Honda NT1100 Review | Motorcycle Tests

Honda NT1100 Review

Honda NT1100 review by Wayne Vickers, Images by RBMotoLens

Honda has a shiny new tourer in its arsenal with the arrival of the new NT1100. Based on the successful Africa Twin platform, but with rims sized for ripping up the tarmac instead of the trails, it also has some height lopped from its stance for better road manners and is all wrapped in smart touring clothes. It should be quite the thing and I was pretty keen to throw a leg over the new NT.

Now part of my regular test routine for bike reviews involves a commute to the city office. At a bit over 110 kilometres, each way, so it’s a decent trek.

While the first open road and highway section sails by, the last 20 km into Melbourne takes over a third of the elapsed journey time, crawling, multi-lane highway followed by the inevitable CBD traffic light shuffle.

While not exactly the most exciting riding in the world, it does highlight any deficiencies when it comes to fuelling via minor throttle inputs, as you need to match traffic speed and filter through whatever gaps you can find.

I mention that because for the NT1100, that city traffic is where we kicked off. I picked the bike up around lunchtime and made my way back to the office, then legged it home for the evening commute.

Unfortunately it wasn’t a great way to start our relationship. The NT is definitely not in its element in slow traffic. Truth be told – I said several unpleasant words inside my helmet. The problem is not the size of the bike, the handling, the engine or brakes.

My frustration is primarily the throttle and fuelling. At constant or part throttle, particularly at low revs, it hunts badly. Lurching from slight acceleration to old school big-twin deceleration. Crawling along in traffic at 20-25 km/h – it’s not nice. It completely dominates the riding experience in stop-start city traffic. Unfortunately it’s only exacerbated further in the standard D (Drive) that you will likely start out in with its ridiculously low shift points.

It has you in sixth gear before you get to 60 km/h, which barely sees that tacho get above 2000 rpm. At those revs it gets a bit chuggy, noisy and rattly down low.

Sports mode is where it’s at, with three variations of better shift points available. S1 being the least aggressive, S3 the most aggressive – all much better out on the open road than D.

The downside is that all of the modes still get a bit confused in traffic occasionally, and you’ll find yourself resorting to using the paddles now and then.

You do also get the option to adjust power maps, engine braking and TC settings, but for that you have to engage with what is one of the most unintuitive switch-gear and dash design set-ups out there.

Switch-gear example? The heated grip activation required pressing buttons on both left and right hand clusters, neither of which gave any indication that they were for heated grips, you just have to keep pressing buttons ‘til you stumble across it… And what do you reckon that star button is for? Guesses in the comments perhaps…

Dash wise – the little circular displays for the power, engine braking and TC on the dash. If the thick blue line is one-third the way around the circle is that full power or one-third? What about engine braking? Turns out it’s the opposite of what you expect.  ‘Full’ power and engine braking is actually when the display shows one-third… and it drops as the display moves around to full… And unless you’re actively using the integrated Apple CarPlay/Android Auto, the lower LCD dash is a bit pointless given that it just repeats the same info from the main screen.

I don’t use that stuff normally so it was completely wasted, maybe I’m the odd one out and everyone else does these days?

I do get a bit OCD about dashes and switch-gear. In reality it’s not a show stopper and you’ll get to know where everything is (I did after a couple of thousand kays), but I do think some manufacturers tend to overlook the part of the bike that you look at when you’re actually using it…

Back to modes. While there is an ‘Urban’ and indeed a ‘Rain’ mode that are a bit less snatchy, they also each run progressively lower power maps. Soooo… no thanks, what’s the point of having a lovely engine if you aren’t going to use it.

So I found myself settling for one of the customisable ‘User’ settings with full power and minimum engine braking and TC. That was the best way to minimise the snatchy fuelling without hobbling output.

Those things aside however, once you get out of town with time to appreciate the bike’s strengths out on the open road, there’s actually a fair bit to like about the NT1100.

The engine is smooth and strong once past 2000 rpm, making solid power. Smooth is the key word here. Once past say, three and a bit thousand revs, it’s just lovely. Silky smooth power and it purrs along at just under four thousand at highway speeds.

At just on 100 horsepower it’s no rocket ship, not when it’s pushing 250 odd kilograms along (10 kg less with the regular gearbox). This is a bike to enjoy at more of a sedate pace (which makes the part throttle fuelling issue even more bewildering).

The DCT shifts quickly and smoothly, though the first to second shift can be a little noisy. It also delivers a rewarding pop from the exhaust when down-shifting from higher revs.

Sport mode on the open road is quite enjoyable – auto down-shifting under braking in particular is nicely dialled in. Quite a nice exhaust note for a stocker too, it sings along quite happily at highway speeds.

I thought the weather protection was excellent too, I found myself in some fairly serious rain more than once and that big adjustable screen, winglets for both your hands and feet, along with that generous front fairing did a nice job of keeping as much moisture off me as possible. I did find it a little distracting seeing a reflection of the front indicators in the winglets though.

Speaking of the front screen, I need to call out that they’ve managed to design one that you can actually clean the back of quite easily, which seems a bit rare these days. So they get some design points back there.

Pillion accommodation and luggage also sees some more design wins, with lovely quality luggage platforms and panniers, quick to take off and put back on. There are generous grab handles for your significant other or whoever is sitting in the silly seat too.

Plus it has a smattering of the usual features that we expect for these types of bikes – including cruise control, heated grips, those great panniers, a centre-stand that’s fairly easy to lift on and off, and two charge points for your do-dads.

The rider’s seating position is quite comfortable – as you’d imagine it should be. Though I felt that the seat itself was probably firmer than it needed to be. For a bike that’s arguably meant to do big kays, I was wanting to get off and stretch a bit after only an hour and a half.

Which is a bit odd, as it’ll manage a comfortable 400 kilometres from a tank. I was averaging 4.9 L per 100 km on my combined commute cycle. So you could easily log up big kays in a day without any fuss.

Suspension is okay. Not amazing, not bad. A little underdone in terms of damping plushness, but it does have an effective remote pre-load adjuster for the rear, which does make a noticeable difference. I backed it off a little from standard, which removed a little harshness. So make sure you have a play with that if you nab a test ride.

Handling wise, it’s certainly set-up more at ‘stable’ than agile. Honda market it as a Sports-Tourer, but I didn’t find it so. Certainly not compared to others on the market that I’ve ridden recently or the long departed VFR1200F. I found it much more at home as a ‘Relaxed Tourer’.

While it’s perfectly pleasant and predictable at steady touring speeds, I found the front end getting vague mid-corner, with a tendency to run wide if I tried to hustle it along. I suspect a set of sportier rubber with a more pointed profile may have a positive impact on that front.

So, where does that leave us. Well, in its current state it seems like it’s not as good as it could be, almost as though it’s not quite finished. Which surprises me from the Big H as they’re normally solid. I’ve owned more Honda’s in my life than any other brand. Actually… I’ve owned more Hondas than all other brands combined now that I think about it.

There’s a good bike in there that needs letting out – arguably all the mechanical work is good, it’s just the electronic stuff that is tripping it up… That fuelling would be the first thing on my list to get sorted.

It’s not bad on the open road, but people ride them through towns too. With that sorted via a Power Commander or similar, a slip-on thrown on to liberate a little more twin cylinder aural delight, some decent rubber on it – and it would likely be transformed.

I like the NT1100 because:

• Nice roomy tourer with plenty of weather protection.
• The new 1100 cc donk makes deceptively good smooth power and purrs along on the open road.
• I still like the DCT in sport and manual mode.

I’d like the NT1100 more if…

• That snatchy fuelling at low revs and part throttle needs sorting.
• The whole switch-gear and dash set-up needs rethinking.
• DCT ‘Drive’ mode shift points need work, still.

2022 Honda NT1100 Specifications