KTM 790 Duke - Long term review

Hey kids, it's Mr. Flyer here, hope you're well. Now the last few weeks I've been lucky enough to be borrowing this, the brand new KTM 790 Duke. And I've ridden it on all sorts of roads and in all sorts of conditions. I even took it up to the Peak District on tour with me for a weekend. So I've really got to know the bike really quite well. And in this video, what I'm gonna do is talk you through all those little things that I've learned about the bike when you get to live with a bike for a little while. So if you're interested in the KTM Duke 790, stick around and stay tuned. So over the past 18 months or so, I've been lucky enough not only to ride this bike, but also got to ride the Super Duke R, the 1290, and also the baby brother, the 390. And this is kind of the love child, if you like, of both of those bikes. I absolutely love those two machines. And this one sits slap bang in the middle, as far as I'm concerned, in the sweet spot for an on-road bike. So what we'll do in this video is take you through all the lessons I've learned, not just the good things, but also what are the bad things about the bike. What do you learn about the bike when you live with it day to day that maybe you wouldn't know if you just rode it for a test ride for an hour. So I'm gonna take you through those. I'm gonna look at cost of ownership. I've got some quotes for things like servicing, MOT, insurance, that sort of thing. And then at the end of the video, I will, of course, give you my summary. So without further ado, let's crack on with the video. So around town, the KTM Duke 790 could just about be the perfect bike. It's got that great combination of agility, power, good sound, so vehicles can hear you coming, and it's lovely and narrow as well. So if you have to do any filtering, it's really not an issue. So if you needed a bike to have fun on at the weekend and to commute to work on, this would be a great option because it really isn't a problem riding in urban environments. Nighttime on the KTM then. Well, first of all, I mean, the moon's up, but it probably still looks quite light. It's actually nearly quarter past 10 at night, and there's still a bit of light in the air, so quite difficult to find complete darkness at this time of year. But I'm gonna go down a darker lane down here so we can have a look at how the headlight works. In the meantime, the first thing that strikes you when you ride a KTM at night is the fact that the switch gear is lit up. I really like the way that KTM do that. It's quite a simple switch gear on the 790, just the arrows, the cursor controls, this side for the menu stuff, and then you've just got a stop button on this side. So not really complicated handlebars, but it's really nice that they've lit that up. One of only two manufacturers I know of that currently do that, KTM, and Triumph on the new bikes do that as well. The headlight itself is brilliant on this bike. It does split opinions the way it looks. I actually like the sort of insectoid look of it. It's the same light as we saw on the Super Duke, on the 390 Duke, and also the Adventure bikes as well. Not only do I love the way it looks, but I love the way they do that heat sink in the middle, which is functional as well. Anyway, here we are, look, dark lane. This is on dip. Loads of light, absolutely fine. If you put it onto full beam, it turns night into day. I think this is one of the best lights currently available on a motorcycle. It's just an amazing bit of kit. If you wanna flash it, all you have to do, it's very easy on this, it's just you pull the trigger and it flashes, you take your finger off and it stops flashing. There's none of this, pull it, it stays on, press it again and it goes off, so very, very easy. So yeah, night time on the KTM 790, you are treated to a festival of excellent lights, both the headlight itself to see where you're going and on the handlebars. Oh, and not forgetting, of course, the TFT display, and it's night mode, which looks excellent. So what about day-to-day maintenance on the KTM 790? Things like pumping the tyres, oiling the chain, that sort of thing. Well, as far as the chain's concerned, you'll notice there is no centre stand on the bike, so when you come to oil the chain, you're gonna need to find a way to get the back wheel off the deck. I recommend things like an ABBA stand, I've got one in the corner there. Get one of those, that would lift the wheel off fine. So you have got that. If you don't wanna do that route, then you're gonna have to wheel the bike around while you lube the chain, which is a little bit of a pain. As far as the tyre's concerned, I'm glad to say they've got these little right-angled valve caps, or not valve caps, valves on them, so they're very easy to get at. So pumping the tyres up, no problem at all on here. Glad that KTM have done that. Sometimes bike manufacturers just put those straight valves in, and it's a right pain sometimes to get the pump there. So thumbs up as far as that's concerned. So on faster roads, of course, you have to bear in mind that this is a naked bike, so you're gonna be in full windblast mode. However, that said, the wind coming off the front of the bike is nice and clean. I'm not in massive turbulent air. Of course, that does vary depending a bit on what sort of helmet you wear, what kit you're wearing. But I've ridden this bike with all sorts of different kit on and different helmets, and I've not found any use case where I've had turbulent air coming off the front on faster roads. So here I am, look, I'm doing, I'm on a dual carriageway, doing 70 miles now or thereabouts, and it's absolutely fine. If you get a winder up to silly, illegal speeds, then you're gonna have to hang on. But as I say, airflow is nice and smooth, no issue at all on the faster roads. She's got bags of power for overtakes. And you can sit on fast roads with no undue stress on the KTM 790, no worries at all. So another tick in the box there for the KTM. Now, unusually for one of my long-term bike reviews here in Blighty, I've not been able to actually ride this bike in the rain. I've had this bike just over two weeks as I say. I've done something like 800 miles in it, and incredibly, there's been no rain during that period. I'm recording this in the height of summer. It's a really warm day at the moment. It's in the evening, and it's still about 27 degrees. So yeah, it's been absolutely wonderful riding the bike in the lovely weather, but didn't get a chance to ride it in the rain. Having said that, I've no doubt it would be absolutely fine what with its lean-sensitive traction control and its lean-sensitive ABS. There are no safer bikes I would think to ride in the rain. Obviously, physics has its place to play, so you can't take the mickey. But of course, it's got all the riding aids that you need to make riding as safe as possible in the rain. So I have no doubt that in the rain, it would be fine. Couple of other things that people asked me to include on the video. One thing was, what's the horn like? So let me show you that. Just turn her on. And it's very difficult to hear the horn just through the little mic that I've got here on the shirt, but we'll give it a go anyway. Let's find where the horn button is. There it is. Beep, beep. Take it from me, that's very loud. It's also very shrill, isn't it? Beep, beep. But that is a lot better than some standard horns I've heard on some bikes. Another thing that somebody asked me to show you was what the seating position's like. So I'll just cut over now to another little shot of me sitting on the bike, just to show you that in terms of getting my feet down, it's quite straightforward. I've got my feet pretty much flat on the ground at both sides. I'm five foot eight. People always ask me what my inseam is. I really must measure it. I don't really know what that is, but I'm a medium-sized chap on the small side, I guess, and this bike has been absolutely fine for me. There's been no issue with it in terms of it feeling top-heavy or anything like that. It's completely benign, completely unthreatening. There's nothing difficult about riding this bike, and that includes the seating position. So yeah, all good from that point of view. So what about the fuel situation then? Well, one of the things I have noticed with this bike is that the fuel gauge seems a little bit up and down. At the moment, I don't know if you can see on the GoPro, I've got two bars on the little fuel gauge here, and it says I've got a range of 60 miles to go, but I found that on each ride, that tends to go up and down a bit. It seems to take a while where it doesn't really settle. So as it's on two blocks and I'm planning a long journey soon, I thought I'd go and get her filled up. So the fuel gauge seems a little bit hit and miss on this. I've noticed that before on some KTMs. As far as miles per gallon's concerned, the onboard computer is saying that I'm getting 60 miles per gallon at the moment, or 60.4 UK miles per UK gallon, which sounds really good, doesn't it? Really high, but I guess the thing to do is to actually empty the tank and work it out practically how many miles per gallon. But the bike thinks it's doing 60 miles per gallon, which sounds pretty good. All right, let's get to the fuel station, and see if there's any surprises filling up. I don't expect any, but this is actually the first time that I've filled this bike up, so let's see. Looking pretty busy in the old fuel station, it being a Friday. It often is around here. Anyway, the KTM has an amazing electronics package, but one thing it doesn't have, I'm glad to say, is keyless ignition. That's one of those features that I think is kind of a solution to a problem that isn't really there. I've never had a problem using a key on a motorcycle before. It's not something I've ever thought to myself, gosh, if only I had keyless ignition. When I have ridden bikes that have it, I get to like it, and you know, it's okay. But it's certainly not a deal breaker for me that this hasn't got it. But anyway, I only say that because, of course, when I finally get to a fuel pump, I'm going to be using the key to open this tank. At last, free pump. All righty, straightforward, lift the flap job, key in. Come on, it opens frontwards, that was a surprise. Other than that, no worries. 125.7 a litre, this stuff is getting expensive. Right, and the fuel gauge is indicating full instantly on there, which is good. For some reason, fuel gauges that take a while to realise they're full up just annoy me, but that's not an issue on the KTM. It's saying now, it's working out the range, actually. It's counting up, it's saying 110 at the moment. I'm sure that'll settle down to something a bit more reasonable. Okay, the fuel range now has settled down to 170. Don't know if you can see that on there, which sounds about right for a bike this type. I reckon if you can get 170 miles out of tank, then that's pretty good. I guess you're looking at fuel light coming on at sort of 150-ish, so that's a usable range. Okay, so at the start of the video, I promised you that I'd go through costs of ownership for this puppy, so I made a list here of the main costs. So I'm not looking at depreciation and I'm not looking at consumable parts like tyres and oil and stuff like that. What I'm gonna look at is what is the road tax, the insurance, and what are the servicing situation with the 790. So first off, the road tax. Here in the UK, we should call it vehicle exercise duty. Because it's over 600cc, you're gonna pay the maximum amount of road tax for this bike, which is 78 pounds a year. Insurance, I went to my friends at Principal Insurance, of course. They've got my details on record and can run me out a quote quite easily for this. They came back with a quote, which is only for indicative purposes, because of course it depends on my profile, my no-claims bonus, where I live, my age, et cetera. But they quoted me £123.20, fully comprehensive, with a £400 access. So I think £123.20 for a bike of this performance, pretty excellent price there, so thanks to Principal for the quote. And then servicing, what's the situation with that? So I called my friends up at what I think is the best dealership for KTM in the country, the KTM Centre at Hamel Hempstead. I'm a massive fan of theirs. I gave them a call and asked them if this bike was mine, how much would it cost to get it serviced? And they told me that the first service, if you go to the KTM Centre, as I mentioned, they'll only charge you for parts, and that'll be around £80 at 600 miles. Other dealers may charge for labour as well, in which case you're looking at about £175 for that first service. Then after that, the servicing is every 9,000 miles around whatever comes soonest. And it goes in that sort of minor, major, minor, major type cycle. So a minor service would cost £250 at the KTM Centre and £400 for a major. Clearly that depends on how your dealer does their charging, but as I say, the guys down at Hamel Hempstead, that's what they would charge. So if you add all that up, I'm gonna assume on an average year, you do say 5,000 miles. So what I've done is kind of included half the service cost. You see what I mean? I've taken the minor and major, split them down the two and come up with a cost. So tax, £78 a year. Add to that insurance, £123.20. Add to that, I've said £325 divided by two for the servicing. And that gives you a total of £363.70 per annum to run the bike. Or if you divide that by 12, £30.30 a month, just to have it sat in the garage and ready to ride. It doesn't include petrol, doesn't include things like tyres, but £30.30 just to keep the bike in roadworthy manner. And that, I've done quite a few of these calculations over the years. That's a pretty cheap one. That comes out really well. £30.30, thumbs up to KTM for the running costs. Okay, touring then on the KTM 790. What can you do with regard to that? Is it possible? Well, I'm all set up for a weekend away, actually. I'm just off to the Peak District for the weekend. And as I've got the 790 Duke, I thought it'd be an ideal opportunity to give it a try touring. So I've strapped on the back a waterproof bag. There's not much in the way of provision for luggage on the bike. It's just the pillion seat, but I've got this strapped on here pretty soundly. So let's go and see what it's like for a weekend away. So the bike has been thoroughly tested from a touring point of view. Absolutely beautiful up here. Good old spanking on the bike. Look at this road, gorgeous. And I was on the bike yesterday. I think the longest run I did was home up to here. I'm up in the Peak District now, which is four hours. And I did a stop at two hours just because I needed to stretch the legs. The riding position on the KTM is relatively sporty, as I mentioned before, and that your legs are at an acute angle. And I just found after a couple of hours, I was getting a little bit of a cramp in my hips, but that's probably just me. And just, you know, a quick stop. I had to stop for fuel anyway, and all was well. So, fine as far as that's concerned. The seat, I thought, might be a bit hard, it being a KTM, but actually turned out to be absolutely fine. Four hours on the bike yesterday, as I say, and no issues with the seat. The only thing I did notice was when I went through towns, I went a bit slower, I noticed there was a little bit of heat coming off the engine on the left side of the back, which I could notice. It wasn't terrible, it was nowhere near as bad, for example, as on my Panigale, but just noticed the engine does get a bit warm. But here in Blighty, I think that's positively a good thing. So yeah, as far as touring's concerned, of course, you can tour on any bike, but this one, as long as you can sort out the luggage on the back or whatever, or carry a rucksack, you're absolutely fine. What a beautiful time of day to be out on the bike. Splendid. So lots of people have asked me what's the bike like for lugging around on your driveway or at the car park or whatever, so let's just pop in here to my local station car park to see how easy she is to manhandle around, or indeed, womanhandle. Thing is, she's quite a nice, light bike at 274 kilos, so it's really not a problem to manhandle, so to speak. The stand on it is a bit more comfortable, to manhandle, so to speak. The stand on her, easy to get at, nice and chunky. It doesn't lean over too far, which is nice. And yeah, really no issues as far as moving it around. It's easy to get off the stand. Turning circle, I'll put it on full lock here, look, and that's one parking space. And basically, it won't go, it won't do a full 180 degree within one parking space, but it's not far off. So pretty good turning circle as well. And yeah, very, very easy to lug about, so no issues if you're a bit of a smaller stature, you'll be able to move this bike around easy. So how about cleaning the KTM Duke 790 then? Well, I use my usual technique, the two-bucket method. Start off with a bit of Autoglym motorcycle cleaner, then sponge the bike down. The bike didn't get that dirty, to be fair, when I had it. Mostly, I just had to get rid of bugs off the headlight using the bug shifter. Then a good rinse down, and then, of course, as I always do, go with the old bike dryer. But not hard to clean at all, this bike, one of the easier ones. It looks fantastic when it's done. So at the start of the video, I promised you a list of the pros and cons, the negatives and positives that I've found out about the bike, having run it for a good few hundred miles. Now, the sort of things that you would necessarily find out if you just took it for a one-hour test ride. So let's start off with the negatives, not too many. First one, and these are in no particular order, I did notice when I took the bike on tour, albeit it has been warm weather of late, so there was a little bit of heat that comes from the engine. Now, this is something that happens a little bit on the Baby Duke as well, the 390. Didn't notice it so much on the big one. But KTMs are known a little bit for hot engines, and this one is no exception. Just a little bit of heat, actually, from the sort of back left. Now, here in Brighty, that's not actually a problem. In fact, that could be seen as a bit of an advantage in the winter. By no means is it really, really bad. It's not as I ride a Panigale, that's really bad. This isn't really bad, but there's just enough there to notice there's a bit of heat coming from. So that's the first thing. Next thing, and this is, again, common to most KTMs, hideous mirror design. They work well, but these stems covered in this rubber, they look just absolutely horrible. If I was gonna have one of these bikes, first of all, I'd get a tail tidy. Then the other thing is, I'd get these mirrors replaced with something else, because they just look horrible. I think the designer needs firing. So, yeah, but that's just a matter of personal choice. Next thing that was a little bit more serious, the throttle. Found it a little bit snatchy at low speeds. Round about, I'd say, if you're doing, say, 25 miles an hour in town in perhaps third gear, just a bit of jerkiness on there. Depends a bit on the riding mode you're in. I found in street mode, it was eased a little bit, but I think there is a little bit of an issue with the fueling on the bike. Give one a try yourself, see what you think, but it's a little bit jerky at slow speeds, which was a bit of a shame. The quick shifter is brilliant on this bike. It works really well, both up and down. It's amazing, but it took a little while to get used to it, because I had a few forced neutrals when I first started riding the bike. Has to be said, I haven't had one now in the last, what, 10 days or so since I've been riding it. I've been a bit more positive with it, and it's been absolutely fine. But to start with, I did have a couple of forced neutrals, so just something to be aware of. The other thing, oh, I mentioned I did the tour, and I showed you a clip earlier from the tour, which went well, but one of the things I did find was a little bit cramped on the tour. Your legs are at a little bit of an acute angle, as I showed you in the sitting position earlier. And for me, I just found it a little bit cramped on long journeys. Seat, actually, was surprisingly comfortable, as I mentioned. The TFT, again, this is something that happens on lots of bikes with TFTs. It's a bit too ready to click from day to night mode and vice versa, so it changes if you go under trees and stuff, and that's just a little bit distracting. I found the same thing on the Super Duke. I found the same thing on the Duke 390. I found it on other bikes, as well. So it's not specific to this machine, but it does do that a bit, just a little annoyance. And then the only other thing, which, again, relates to the instrumentation, the fuel gauge. I found it slightly unreliable. The fuel gauge would go up and down like a yo-yo. Sometimes it looked like it was full. Sometimes you only had two blocks, and you've just filled the thing up. So, you know, it's got a range indicator that seems a little bit more reliable, but the fuel indicator itself, a little bit dodgy, I think. That was it for the negatives. Let's go to the positives. Okay, so much for the negatives. What about the positives? Well, there's loads of positives about this bike. The first one that completely struck me when I first rode it was it's just very, very easy to ride. There's nothing, this bike doesn't seem to have any vices. It's not threatening, although it's got an amazing spec, and it can be a hooligan bike, it's actually very, very easy to ride. It feels light, it's responsive, it's got a nice, comfy seat. You can get your feet down easily. There's nothing about this bike that's difficult. So first thing, very, very easy to ride, which is great about modern bikes. Next thing I made a note of here, super smooth engine. This is the first twin-cylinder bike of this type, or parallel twin, that KTM have made. And they've done a great job on making that really smooth. Although it's got a really good buh-buh-buh-buh-buh note out of the exhaust, and if you get the throttle correct, you can get some nice banging noises coming out, which sound fantastic. I bet with an off-the-market exhaust, it would sound even better. But despite all that, it still feels very, very smooth. It doesn't feel any different to riding, say, a triple, for example. So well done to KTM and the Boffin engineers there for making a smooth engine. It's really nice, the engine. Oh, the third thing I noted here, which I've already mentioned, actually, it sounds good. Even with the stock exhaust, it makes some great thumping noises. It sounds really good, particularly when you give it some beans. Lovely sounding bike as well. Next thing, very fast. When you wind on the throttle, particularly when you're in the high power modes, the thing absolutely flies. You don't need any more power than this engine gives you. You get bragging rights with a Super Duke R, which you maybe don't get with this. But in the real world, for proper riding, this has bags of spare power. If you wanna overtake, you wanna go on the motorway, absolutely no problem. So it's very fast. Very agile is the other thing as well. Because of its, it feels very lightweight. I don't know how they've done it. Again, they've maybe tilted the engine forward or something to keep the center of gravity low. But the bike feels much more agile than you think a bike of this size would. So that's another thing. Fabulous value, this bike. Considering you get things like the lean angle, sensitive ABS, the traction control, the TFT. I mean, the thing is laden with electronics. It really is a great value package. When you look at the sorts of bikes that you were paying for this sort of money four or five years ago, compare it to now. This one, I think is probably the top of the pack in terms of VFM. I already mentioned the fabulous electronics package. Again, to get all that as standard is a great thing. In the past, KTM have been guilty of giving you things like a quick shifter, but not enabling it unless you pay some more money. This time, they've thrown everything at it and you get it from day one. So fabulous electronics package. Probably class leading, I think, in terms of the electronics that are available on the bike. The quick shifter and the auto blipper. I mentioned earlier that I had a couple of false neutrals, but actually I got used to it and that's a minor issue because it's actually great, great fun to use that. Do you need one on a road bike? Probably not, but they are great fun. And it's just an ease of use thing. Riding along and not having to use the clutch very much is just a lovely thing to do. Oh, and then last but not least, great lights. They're all LED lights on here, but we've got that fantastic front light that KTM do these days. I personally like the insect-y type look of it and it works just fantastically well. Hopefully you saw on the clip when I did a bit of night riding on the bike. Really great lights on there. Also love the fact that they light up the switch gear as well, so a good one there. All right, so just before I do my summary, I know that a lot of people are gonna ask me, how does it compare to the Street Triple? What do I think, what would I get a Street Triple or one of these? Well, frankly, it's a very similar bike to the Street Triple in the way that it feels, the way that it goes, its agility, et cetera. For me, really, I think it just comes down to which one you like the looks of. For me personally, I think the Street Triple looks a bit better, but I have owned a Street Triple for the last six years, so if I was buying one now, I'd probably go for one of these, but the answer, I guess, is to try them both and then buy with your heart. Okay, so how would I summarise my time with the KTM Duke 790 then? Well, in a word, great fun. This is just a fantastic real-world motorcycle. It's just a lot of fun to hoon around on. It's not so powerful you can get yourself into a lot of trouble, but it's powerful enough that you can have a lot of fun. In fact, I'd go as far as saying this is probably one of the best real-world bikes I've ever ridden. If you're not a track day person and you just wanna ride on the roads, it's well worth considering one of these puppies. Really, really nice. Whether the looks do it for you is just a matter of personal taste, but a really fun bike to ride and own. I don't think you'll be disappointed if you went for the KTM Duke 790. All right, I hope that's been of some interest. It's a shame this has gotta go back now to those nice people at KTM. Thank you to KTM UK for lending me the bike. I look forward to riding another of theirs soon. Okay, I hope that's been of some interest. Look forward to speaking to you next time. Until then, this has been the Missington Flyer Cheerio. We're working with our partners, Speedo Angels, throughout July to give you 20% off the entire range of dashboard screen protectors and get yourself one extra free fitting kit when you use the discount code, Missington. Just go to www.speedo-angels.com.