Honda CB500X Is the Most Affordable Twin in the Adventure Segment

The Honda CB500X is one of the smallest twin-engine adventure bikes on the market. At 439 pounds, with its gas tank full, it’s basically the same weight as Royal Enfield’s Himalayan—but it’s good for nearly double the horsepower and magnitudes more smoothness.

Honda’s evolved the bike over the past few years, with suspension and brake upgrades we’ll detail below. The CB500X sits at a price point well below bigger, meatier twin-cylinder motos that target a touring crowd. Honda delivers excellent ergonomics, super-smooth revving and great suspension dynamics. Is it perfect? Not quite, and after 500 miles of mixed pavement and dirt testing, we have the full lowdown.

FYI: We compare the Honda CB500X to the KTM 390 Adventure and Royal Enfield Himalayan throughout this review, because they're all comparable in price. The Himalayan is a good $1,500 cheaper and the KTM is just about the same sticker as CB500X.

Honda CB500X Specs

An Excellent Suspension

Heavier riders found the new Showa 41mm fork and Pro-Link shock a tad soft, but the shock is easily adjustable, with nine settings so you can stiffen the pre-load to sink into its five inches of travel less rapidly, which is especially useful if you’re loading up luggage for a moto travel adventure like we did. And the fork, while initially plush, ramps nicely, and through a ton of braking bumps on dirt it took the sting out of what would otherwise be punishing terrain, plus that seriously aided control through rippled pavement.

Cockpit Ergos are Nearly Perfect

Ergonomics on a bike are subjective. My arm length isn’t your arm length. My butt isn’t the same width as yours. But Honda starts the CB500X with a 32.8-inch seat height that’s approachable for most riders and isn’t so low that taller riders will feel cramped. Mile after mile during one six-hour test ride the cockpit proved very accommodating.

Still, there are two hangups. The CB500X comes with a street-focused foot peg. Ordinarily you’d pull the rubber dampers from the stock peg to reveal the teeth of something reasonably meaty, the better for stand-up riding grip, but Honda only specs a wispy, street-focused peg on the 500X. (Our photos show the bike with a more aggressive aftermarket peg.)

Also, even though I’m a mere 5’ 7”, the bar position is a tad low for standup motorcycling, which means taller riders would really find themselves stooped over on dirt. That’s easily fixed in the aftermarket with spacers or a higher-rise bar, and Honda folks told us they see that and peg swaps as the kind of customization riders will do no matter what parts they spec. That’s fair.

On the upside, a three-position windscreen that comes stock is just about perfect. Loosen four Allen screws to remove it and change the default height of the platform, then re-attach. That operation takes just a few minutes so you could easily revise the height, depending on that day’s shredding—higher for highways, to block turbulence, lower for off-road, for better vision ahead of your front wheel.

Solid Stoppers

Honda’s gone with dual Nissin twin-pot calipers and 296mm discs on the front wheel and a single-piston 240mm disc at the rear. There’s ABS as well, and hammering the brakes to test emergency braking proved the merit of this design: CB500X has very confident stopping capability, matching what we’ve experienced on KTM and besting Himalayan’s grabbers.

However, you can’t turn off the ABS on the Honda. That’s a bummer. Royal Enfield’s Himalayan lets you kill the ABS on the rear wheel and KTM’s 390 Adventure allows turning off ABS both front and rear.

Why care? Because off-pavement you want to be able to stand on the rear brake and whip a bike around a corner. With a locked rear wheel, you can better negotiate tight terrain (the same technique you’d use on a mountain bike). And on long, hairy descents on gnarly dirt and rock, ABS can interfere with the ability to quickly change momentum. Switchable ABS is therefore very common, especially at the higher tier of adventure bikes.

Best Engine in the Class

Parallel twin engines offer a few benefits. One is packaging. Unlike V-shapes, they’re more compact and share more parts, so they typically shave weight as well as complexity. CB500X delivers 42.6 hp at 8,430 RPM and 29.2 lb. ft. of torque at 6,520, but the torque curve is very flat, so you get to 25 lb. ft. at only 2,500 RPM. That makes second-gear a favorite for off-roading, since you can lug the engine to a near-stall and still grab easy, flexible torque from 15 to 35mph. That’s ideal for safer fire-road riding and the Honda’s unperturbed powertrain is as friendly as it gets for this duty.

The Himalayan isn’t in the same universe on this front. Its single-cylinder 411cc only gets shy of 22hp at 6,260 RPM and while the torque curve is pretty flat, 21 lb. ft. at 4,400 RPM means you have to keep this engine on the boil to have enough twist for climbing steep earth, especially given that bike’s weight. The Himmy’s one-cylinder design is also tractor-ish. It gets the job done, but it’s the opposite of the Honda’s free-winding zing. The KTM is way closer—and that bike is about 50 pounds lighter, so its 37.5hp pulls more like the Honda—if not as smoothly since it’s a single-cylinder design as well.

A bonus was that even with great power we saw over 60 mpg on a mix of highway, back road, and dirt use.

Honda CB500X Shortcomings

The first challenge to Honda’s supremacy in this segment has to be that it comes with 19- and 17-inch (front/rear) cast rather than spoked wheels. “True” ADV bikes come with spoked wheels (the hidebound will argue) and the front hoop should be a 21-incher. The bigger wheel size probably matters more than the build material, because it’s like switching to a 29er wheel for mountain biking: A larger circle makes for a stronger lever to overcome obstacles.

KTM’s 390 Adventure is now shod with a spoked wheel but it’s still a 19, not a 21, and the Himalayan has a 21 with a spoked wheel, giving that bike an advantage in the dirt. Honda furthers the challenge for anyone going off-road by mounting their rig with a Dunlop Trailmax Mixtour tire. This is sweet for pavement, but doesn’t have nearly enough knob for even mild mud duty. It was fine on fire roads, but tackling anything gnarlier would be akin to taking slicks to an ice rink.

CB500X has okay ground clearance, at 7.1 inches, but comes up shy of both KTM’s 7.9 inches and Royal Enfield’s 8.6. Lastly, CB500X doesn’t bake in a 101-level off-roading kit, from substantial skid plating to engine guards to hand guards, all gratis on KTM.

You have to opt for hand guards on Himalayan but engine and skid plating are included.

Who Should Buy the Honda CB500X

All of the above issues (though not the wheel size) are easily addressed in the aftermarket, as are tires, but it says something about Honda that they’d rather steer an adventure rider to their more MX-designed heritage machines—bikes that aren’t enjoyable on pavement—instead of making the CB500X a bit more like the KTM.

Why? Probably because they know that a lot of customers are chasing the adventure bike genre but are more about the look and less about the grime.

Honda CB500X could be more dirt focused with some simple parts swaps, and given the exceptional chassis and engine goodness (aspects that are way harder to improve after the fact) it’s mighty hard to fault Honda’s recipe.

Sure, it could be more this or that, but the joy of motorcycling is how cheap it is to make a bike very much your own, and with an approachable base price and excellent handling, Honda’s got you 85% of the way there already—especially if your adventuring includes a bunch of pavement along the way.

How Much the Honda CB500X Costs

[$7,299; powersports.honda.com]