. The CRF250L for me has been simultaneously a gateway into a wider world, a much wider world, much of which I did not even know existed before I stepped through the gateway. And it's also been the reliable, stalwart, supportive friend that's accompanied me along the way on the journey, always ready to go in any direction that I wanted to go and capable of helping me get there. That's the CRF250L. That's the bike you're buying, if you're thinking about picking one up. I have many, many videos. I have a whole CRF250L playlist, which I will link for you. Please consider hitting that like button if you learned something or got some insight from this video. That really helps YouTube know to share it with other people so more people can learn about what a fantastic bike the CRF250L is. If you're looking for a really cool one-stop shop for all of your dorky motorcycling needs, check out my new website, dorkintheroad.com. Go give it a look. But for now and as always, I just want to say thank you very much for watching and please do not forget to be excellent to each other. Thank you. Excellent! It's comfortable. It's not comfortable.