Z900 SE (MY2025-SE)

What the SE's rear end does for me shows up exactly where the softer setup starts giving ground. There's reserve left at the limit, so the back stays settled when I'm leaning on it instead of sinking through its stroke, and that reserve is what buys me a later brake release and an earlier crack of throttle on the way out. The front asks for almost nothing in return. I set the lean angle, commit to the arc, and the chassis holds it there without a second input from me. No push wide, no wandering, no correcting. The one hard stop is ground clearance. Ride it at real pace and something will eventually touch down. That's the shape of a naked bike built like this one, so it isn't a surprise, but the limit is real and it turns up before the chassis has run out of ideas.

The hardware here is set up for riders who actually use it. I can carry the brakes well past the turn-in point and the front stays planted while I do it, with the calipers biting hard enough to shorten a straight properly. Braided lines and a radial master cylinder are why the lever answers the same on the tenth stop as on the first, which is what makes trail braking repeatable instead of a gamble. What's missing is the final layer of definition at the lever. Fine on the road, obvious against pricier machinery on track.

Ridden hard on ground I know well, the SE has the uncommon quality of arriving everywhere slightly ahead of me. Braking, the middle of the corner and the drive out stop being three separate jobs and turn into one continuous movement, and I ended up steering the bike rather than operating it. I put that down to the whole machine being conceived as a naked from the first line on the page instead of assembled out of parts that used to be something else. You feel that coherence in how little of it needs managing. My reservation is the flip side of the same coin. Nothing stands out, in either direction, and after a long day at pace I still couldn't tell you what this bike wants to be remembered for. The exhaust doesn't help its case either, staying polite where the engine underneath is anything but.

The character I keep coming back to is the swell. Nothing arrives in a step anywhere. Drive builds from low in the range and keeps stacking, with enough flywheel weight behind it that the whole thing feels settled rather than snatched at. It isn't a motor that begs to be wrung out at the top, and I never found myself asking it to. What it gives instead is authority, a deep and unhurried pull with no coarseness I could find at any point on the dial. The other thing this delivery buys you is precision. It's smooth and dosable enough to work as a control input, not just a way of making speed, so a gentle roll of the throttle at corner exit tightens or opens my line by exactly the amount I asked for. That's a rarer skill in a four than an extra thousand rpm.

The geometry from the saddle is judged rather than borrowed. A slight forward lean, a natural reach to the bars, sporty enough to feel intentional without demanding more of your body than you bargained for. It doesn't sit as hard as the most committed nakeds you can buy, and for a machine that has to work in Monday traffic as well as on Sunday's best road, I think that's the correct call. Nothing about it costs you anything in the corners either, since there's enough freedom to move around and put real weight through the outside peg when the pace picks up. The rider aids deserve credit in the same breath, because badly judged electronics ruin a ride the way a bad seat never quite manages. Traction control, ABS and the ride modes are all calibrated with restraint, Sport included. The bar is the exception, too narrow for the class, and it's the one part I'd change first.

Living with it turns up two irritations, and neither one concerns how it goes down a road. The dash puts too much on screen at once, so pulling a single number off it while moving takes more concentration than a display has any right to ask for. Then the green rims, which look genuinely striking for about one ride before brake dust claims them. Keep a rag in the garage if the look matters to you. Set against that, the shifter is the component I stopped registering altogether, which is exactly its job.