Triumph Tiger 900 (2024) REVIEW | On-road and off

Welcome to Benet's Bike Social, welcome to beautiful southern Spain and welcome to the launch of Triumph's new Tiger 900. Now for 2024 Triumph has simplified the Tiger range so you've essentially got the GT, the GT Pro and then the Rally Pro. Now let me run you through the differences before I give you the updates. So the GT Pro is the premium 19-inch front wheeled Tiger from Triumph. So we've got 19-inch front wheel, kind of more road biased adventure bike, electronic rear suspension and conventional manual adjustable suspension on the front. The Rally is fully adjustable suspension, higher seat, more travel on the suspension, 21-inch front wheel, more catered for off-road riding. If you want to go more road you go in 19, if you want to go more off-road it's 21. That simplifies the range, makes it much much easier for Triumph because before I think they had 27 different models of Triumph Tiger to opt from and now it's a lot easier and a lot simpler. So the big talking point for 2024 is the improvement in performance. Still 888 capacity from that really distinctive T-plane crank, triple engine built in Hinkley but they've put new pistons in, new cams, revised the exhaust, the intake has all been redone so despite having the same capacity we've got an improvement in performance. We've gone up from 93.9 horsepower to 106.5 which essentially is 13% more power but they haven't reduced the torque and just gone for the top end. Down at the bottom it's around about the same and then it just increases from around 5,000 rpm onwards and revs a little bit higher. In terms of torque we're up a fraction but not a huge amount. In terms of tech we've now got the TFT clocks that were on the big 1200 Adventure. So we've got new tech, we've got more power, we've got slight design tweaks and we've got a really premium and high level finish. So we've got like on the pro we've got heated seat for rider and pillion, we've got cruise control, we've got heated grips, adjustable screen, TFT connectivity. This is a really premium bike and in this category it's not jumped up in price either. So prices are £12,195 for the basic, £13,895 for the pro and £14,495 for the rally pro which isn't a massive jump over what it was previously. Today we've had the opportunity to ride on the road so we've been jumping between the GT pro and the rally pro. Voila! Welcome to southern Spain. We're just in the off-road mode because we are on some kind of roads that go from, well, tarmac to gravel pretty quickly and just in the standard off-road mode we've got no abs on the rear but some abs on the front, oops sorry cat, and the traction control is not lean sensitive anymore but still active and that it's letting me slide a little bit but controlling it so it's done on wheel speed rather than lean angle but yeah that was a good demonstration of how versatile the bike is jumping from gravel and back. So just in the standard road mode again I'd just like that to be a bit bigger and then now I can press that on the left bar and just scroll through from road to rain to sport give it a tick close the throttle and we should be in sport go back to the home screen sport is derived by a different symbol but just not that clear and when you're riding you can't go into any mode that turns off the tco changes the abs so really when you're riding you've just got the rain the sport and the road but then when you're stationary then you can switch into the off-road modes there's a real significant difference between the two models as you'd expect with the amount of suspension travel and size of wheels but despite the rally pro having that long travel suspension and catered for off-road ability it's still very compliant on the road very comfortable very easy to ride very manageable and when you do rev it you do feel that increase in power it kind of feels the same as the old bike to about 5000 rpm and then it just revs round to a few occasions where I was changing gear a little too early because it will rev even more than you was expecting it you're on a big comfy big adventure bike and you don't expect it to rev as much as it does and it just gives it that extra zap that extra gnarl of performance that extra kick and we're as I say we're over 100 horsepower now so it's got some real go about it the gt pro has got exactly the same engine the same exhaust sound the exact same snarl but it's just a little bit easier to manage there's less suspension travel there's less movement it feels more nimble it feels lighter it feels easier to turn some of the heavier riders on test have had a little issue with ground clearance touching the pegs but I've not had an issue all day maybe because I'm not riding as fast and maybe it's because I'm shorter and lighter but it's definitely more road focused than the rally pro in terms of comfort both are pretty similar you've got the manually adjustable screen you've got cruise control you've got the heated grips and you've got the heated seat which we've had on today because of the temperatures early this morning the suspension takes every imperfection that you can throw at it again on the rally I was expecting it to kind of blow through the stroke quite a lot but it doesn't it's really nicely controlled on the gt pro you have the electronic rear shock it's not semi-active but essentially the rear shock changes depending on what mode you're in so if you're in rain mode you've obviously got quite a soft setup if you're going to road there's less and then if you're going to sport you can change it again and also you can change these if you want by changing on the fly so you can actually change the amount of preload in the rear shock as you're going it's not semi-active and the front is still manually adjustable the reason behind that is it's designed to be an adventure bike that's going to carry luggage and a pillion so you're asking a lot of different changes of the rear so when you add luggage when you add pillion when you're cruising so now you can electronically change the rear shock on the fly with the fully adjustable shower system on the rally it's all manually adjustable which I guess that's going to be catered for those people who really going to attack some off-road on the road I didn't feel the need to change it I guess if I added a pillion and luggage I'd want to change it and tomorrow when we try some off-road again I might want to change it just to control it if we're doing any extreme jumps or hitting some hard terrain but in perfect standard setup I didn't feel the need to change either bike in terms of a downside for me the tft clocks are really clear really neat and really well lit up the sunlight doesn't affect them and they're quite easy to read but when you're changing it they're quite slow to kind of move from one screen to the other there was a few occasions where I kind of got lost in the menus so you've just got like the rev counter the fuel gauge and the speedo you'll see this on the gopro but when you want to see the trip or you want to see the range you've got to go within a mode within a mode and it sometimes gets a little bit confusing when you're changing the modes when you go from one mode to the other you think it's changed it hasn't because there's just a bit of a delay it's probably something I'm going to get more used to and this morning it was a little annoying and by three four o'clock this afternoon it wasn't so much because I was more used to the system but this is just day one tomorrow is day two and we're going to go off road hence the off-road looking tires on the rally we're going to the adventure school here that triumph have in southern spain where we get to put the rally through its paces in terms of their road ability the same comfort the kind of same premium quality the same sound as the old tiger there was a great bike that was introduced in 2020 but now you've got more zip more grunt it's still lovely and soft and really nicely fueled the low 5000 but then at 5000 it just kind of wants to go again you've got that extra flow that extra grunt and that extra drivability but tomorrow's another day let's see how that performance equates off-road will it be a little bit too much performance we'll find out because the rally pro has got two off-road settings off-road and off-road pro so we're going to play with those settings tomorrow we're going to play with more off-road bias tires and we're going to try it out at the triumph adventure school here in malaga so this is pretty epic look at the plane there we can wave at people landing at malaga over there is the snow which is like the sierra nevada kind of where almeria is over there is the beach and the sea it's just been some beautiful riding so today is off-road day see you guys so we're on the rally obviously because we're off-road 21 inch front wheel off-road tires uh off-road bias suspension fully shower front and rear the only change is we've gone for more off-road bias tired tires than yesterday and because i'm on the pro i've got two off-road modes just a standard off-road and the off-road pro if i go for the pro i got no traction no abs and if i go to the just the standard off-road i've got a little bit of off-road bias abs and off-road bias tc but apart from the off-road bias tires this is just a standard tiger 900 at bennett's bike social we did the on-road test yesterday we tested the rally and the gt pro we both did them on road today has been off-road just on the rally which is obvious to use the rally because it's got the longer travel fully adjustable suspension the more ground clearance and the crash protection um two modes on the rally pro you've got off-road and off-road pro in off-road you've got abs on the front which is conventional it's not sensitive and you've got no traction on the rear and you've got a dedicated throttle map for off-road in off-road pro you've got no tc on the front sorry no abs on the front no traction control on the rear it's just free and you can do what you want with the same throttle map now i thought the throttle map might have restricted the power but it's actually full power in off-road mode so if you go to 100 throttle it opens the butterflies and you've got 100 power and there is a lot of power i'll be honest i didn't have huge high expectations for the tiger i've ridden the old tiger off-road and it was good off-road but i wouldn't say it was amazing off-road but the new tiger feels very different it's got real nice power delivery um in the off-road mode the off-road abs works really well for a relatively inexperienced rider i don't think you're getting too much trouble riding the tiger off-road that abs is really good and the throttle delivery is really nice and then for me i flicked it into the off-road pro which means no traction no abs and really let it flow and it really surprised me what this tiger can do it's really impressive off-road considering this is the same bike that we rode on road yesterday just with different tires this is just cool just riding small group kind of nice trails not too dusty 15 degrees lovely a bit rocky there though the tires are really good they're just finding grip they feel pretty good on the road as well different tires to yesterday trying to obviously put a bit more yeah swap the tires which you would do if you're riding you know on these type of trails but the bike that we rode and i put on yesterday we're now hitting trails with confidence and the good bit is with this off-road abs and the off-road tc you know you can have some fun and you know it's relatively safe on a 230 ish kilogram bike oh look at this in the uk that we get trails like this but so we just tried the off-road pro don't know why i'm setting off in second which means now i've got no abs front or rear no traction just uptreat just me it'd be nice to go a little bit quicker but to be honest i have ridden these type of roads before in spain and you come around one of these i mean that is a proper drop and and before you know it there's a fiat panda around triumph have got an adventure school here up in the hills near manager so if you want to come and do this kind of stuff check triumph out online they've got scramblers and tigers i believe um we have got more horsepower as we explained yesterday but you don't really notice that so much off-road there's a few places where you can open the gas in third and fourth because we're on open fire traps here in spain but in the uk you're probably not going to notice that but i guess the big question mark for the tiger is going to be the competition because when you start going off-road on a middleweight adventure bike you've got ktm and you've got husqvarna and here at bike social we'll be testing bmw's new 900gs shortly and we'll be testing honda's new africa twin very shortly so that's going to be the big asking point and the big question how good are those bikes going to be against this and when we get them all in a big group test that'll be the big reveal but in terms of what triumph have done for the tiger they've improved the impel they've improved the performance i think it's a stunning looking bike it's not gone up in price and it's got a very high specification that the others are going to struggle to match at this price thanks for watching i hope you enjoyed it if you've got any questions because it's been a little complicated with two bikes i'll try and answer the below thanks for watching and don't forget to subscribe