Is This the Best Value Liter Bike on the Market? Honda CB1000 Hornet SP Full Review
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This episode features a detailed review of the Honda CB1000 Hornet SP, highlighting its technical specifications and real-world performance. Annick emphasizes the bike's 1000cc inline-four engine, noting its 155 horsepower and sophisticated Ohlins and Brembo components. A significant portion of the analysis focuses on the electronic ride modes, specifically how adjusting engine braking and traction control can vastly improve the handling experience. While the motorcycle is praised for its nimble chassis and competitive $11,000 base price, the review also critiques the restrictive stock exhaust and the "clunky" nature of the quick shifter at low speeds. Comparisons are drawn to the smaller CB750 Hornet, concluding that while the 1000cc model is a powerful "bare-knuckle brawler," the lighter sibling remains a more practical choice for daily commuting. Additionally, Annick addresses ergonomics for different riders and the bike's behavior during high-speed highway cruising.
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Honda CB1000 Hornet SP
Annick: Hello beautiful Motorheads. It's Annick, and today I'm going to be reviewing the Honda CB1000 SP Hornet. Let's go take a look at it.
The CB1000 Hornet has a base price of $11,000. Add on top of that destination fees and whatever else the dealerships are adding these days We can do a full walk around, and then I want to talk about the aesthetics of this bike.
* INTRO *
Annick: Part of the Hornet line, this is the big sister to the CB750 Hornet, which I have reviewed in the past and you can find here. The bike comes in a matte black metallic and it's a 1000cc, a true 1000cc. Uh, you know, some of the bikes, what they'll do is they'll say, you know, it's the 750, but it's actually a 755, or it's an 800, but it's really a 756. But this is actually a true 1000cc liquid cool in line four. One thing I love about the bike is the four into one pipes, right?
Old school design. However, one of the worst designs of this bike, parts of this bike, which, uh, I know you guys are gonna be like, "Ugh," and it's this. It's this awful exhaust pipe. And, uh, we can thank California and EPA laws for that pipe, that exhaust. but let's just say that a quick fix to that would be to immediately put an aftermarket exhaust on it.
Oh, well, what are you gonna do? we love the wheels, the gold. And on this bike we have sport tires versus on the 750 they do a sport touring tire. These are 17-inch wheels, but we also have a larger rear on this at a 180/55.
I want to note the tire selection from the factory. These come with Bridgestone Battlax, and they are more of a sport compound. This bike boasts at 11,000 RPMs 155 horsepower, and because they are a sport compound, you're going to definitely need to replace the tires more frequently, depending on your riding style of course.
But they also are going to have more grip. Uh, but if you want something that's a little bit longer-lasting, you might wanna look at sport touring tires, uh, as a replacement once these run out. All depends on how you're gonna use the bike. As compared to its little sister, the 750, this bike has more premium parts on it, one of which is the Ohlins rear shock. If we can see if we can get in there and get a little bit of a view of that. Uh, let's see which is the TTX36. I have to say that the suspension on this bike is really nice and effective. I, uh, hit a pothole and although I got bumped out of the seat, it did recover very nicely and the bike did not get upset in any way. It also has the 41 millimeter inverted Showa SSF-BP forks.
And another thing about this bike is the braking, which it has these four-piston Brembo and also the Brembo master cylinder. This is a small detail, but I do kind of love it, which is that the brake fluid case is actually clear. It's a kind of a smoky gray, if you can see. Let's see. I don't know if this will show it up, but you can kind of see the, the level inside there, which I think is really nice, versus traditionally or, you know, on some of the older bikes, you'd have to look through a sight glass on the side. So I, I like this design a lot.
I don't want to spend too much time just looking at the bike. I actually want to go for a test ride and kind of demonstrate how the bike handles and what it feels like because I think most of the time when people are doing bike reviews, they are just running through, you know, what are the, the highlights.
Okay, it's got these forks, this seat, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, right? Which of course is incredibly important and all the things that you want to know. But ultimately, how does the bike feel? So let's go find out.
I want to illustrate something because this is going to be very important for the ride, which is the modes. So Honda has this pretty easy to navigate handlebar, which no matter what can be a little bit confusing at first, but it, you get used to it very quickly. It's not that complicated. we have the high beams and pass here, your ride modes.
This is your toggle to get into these features over here. Horn, signals, on/off, and it has its flashers, which I actually love that feature on motorcycles, especially if you're coming into traffic or whatnot. So right now the bike is in standard. You have sport, and you also have rain mode. And then you also have, what you can do is you can program user one and user two.
Now, this is important because what I found with being in the standard mode was this
And I'm gonna have to take my gloves off for this, I think. All right, so if you go into the settings, you can take a look at the rider modes, want to show you something. So these are the user modes, and if I go back here
I ended up changing the user modes because in standard, which is the preset mode here, Traction control, engine braking, and power. All right. So I changed this because in the standard mode it's all equal, right? Which is very similar to riding modes in rain.
And what I have found is that when the engine braking is up at the second, it's too much, like way too much, and so is the traction control. So in the preset modes, this is the, the standard mode, which has you at not full power, high engine braking, and high traction control. In sport, you can see that it immediately drops down. Full power, less engine braking, less traction control. And then in rain, it has less power, higher engine braking, and much more in the full traction control.
Okay. Now why is this important? Well, we're gonna keep it in, uh, in sport mode because this is what I found to be the best settings for my riding personally
You can also change in here the quick shifter
I have it on soft and soft because I just like the light touch of being able to just shift it up and down or you can have it in medium or hard, obviously, which is what it's showing. Or you can have it off. You don't even have to use a quick shifter. If you want to ride completely old school, you can do that.
The shift point i'm not gonna mess with, but you can, if you, you found it, you wanted to bring it down a little bit, you could. It definitely just in general, just to show this, is that this 4,000 point is where at, at the RPMs, that that's where the quick shifter starts to work. Below 4,000 RPMs, the quick shifter, it's, it's clunky.
It doesn't really, you hear like a clunk. It, it's awful to be honest. All right, so we have it in standard, but I'm gonna put it into sport and let's get going.
So typically when I do reviews and I get these bikes, I for the, you know, first couple of days will just leave the the bike in just standard mode. And for the most part, that is fine on most motorcycles. However, on this bike, I did not like the standard mode and I was struggling on the first day of riding this because what I was finding was that the engine braking was too much, which was a little bit weird for me on an inline four.
The liquid cooled inline four is a pretty smooth engine and doesn't typically have that much engine braking, but
What Honda has done is allowed you to have more engine braking. And I don't quite know why they do that in the standard mode, but it doesn't work with my type of riding. So what was happening was that when I had it in standard mode, which I'm going to switch it down to and illustrate this
Okay, so I'm in standard mode. Let's see if it switches over
Okay. So I'm very light on the throttle. As soon as I'm off, you see how much it's decelerating? Up. Wah. All right. I'm going relatively slow so it's not as exa- exaggerated, but when you're at highway speeds or you're riding more aggressively, when you roll off, it really, the engine really goes bleh very quickly, and it is unsettling for me, especially going into turns because you're set up for the turn thinking that you're just gonna have, 'cause it's an inline four, a light rolling off or a light engine braking, and all of a sudden it's hard engine braking and you're not set up for the corner correctly.
So like I said, typically, you know, standard in any of these bikes would be fine for most riders, but I think that this bike really illustrates what the ride modes are for and how they're worth taking a look at. I put the bike into, back into sport mode because it is the, the setting that I like most. I played around in user one and two just to see what, uh, you know, what I might like the settings in, but I really found that I was automatically putting the settings back into sport mode. So we're just gonna ride today in sport mode in this glorious weather.
So as we're going up this hill, I'm gonna quick shift. You didn't even feel that, right? Quick shift again. Felt that a little bit more because I let off the gas, but
The quick shift is getting more and more refined every year that Honda puts out a motorcycle, and I have found that the quick shift on this CB1000 is excellent. My biggest problem is I have to remember to use it because as an old school rider, I don't typically use, uh, the clutch to upshift. So the upshifting, you know, isn't as much of a deal.
But I have to say that the quick shift actually is smoother than my personal shifting. So kudos to modern technology. And then as I just went into this turn and I over-braked and I went down a shift using the quick shift, The bike didn't even get upset in any way. Brembo brakes are stellar. I have to say that the, the brakes on this are just really, really fantastic.
And this upgraded suspension with the Ohlins rear shock is fantastic. Now, I have it all stock because I only have the bike for a limited amount of time, so it's not like I'm gonna, y- you know, take the time to ... Okay, as long as he's going in the opposite direction. Oh
be a bridge here, but somebody took it out, or a truck took it out
Okay, so I did a shift, a quick shift that was under 4,000 RPMs, and you could feel it be like a little herky-jerky. So I'm gonna do the same thing. I'm gonna downshift. You see that? It doesn't really like to be underpowered. So around four, it's not great. As we saw on the earlier screen, it's saying that it wants to use a quick shift at a much higher RPM.
And I have found that the sweet spot of it wanting to, or shift starting to shift well is at 5.5, which is 5,500
And then again, I just, I forgot to use the quick shift, so this is, it's a funny thing. This bike does not come with the E-Clutch. I suspect that in the future it may. Honda is moving towards that with a lot of their motorcycles, and a lot of people are poo-pooing that if you're an older rider or let's just say a more experienced rider.
But I have to say that the E-Clutch technology is really impressive, and I'd say, you know, don't knock it until you try it.
Also, I always have to say this, is that you don't have to use it if you don't want to. You can keep it in manual mode if you want.
having come off the 750, I put out a question onto social media asking people what questions they would like me to answer.
Some of the questions that came up was comparing this bike to the 750, and I did a previous review on the 750, and riding them nearly back to back has been great because I can really see the differences in the two bikes. ... I was surprised with this 1000 that it's physically not that much bigger than the 750. They've kept pretty much the same chassis design frame. Now, they were able to stuff this inline four into what holds a parallel twin. It's slightly wider, but barely, barely.
Like, I'm, I'm actually incredibly impressed that they were able to keep such a narrow profile on this bike. I fit very well on this bike. I love the narrow tank and seat so that I can feel like I'm on and over the bike, but also that I can use my legs to, my lower body to also manipulate the motorcycle and have control over it.
The reach from my shoulders to the, to handlebars is fantastic. I haven't altered that at all. One thing that I would have to do is that I would get aftermarket levers, which is not surprising because I have small women's hands, and the reach is not great. I, I have a couple of tricks here in how I've been able to bring the levers closer, but ultimately it would do better with some, like, dogleg-shaped levers that are fully adjustable.
And there's a lot of aftermarket parts that are available for this bike. Someone asked would I prefer to commute on this bike or on the 750, and I would say if I was using this as a daily commuter, I would prefer the 750. The 750 is a little bit lighter, about 26 pounds lighter. This is at 465, and then the 750 Hornet is 26 pounds lighter at, I think it was 430.
You do the math.
Also, the parallel twin is a little bit more forgiving than this inline four, so I have found that at lower speeds
In first gear, this bike is a little herky-jerky, and it does have low-end power and good torque, but it's a bigger bike and it wants to go. This bike is made perfectly for these types of roads that I'm on, which are these secondary double yellow lines- lined roads where you can just carve through turns, have fun, enjoy yourself, and not really worry that much about traffic. Unfortunately, on any of these roads, we're always gonna have to contend with people walking, deer, uh, bicyclists who take up the whole lane and don't stay to the edge and mostly animals.
But for the most part, this bike really comes alive on these back roads and just wants to go. The other thing about this 1000 liquid-cooled engine is that
It's a bit of a hooligan bike. It's really nice to have the extra power. It's really nice to have the power of a liter bike and know that if you wanted to go pass a car or you had to get out of a sticky situation, you could just get on the power and get out of that very quickly.
Also get you into a lot of trouble should you choose to ride it aggressively in not the most optimal circumstances. But to each their own. Enjoy yourself. I believe you're an adult, and you can make good decisions.
Back on what I said about how the bike, when I initially got it and was riding it in the wrong mode, I didn't really care for the bike that much. And this is why it is so important that if you have the opportunity to test ride a bike, please take advantage of it. There's demo days at various events and rallies, and then some of the dealers will have these days where
manufacturers will show up with the factory truck and you can go out and test ride. Unfortunately, you know, the test rides as we know are pretty short, so you can't always feel what the bike is like, but it's better than not knowing at all. Uh, having a little bit of seat time is better than nothing.
All right, let's fill her up. So this tank is a 4.5 gallon tank.
The 750 is a four-gallon tank. $12 for two and a half gallons of gas. Nice I haven't figured out how many miles per gallon yet that this bike gets. I've been having too much fun just ripping around on it.
We're gonna go into an area that has slightly more traffic.
This bike though is incredibly nimble, which I absolutely love. You know, I think at this point you guys all know that I love a naked bike and for so many reasons. Number one is this more upright seating position. It's just easy, and I don't want to work as hard as I used to to ride bikes, especially bikes that, you know, don't quite fit me.
So it's nice to be able to be really upright and to just have a better view of the street, people around it, because as we know, drivers are just becoming more and more distracted every single day.
Another thing I want to address is actually, oh, and I filled it up and I got 189, about 190 miles for 4.5 gallons. So We'll have to figure out the math on that one, uh, when I can focus on it more. Just make a note of that, 190 for 4.5 gallons.
One thing that's surprising about this liter bike is how quiet it is I can barely hear the engine, and I was out riding with a friend, and they could also barely hear me. Now, this is a stock exhaust, and we've already gone over that that exhaust is quite awful. And it's not for Honda trying, as we know that California has very strict EPA laws and Why in general manufacturers haven't come up with sexier designs for these restrictions, I don't know.
But also, as we all know, almost every motorcyclist is going to put an aftermarket exhaust on it. So it's probably not an area to really spend that many manufacturing dollars focused on. I would definitely immediately get a different exhaust for it, but I do love the four into one. Uh, that has always been one of my favorite classic motorcycle designs.
I always just have thought that that looks great. The rear of this bike, the license plate holder, typically one of the first things I also do on any motorcycle that I purchase is do a, uh, rear fender eliminator kit, and with the bikes that are coming out, I'm finding that it's kind of less and less of an issue.
The designs for the rear fenders are getting better from the factory, and I support that. I like that.
The person who asked me whether I would choose this bike or the 750 for commuting, I would say the 750. And the 750 with just that little bit of lightness, more lightness, you know, the 26 pounds, it actually does make a difference when you're perhaps lane splitting or going down, tight parking lots.
This is still incredibly nimble, so, you know, it is what it is. But I would say that the 750 would be better for commuting. It's going to be a little bit more fuel efficient, so you're going to get more mileage out of the tank, even though it does have the smaller tank. And It comes from the factory with sport touring tires versus these Battle Axes which are more of a sport-oriented tire.
So the sport touring tire is going to have a little bit of a harder compound. You'll get more miles out of it. And this bike right now has almost 3000 miles on it and the rear tire is almost cooked. It's really ready to be changed. And on the 750 it was at about I think when I handed the 750 back it had higher miles and the tires still looked quite good on it.
Tire wear also depends on the actual rider and your riding style, what road you're on, what type of riding you're doing. But for the most part no matter what, you're gonna get less miles on a sport tire than a sport-touring tire. And a sport-touring tire is also going to be better in the rain if you're doing commuting in an area that has, you know, is a little bit more wet.
Honda calls this the bare-knuckle brawler. I actually love that description, and in this matte black finish with the gold accents, I do think that it's a good-looking bike. People are very torn about the aesthetics of this bike. Some people find it ugly, and some people love it, which is really truly the case for any motorcycle out there.
I do appreciate the modern dynamic lines that the design of this bike has. I think that you could do a lot of fun aftermarket parts on this bike, which would really make it unique and personalize it to your own aesthetics. For the most part, though, out of the box with a base price of $10,999, that feels like a steal in this market of liter bikes.
If you go into any of the other manufacturers, and, uh, not talking Japanese, but if we head into European bikes, American bikes The price of motorcycles is really becoming astronomical, and being able to get this much bike for basically a base price of $11,000 is bonkers. It really is bonkers. And I do want to note that that is a base price.
There are some factory add-ons that you can get from the dealership, but I have also seen that some dealers really add a lot of fees on top. There's, you know, the destination charge, which you can't really do much about, but then there will be varied fees. So shop around if you're looking for one of these motorcycles.
We all know that the, uh, the dealers are taking a hit and supporting your local dealer if you feel like you've got a good connection with them, and maybe you pay the extra $100 or $200 just to have a personal experience with them, I think is worth it.
You always want to make sure that you're getting the best price that you can, so shop around. it's easier these days to figure out pricing on the internet. But I also do offer my Bike Bestie consultation. So if you are looking at motorcycles and you want me to help you figure out what your next motorcycle should be, I do a 45-minute video conference call to go over options and select bikes specifically to your personal riding style, your experience, your size, and we also get into gear, which is of course my other favorite topic to talk about besides motorcycles.
As for that commuting question that came up, another great thing about a l- um, a naked bike is that without the fairings, the bikes feel less hot. Like, the heat from the engine is able to dissipate more quickly versus when you have a full-faired bike and you're commuting on that and you're sitting in traffic, it can get really hot.
But the reverse to this is wind protection.
A question that always comes up with naked bikes is how do they feel on highways, throughways, whatever you want to call them or they're called in your area. So we are going to test it out and see what it feels like on the throughway
A question that came up was somebody wanted me to test, know what the RPMs were at 70, 75 miles per hour. So I'm gonna get into this lane
Throw it down to seventy-five
At 75, we, in sixth gear, we are at 5,000 RPMs. Bike feels fine as far as some vibration. There's some in the, in the right handle, but a lot of that has to do more with my gloves and my hand positioning on this bike. as I've mentioned, I have small hands, so the reach is a little bit long for me if I'm trying to cover the brake, and that causes numbness.
Now, some people will say that the numbness issues have to do with the motorcycle, and it might actually have to do sometimes with the rider. But there's various things you can do to try to mitigate that, which is play around with different bar ends and just from a rider perspective, try out different gloves, uh, which is always, I feel like Goldilocks when it comes to gloves, 'cause it's always so hard to figure out, like, what-
gloves are actually gonna fit because there aren't many places to actually try on gloves. Okay, I'm gonna go down to 70 miles per hour. Try to hold it steady at 70. Let's see where the RPMs are at
One more.. Come on. There we go. Ah, below 5,000. It's kind of like within the range. So the bike is very comfortable cruising at this speed, and I could go like this all day. Now, the wind buffering.
Here's my thing about bikes in general. If this is what you're used to, like I don't have another bike that I own, you just get used to the fact that it's windy and you're probably having a harder time hearing what I'm saying. If there was a windscreen, obviously this would be a lot more comfortable.
There is going to be wind fatigue more than anything. It's really the wind noise in the helmet that's annoying. And of course, today I forgot my earplugs, so I left home without them. Usually I keep them- well, actually, they might be in my jacket. I just forgot to put them in.
Honda does offer a tiny aftermarket windscreen that basically comes up and just covers the instrument like about here, but that would bring, I believe, some of the air up and over. But knowing the aftermarket, if you wanted, you could definitely find a bigger mini fairing that would deflect some of this wind. Which as you can see, you know, the bike , has no problem cruising at this speed.
I want to do this for six hours on a long trip? Probably not. The actual physical riding position, excellent. I could, I could do this all day long. I did two like five-hour days on this bike with somewhat frequent stops 'cause I was on back roads, and I felt pretty good. There wasn't really numbness.
The only thing I'm battling with this bike is, uh, numbness in my right hand, and again, that, that has to do more with my riding position. I'm covering the brake because there's a little bit more traffic, and I don't trust other drivers, but if I'm on a road and I relax my hand position where I'm just doing a light cover on the throttle, then the numbness and the vibration issues go away.
So sometimes when we make these comments on, you know, whether or not the motorcycle
has vibration issues in the handlebars, there's a few things to look at, which is the motorcycle, the rider, and the circumstance.
I don't know about where you're from, but I will say that the, uh, these speed limits with the speed cameras are getting worse and worse. They're just everywhere, and frankly, it's annoying I understand the safety concerns, but it's a little excessive in a lot of areas.
Just another reason to try to stick to back roads when we possibly can.
if you have liked what you've seen in this video, please like and subscribe. It helps the channel in all the ways. And also, in the comments, let me know, did I answer all your questions? Is there anything else that you would want to know about the bike?
I would be more than happy to respond. And as always, ride smart. Ciao.
* OUTRO *