What we have here is a nice, competent 500cc twin street bike. For me at roughly 182cm the size was pretty good; it felt small and light but not tiny. The seat is not high; for somebody shorter but with reasonable lower body strength it would probably also be cosy.
The engine note is lovely and burbling; it starts easily from cold. Acceleration from the lights is good, and it has a broader torque band (~2500-9000rpm) than comparable smaller bikes. The relatively large displacement for a learner bike and a heavy flywheel(?) should make it patient with on riders who are still getting the hang of the clutch.
Cornering and braking are pretty nice for what is not really a performance bike. You can scoot around inner city corners with confidence in the slightly narrow tyres (110/70-17R front, 130/70-17R rear) and handling. It's not quite “on rails”, but it is wearing good grippy sneakers.
Steering is of course very direct and tight compared to a sports bike, and the relatively low gearing means that putt-putting around carparks or the inner city or parking on sloping footpath is a piece of cake. It feels rather less than its dry 179kg.
The obvious weak point is the brakes. The single disc front and drum rear both produce nowhere near the force they ought to — and brakes are one thing that's not really optional. A very tight squeeze on the front produces rather asthmatic deceleration, and the rear brake seems to have less effect than engine braking.
I suppose the nicest thing I can say about the brakes is that they might be comfortable for a novice who's afraid of sliding the front wheel under heavy braking. However hard I squeezed, it didn't seem to get anywhere near the friction limit of the modest front tyre. The price of unthreatening braking might well be sliding right into a crash that you could have avoided on a small sports bike.
So the ER-5 is roughly AUD $8900 brand spanking new, friendly to ride, and very practical around town. Under the current laws in the ACT and most of Australia, it's learner-legal because of the conservative power-to-weight ratio. Not only is the ratio legal, but I think the absolute values are sane: it's not so heavy as to get away from you, and it's unlikely to lead the new rider into too much temptation.
I would almost like to say it'd be a good learner bike, but the brakes worry me. I hate the idea of a learner drifting into a collision with the calipers squeezed shut. Perhaps I'm being unfair here — I haven't sampled the competition recently. But from memory even something like a Balius feels far safer. Before buying an ER-5 I'd definitely make sure to pay attention to the brakes. Aside from that, go ahead and enjoy.
Source: http://sourcefrog.net
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