Yamaha Tracer 700 (2020) - Long term review

Yamaha Tracer 700 long term test part 1 - First impressions

Yamaha Tracer 700 long term test part 2 - Enjoying the unenjoyable and definitely not setting the lap record on the Isle of Wight

Yamaha Tracer 700 long term test part 3 - When summer stops, the smiles keep on coming. Wet roads, dark roads, busy roads, all failing to prevent the Tracer 700 being one of BikeSocial’s bikes of the year.

Yamaha Tracer 700 long term test part 4 - Eight months with Yamaha’s 2020 Tracer 700 shows that functional and useful bikes can also be fun (but you knew that already).

Top box and centrestand are optional extras adding £543 to the otr price.

7.48pm. The last two and a half hours have seen me and the Tracer 700 filtering through rush hour traffic on the M25, taking an impromptu short cut through the small towns and surprisingly enjoyable A-roads of middle England before a few more motorway miles to wind up here. A small petrol station just outside Lutterworth in Leicestershire. Filling the Yamaha after 161 miles takes 12.2 litres. That’s around 60mpg and we’ve been averaging 64mph including all that rush hour traffic. Impressed? You should be. If you’re geeky enough to use average speed as your metric instead of headline numbers glanced for a second or two, you’ll understand how impressive that is. I can’t think of many other bikes that can do it without the rider having to even think about riding economically.

The next fifteen miles to my overnight stop at Market Harborough are the kind of roads that the Midlands do best. Sweeping, fast-as-you-feel-like, good visibility and, at this time of night, deserted too. Where I live, near the south coast these roads are permanently clogged with queues of 4x4s stuck behind cyclists so I make sure I enjoy every last degree of throttle action and lean angle.

This year’s engine makes the same power and torque as before but now also passes Euro 5 regulations and still does 60mpg with ease

If you already ride a bike with more than 75bhp it’s easy to overlook Yamaha’s wonderful twin-cylinder middleweight motor in that weird macho way that motorcyclists think. The point so many of us miss (usually before we reminisce nostalgically about our old RD350LC or RGV250) is that what makes a great bike is the whole package, not the power figure. This trip was a not-so-subtle reminder to me. Not once did I need more power or speed, or handling, or brakes. I arrived at the hotel feeling fresh with no aches, pains or regrets about not bringing my trusty Fazer 1000 or the Triumph Daytona 765 BikeSocial also has on test.

Bikes that are all-rounders seldom catch our attention when new. We get distracted by the shiny things and crazy numbers of this year’s ‘wizz-bang-million’. So far I’ve done almost 1000 miles on the Tracer and it’s lived up to the seriously high expectations I had after the bike’s press launch in February.

Back then, the dry roads of Tenerife allowed us to explore the top-end performance, easy steering and suspension that coped as well with bumpy back roads as it did with high-speed sweepers. What we didn’t know was what the real-world, long distance comfort would be like, how many mpgs it would do just getting from here to there and what kind of state our backsides would be in after a long motorway slog.

The riding position is comfy, sporty and brilliantly balanced for urban filtering all at the same time. The standard screen adds noise, but not much protection in either position

So far, the answers to the above are all very favourable. Riding away from Yamaha HQ after two weeks testing a YZF-R1 made the first 30 miles interesting. It’s only when you get back on a roadster that you realise how stiff the chassis of a sports bike is and how firm the suspension settings are. The Tracer felt like a softly-sprung, underdamped cruiser in comparison.

By the time I got home I was hooked. The top half of the riding position is almost perfect. You lean a little into the handlebars, just taking the worst of the weight off your back, but with plenty of room to move around. The footpegs are higher than I remembered, but not so much as to be cramped. Steering is easy and natural, brakes are powerful and the suspension is more than firm enough once you stop comparing it to a Superstock race bike.

There are no switchable riding modes or traction control, no Bluetooth connectivity or other distractions either. So the switchgear is simple, the LCD dash is easy to navigate and there’s a rather charming simple-to-use handle that lets you adjust the wind noise on the move by moving the screen. Apart from the noise level it doesn’t appear to make any other difference, but Yamaha offer a taller screen as an option and I suspect with that fitted you’d appreciate the ability to move it.

My bike has a top box and centrestand fitted as extras, making it much more suited to the needs of a high-mileage, working rider.

Suspension has preload and rebound adjustment front and rear, but works very well on standard settings

Reviewing an accomplished all-rounder is difficult. If I say that the power is ‘just enough’, that the handling is ‘easy, confident and stable’ and that comfort is ‘good enough that you don’t really notice it’ then the Tracer 700 doesn’t sound like the kind of bike most riders will be dreaming of. Turning up to the bike meet on a Tracer 700 won’t get you noticed and, be prepared for some patronising comments along the lines of ‘I hear they’re a great first big bike’ etc.

Ignore that, such people are fools. Forgive me, I’ve said this before, but if riders bought trousers in the same way we bought motorcycles we’d be wearing ridiculous ten-legged garments, with enormously high waistbands and spinnaker-flares that actually made us slower walkers than we should be while talking borrox about how ‘I just like having the extra eight legs – and flaption control - to get me out of trouble’.

My suggestion would be that a bike like the Tracer 700 is exactly what most riders should buy when they’ve been through the ‘biggest, fastest, need the power to get me out of trouble’  phase and realise that instead of buying a plus-sized adventure bike they can’t push around a car park or another half worn-out secondhand hyperbike, that the lovely experience of owning a brand new example of something that is so versatile and enjoyable in any situation that you’ll find yourself choosing the bike for twice as many journeys, is far more rewarding than any imaginary status issues at the bike meet.

I know I’m lucky. As a road tester I get to experience the full range of what biking has to offer. But given the choice of which bike I wanted to run as a long-term test bike this year - the bike I want to ride most often – the Tracer 700 was an absolute no-brainer. And so far, I’ve seen nothing to change my mind.   

2020 Yamaha Tracer 700 long term test part 2 - Enjoying the unenjoyable and definitely not setting the lap record on the Isle of Wight

The difference between the joys of a routine journey on a motorcycle and the equally-joyous-but-very-different sensations when adventuring on an unknown road are the landmarks. On a regular trip it’s the recognition of familiar moments that paint a mental picture of where you are, what’s ahead and how long is left. On an adventure, with no landmarks, the whole trip is (or should be) memorable for its surprises.

I can’t imagine many people out there have the pleasure of a regular commute as long and potentially dull as mine. I’m not looking for sympathy – I chose to live at the end of a 157-mile run involving four motorways and the misery that is the A14. And the reality is that less than a month after moving house I was already finding ways to enjoy it. Only motorcycles do this.

Neither adventure bike or sports tourer – the Tracer is closest to being an updated, lighter and more agile version of Yamaha’s own TDM850/900

Yamaha’s 2020 Tracer 700 does it better than most. Many people would say the M25 is the absolute worst example of any regular commute, but it isn’t - especially when you’re on a bike. When you ride it regularly you understand the nuances and adapt your riding accordingly. It’s a challenge and I love it - really. Today, I’m doing something I haven’t done for a while. A lap of the M25 just for the hell of it. I’m not sure anyone else does this. It’s my 15th year of M25 fascination which started when the magazine I was working on organised a feature where we rode around it for 24 hours. That was when I realised how a road that is genuinely hell for anything with four wheels can be so enjoyable on two.  

For example the section going north from Dartford to the M11 is dominated by the mixture of trucks that piled out of Dover two hours earlier and the white vans of Essex painting, plumbing and landscaping the living rooms, bathroom and gardens of south east England. At this point the Tracer’s easy low-speed fueling, light clutch and flexible motor combine with stability and confidence as we wiggle through the seemingly too-small gaps where lorries filling three lanes and white vans stationary in the outside lane form a not-quite-rolling road block to all-but those of us on narrow, nimble motorcycles.

Optional top box, back rest and rack adds £362 to base price, centrestand is £204

Whizz round another 30 miles west and the traffic changes to worn-out workers driving home at the end of a 14-hour shift. 20 year-old cars, with comatosed drivers lane-swapping without looking or thinking about anything other than a Watford bedsit. Faster than the last stretch, but still a long way from fast, the challenge on this section is lane-swapping agility, all-round vision and hair-trigger changes of direction. Speed is irrelevant, it’s usability that counts.

Past Heathrow and the traffic snarls up again, but this time its cars and vans, not trucks. There’s plenty of room for filtering but so much traffic and so many cameras that you feel like you’re wired up to the mains. Full alert, eyes scanning, fingers twitching on the controls while right foot does fine-control of speed with subtlety on the back brake. I love this section even though it’s mostly 40mph. Filtering for such long stretches is taxing and tiring, but it also puts your mind and consciousness in a place it rarely goes. In the zone – sensing the traffic and where the gaps will appear. This is the closest I will get to the focus of my MotoGP heroes, doing a fifth of their speed with (at least) twice the risk.

In a world of humungous adventure bikes with built-in wardrobes, the Tracer’s agility is welcome relief

Again, it’s the light weight, easy power delivery and slim dimensions that make the Tracer so good. Comfort is surprisingly good for a bike with touring ambitions but (mostly) lacking the serious equipment. The seat stays supportive for an easy couple of hours. Feet and arms fall naturally on pegs and bars and the biggest advantage of the not-really-good-enough-for-touring screen is that there’s enough windblast on your upper body that you have lean into it which relieves the stress on the small of your back.

There are tingles through the bars at motorway speeds and they half-numb your fingers on a long trip at a constant 70mph. But on most UK motorways you don’t sit at one speed and it’s only been an issue for me once so far.

The last section of M25 through Surrey and Kent is the random incident generator. You never quite know what will be causing the delays only that there will be one. And, if for some reason nothing is happening, the authorities flash that ‘report of incident’ message on the signals to slow down the traffic anyway. There’s never an ‘incident’ and we all know that by now, but you still have to slow down because even the boy who cried wolf got teeth marks in his backside eventually.

Love the details on the wheels and the swing-arm and the engine is a very pretty design

The official distance round the M25 is 117 miles. On the Tracer’s trip it shows 124 meaning it is reading optimistically by around 7 per cent on average. Eight litres of fuel works out at 66mpg. One hour 50 minutes is a little under 70mph average, which is good, considering the amount of traffic and variable speed limits.

And that’s the point for me. I could go on about how well the Tracer goes round corners (very well, since you ask) or how it got down one of my favourite twisty roads in an astonishing manner last week. Or how much fun it still was in the last hour of a 15 hour day riding to, around and home again from the proposed Isle of Wight road race circuit a few weeks back. Or how it got through the Island traffic quick enough in rush hour that a ‘definitely going to miss this ferry’ internal conversation became a ‘what shall I do with the spare five minutes?’ one instead.

Half the cylinders, power output and price of a BMW S1000XR, but very possibly a better bike for most of us. Discuss.

I absolutely love this bike. Love the optional top box and centrestand too because they make living with it as easy as a motorcycle should be. A couple of mates have recently bought BMW S1000XRs and they are both head-over-heels in love with them. Parked next to one the other day I was thinking how the Tracer is in many ways half an XR (half the cylinders, half the power and half the price too), but every bit as good for a rider like me in almost every respect. The few fractions of a second it loses here and there on acceleration or corner speed are more than made up for in time saved off the bike, working out which of the many modes you should be riding in, setting-up your Bluetooth or answering criticism on forums about vibration. In a world where we get a little too hung up on numbers, the Tracer 700 is a lovely example of how the substance is so much more important than the hype.

2020 Yamaha Tracer 700 long term test update part three

When summer stops, the smiles keep on coming. Wet roads, dark roads, busy roads, all failing to prevent the Tracer 700 being one of BikeSocial’s bikes of the year. 

Yamaha put a lot of effort into making their 2020 Tracer 700 a thoroughly modern motorcycle for the kind of money that makes sense to most of us

5.55pm, Friday night, end-of-November. There’s a filthy Yamaha Tracer 700 making pinging noises in the garage as it cools down and 140 miles worth (or two and a half hours if you prefer) of Sussex mud bakes itself slowly onto the cooling metal parts beneath the waterline. Its rider is shattered; physically and mentally drained from attacking 70 miles of unlit, twisty roads to get home. Processing and disposing-of seemingly endless traffic in driving rain in the dark. Oh, and you can add one more sensation to that list; this rider is buzzing like he hasn’t done in months. No point going to bed early tonight, no matter how tired I feel 

You could send your kids to Hurstpierpoint College for a single term or buy yourself a Tracer 700, still save £500 and explain to them that the local comprehensive is a ‘more rounded’ experience

Five months in with the Tracer 700 and less than 2000 miles on the clock. I feel like I should apologise – it’s hardly a long-term test. And it’s even more frustrating because the reason I chose the Tracer as a long-term test bike this year was because, having moved house last year I wanted a bike that was small, slim, nimble, comfortable and economical enough to manage the 160 miles between my house and the BikeSocial office. Try as I might to calm down, there’s usually at least a dozen moments on each of those trips when some ‘other’ Steve makes an appearance, shoulders drop, eyes narrow and being on the right bike can really make a difference.

Except this year I haven’t been doing any commuting since March. By that point I’d already racked-up 5000 miles, mostly on Honda’s ‘It shouldn’t be this good at this kind of thing’ too-tall Africa Twin. The AT made a superb winter commuter, but it was the Tracer I’d wanted since seeing it in the press pics back in 2019.

Am I the only one who thinks it looks like an updated TDM850?

For those of us with enough rings round our middle the Tracer brought back memories of winter 1990, seeing the first images of Yamaha’s TDM850. That bike – a 75bhp parallel twin in a sporty-but-comfy chassis – looked like the perfect all-rounder; cheeky, chunky, comfy, fast-but-agile-and-easy too. Sadly, the original TDM was a bit sluggish, a bit bouncy and they got the Flintstones to build the gearbox.

The 2020 Tracer 700 is all the things we wanted the TDM to be in 1991. And I love it. All the room of an adventure bike with none of the tippy-toes tallness. Just about enough punch from the engine to make every overtake as easy as you’d hoped, an easy 60+mpg, with brakes, steering and suspension to cope with commuting, touring and what Father Ted would have described as ‘that kind of thing’ -the foolishness I’ve just indulged in.

Biggest surprise of the ride home was the headlights. This is the first time I’ve ridden the Tracer at night on unlit roads. Last time I used Yamaha’s projector units, on an MT-10, they were awful. Very bright up to around ten feet ahead of the bike but with almost no spread and nothing beyond that. Main beam just illuminated the same ten feet ahead even more brightly. Far from ideal on a motorcycle that can out-accelerate a supercar.

The headlights are superb on dip and main beam 

Not so on the Tracer. The lights are superb. On the twisty, unlit stretch of the A272 between Petworth and Billinghurst, I’m only doing a few mph less in the dark than I would be in daylight. And, what’s more I feel confident doing it. Helped by the flexible engine, easy steering and road-biased suspension, the Tracer makes such light work of this stretch I’m beginning to wonder if the speedo is over-reading. But Sat-nav confirms it’s the usual ten per cent or so optimistic.

It’s a brilliant all-rounder without that also meaning that it isn’t actually good at anything. Quite the opposite actually. So far, my only criticisms of it are the vibes through the handlebars on long motorway journeys and that the standard screen should be more effective on its highest setting. Other than hard I find it hard to fault.

Yamaha’s 2020 Tracer 700 isn’t meant to be an adventure bike, but it handles unclassified cart tracks surprisingly well

Earlier today on the way out I took the ‘isn’t this a farm track?’ back road route for no other reason than I felt like spending an hour or so in the company of no other traffic and to simply enjoy my own low speed company on the muddy, gravelly cart tracks of Southern England. I’d done the same route in summer on the Tracer’s dirty sister, the Ténéré 700 and really enjoyed it. This was tougher; more mud and wet leaves, bigger puddles and less sunshine coming through the trees to warm my cockles.

Apart from one slapstick-comedy puddle where the Yamaha sank to almost its axles, the ride was surprisingly easy and mostly relaxed. Thankfully, even when it did topple over at less than walking speed I found it easy enough to throw myself underneath it and limit the damage to a cracked mirror glass.

The optional centre stand has come into its own since the monsoons came, allowing me to clean it more easily and lube the chain regularly. Part of my original high mileage plan had been to test chain-oilers, big-distance tyres and comfort seats. That might have to wait till next year and perhaps on a different bike. Or maybe I should keep this one for another 12 months? 

For a (relatively) budget bike the finish is superb

Before they launched the Tenere 700, Yamaha sort-of marketed the old Tracer as an adventure-flavoured motorcycle. In truth, this is as off-road as it gets

Yamaha Tracer 700 long term test part 4 - Eight months with Yamaha’s 2020 Tracer 700 shows that functional and useful bikes can also be fun (but you knew that already).

Imagine if you will that you’ve been driving a car to work or, worse, relying on public transport for years. Imagine that a global pandemic disrupted all of that and that someone suggested there was a vehicle that could get you from here to there in comfort, safety and speed for less than £8k. This vehicle does twice the mpg of your car in traffic, carries all the kit you need, can nip through traffic with ease and then, at the weekend can take you and your partner into the countryside, without being stuck in a queue of caravans to enjoy the fresh air, freedom and joys of being together. Thankfully, you passed your bike test back in 1998 even if you did give up riding in 2001 when, after three years trying you still hadn’t got your knee down. Even more thankfully, biking has changed in the last 20 years and become a lot more welcoming.  

Imagine if such a life-changing vehicle was really that simple to find, would you be interested? 

Heart or head, how do you choose a bike? There’s value in both and I guess it depends on what kind of rider you are. Those who simply ride for a blast can justify having a crazy, focused ‘bought-with-the-heart’ bike for Sundays and sunny evenings. Those who tour Europe or are planning that big adventure don’t need a bike that’ll nip to Tesco at lunchtime. And those who do biking because it’s the easiest way to get one person from here to there as quickly and effectively as possible are much more bothered about urban agility, reliability and economy than how many levels of anti-wheelie control it has.

Honda’s NC750 has ruled the world of functional motorcycling for almost ten years now. Those riders who make a list of all the things a bike must do and choose the machine that ticks the most boxes find it very easy to buy an NC750. The only boxes it fails to tick are the sporty one and the shaft-driven one (why are the Japanese manufacturers so reluctant to develop a lightweight, modern shaft-drive?), but even then I’ve had at least half a dozen very thrilling rides on an NC750 and it’s easy to forget that a lot of the people who buy one were tearing up the landscape on sports bikes a few years back.   

The headlights are great, top box enormous, standard Michelin tyres are superb and suspension is brilliant. Screen is ok, but needs to be a little taller

As someone now old enough to have owned (or still own) most of the loopy sporty bikes that I ever wanted and with no sense of nostalgia, I now make a long list of things a bike must do before committing to a new one. First off, it should be practical. Lockdown-aside, I ride virtually every day. Motorcycles are always my first choice to go anywhere that doesn’t involve a dog. Practical means comfy, with a punchy engine that cruises easily and does at least 55mpg. Practical means shaft-drive or a centrestand so I can lube the chain. Practical means at least half a fairing with a decent screen, power sockets for heated clothing and somewhere to mount a sat-nav.

Next, it has to be small. I prefer bikes that are easy to push around, narrow enough to filter through traffic as clumsily as I do at 6.38am (or pm for that matter), lightweight, nippy with good visibility to plot a path through the traffic.

And, obviously they have to be quick, sporty and equally as brilliant at carving up a B-road as they are getting through town. So suspension quality is important, but adjustability less so. Pillions are irrelevant to me, but a top box is essential as are effective factory-fit heated grips, which, if I were designing a motorbike would have higher priority in the spec sheet than almost anything else on the handlebars.

Oh, and it has to be cheap – and popular - because I’ll do loads of miles, won’t look after it and expect to get a good price when I come to sell it.

That’s quite some list and a long way from the one I would have made 20 years ago. Until last year, Honda’s NC750 and CB500X, Yamaha’s existing Tracer 700 and BMW’s F800GT were the only real contenders and the Hondas were the ones cleaning up in the sales chart.

Yamaha’s 2020 Tracer 700 has turned that upside down. The biggest difference between the 2019 and 2020 models are the styling, emissions and some subtle-but-effective suspension improvements. On the press launch in Tenerife last year I was impressed enough to cross every other bike off my list for what I wanted to ride every day in 2020.

Pillion accommodation is good, Top box makes it even better.

I wasn’t disappointed. Lockdown-one meant I didn’t get my hands on a Tracer till late-June. I managed 1300 miles among other road testing duties before Lockdown-two. Another 300 miles inbetween Lockdowns two-and-three and took it back to Yamaha last week with less than 2000 miles on the clock. That’s around a fifth the mileage I’d usually do on a long term test bike, but we had a lot of miles to put on other test bikes in a short space of time last year (I tested 21 bikes inbetween lockdowns).  During that time it ticked every single box on the list and then some, proving itself every bit as enjoyable on a daft afternoon in the South Downs as it was carving through rush-hour traffic in Croydon.

The punchy twin-cylinder motor does low-speed bumbling and red-eyed, redlined mania equally well and at no point did I need any more mph, gears or any kind of electronic riding aids other than the simple ABS supplied. The suspension copes well with urban decay and unexpected countryside challenges. Front forks compress and rebound on and off the brakes in a way that adds confidence to cornering and, on the couple of occasions when I did take a passenger there was no discernible drama at either end of the saddle. Unlike the MT-07 and MT09, the passenger footpeg:seat height ratio is similar on the Tracer to that of the rider. Once you’ve adjusted the suspension preload to suit (it needs quite a hike) the handling is unaffected and pillions find the riding position comfortable.

The optional centrestand and top-box made it useful. I would have fitted heated grips but in the end didn’t do enough winter miles to need them.

Additional catalytic convertor might not be pretty, but it helps the Tracer pass Euro 5 and still be great to ride

The new LED headlights are superb, giving both power and a good spread of light. Fuel consumption is usually in the high-50s or low-60s mpg and apart from some occasional tingly fingers on the motorway, it’s as comfy as most proper touring bikes. The two-position screen makes less wind noise when you raise it but doesn’t affect the windblast, the brakes are superb, and the front suspension is now good enough to allow you to use all their power with confidence.

If all the above sounds like writing a review like a shopping list, the I apologise. Like I said up top, this is a bike that ticks boxes and it ticks them very effectively.

Sadly, the one thing I didn’t get chance to do on the test bike was to have that long, trip where an emotional connection was formed. I got a glimpse of the Tracer’s talents on a late-night thrash up to Leicester in the summer. And a long day getting to and from the Isle of Wight and trying out the proposed circuit for their road race ambitions was brilliant. But both were so good because of the Tracer’s efficient all-round ability and user-friendliness. Getting back from Southampton to Sussex in style and safety won’t make the Rosie memoirs, but it was very, very welcome at the time.

Ripping up the roads of Tenerife on the press launch was close to that emotional connection, but that was only a day and press launches are more about survival than bonding with the bike

Handguards look small, but are reasonably effective. Handlebar brace makes a perfect sat-nav mount.

Is all that such a bad thing? Do we have to form a bond with our bikes or can they just be flipping good at being functional? Like I said earlier, there’s no right answer, but what strikes me as I get older is that the bikes I buy with my heart do the fewest miles and cause the biggest worries (mostly about how few miles they do), where the ones I buy with my head are the ones I find myself recommending to others.

Does any of that matter? Maybe. In the meantime, might I recommend that anyone who needs to be anywhere a long way from where they are now, in comfort, with simplicity, economy and a smile on their face for not that much money, could do a lot worse than bother their Yamaha dealer for a test ride on the Tracer 700.

At the heart of it all is Yamaha’s brilliant CP2 twin-cylinder motor.

2020 Yamaha Tracer 700 spec

Looking for motorcycle insurance? Get a quote for this motorbike with Bennetts bike insurance

What is MCIA Secured?

MCIA Secured gives bike buyers the chance to see just how much work a manufacturer has put into making their new investment as resistant to theft as possible.

As we all know, the more security you use, the less chance there is of your bike being stolen. In fact, based on research by Bennetts, using a disc lock makes your machine three times less likely to be stolen, while heavy duty kit can make it less likely to be stolen than a car. For reviews of the best security products, click here.

MCIA Secured gives motorcycles a rating out of five stars, based on the following being fitted to a new bike as standard:

• A steering lock that meets the UNECE 62 standard

• An ignition immobiliser system

• A vehicle marking system

• An alarm system

• A vehicle tracking system with subscription

The higher the star rating, the better the security, so always ask your dealer what rating your bike has, and compare it to other machines on your shortlist.