Voge DS625X (2025) – Review

A long, long time ago, in a galaxy not too far away, six grand could get you quite a lot of brand-new bike. Back in 1996 it’d get buy a box-fresh Suzuki Bandit 1200. In 2025, however, it barely gets you a posh 125 (Fantic Caballero Rally), an electric commuter (VMoto Stash) or a 300cc scooter (Honda ADV). But there is a way you can make that kind of budget stretch a whole lot further…

Voge is the premium sub-brand of Loncin, a Chinese motorcycling monolith that’s been going since the 1980s, builds more than 2.5 million bikes a year and even produces the motors for BMW’s F900 range. Now they’re using their Voge badge to break into the European adventure market, with a lineup that spans the single-cylinder Rally 300 to the fully loaded DS900X. In between these two comes their newest bike, the DS625X – a parallel-twin middleweight adventurer with an impressive spec list and an on-the-road price of just £6199. Is it worth it? We spent a day with one to find out.

Pros & Cons

2025 Voge DS625X - Price & PCP Deals

The most crucial and compelling figure on the Voge’s spec sheet is its price: a brand-new DS625X costs just £6199. You might find it advertised for a more psychologically pleasing £5999, but that figure artfully omits Voge’s compulsory £200 ‘on-the-road costs’ – so unless you don’t want to tax, register or actually ride the bike, you’ll be paying £6199.

The DS625X is available in two colours: Desert Yellow (sandy-beige plastics and black wheels); and Black Knight (black bodywork and gold rims), with both versions costing the same. If you want a three-piece set of aluminium luggage it adds just £699, taking the price to £6898.

If you’re considering finance, a DS625X is available on both PCP and HP schemes. A typical PCP plan starts with a £1399 deposit, followed by 36 monthly payments of £79.48. The optional final payment to keep the bike at the end is £2971. That works out to an APR of 8.9%.

A five-year HP finance plan begins with a £999 deposit, with the remaining balance split into 60 monthly payments of £106.83. That adds up to a total of £7408.80, with APR the same 8.9%.

2025 Voge DS625X - Engine & Performance

The ‘625’ part of the Voge’s name perhaps over-eggs its capacity pudding slightly. The engine is a 581cc parallel twin, that displacement reached via a 76mm bore and a 64mm stroke. There’s a 270° crankshaft, giving the same firing intervals as a 90° V-twin, along with a pleasingly substantial exhaust note and minimal secondary vibration. The engine’s top end is all familiar modern stuff too: double overhead cams, four-valve heads, with finger followers in between. The engine itself doesn’t appear to be shared with or derived from any other bike – it’s substantially different from both Voge’s DS525X (a 494cc twin with a 180° crank) and their DS900X (the 895cc twin they build for BMW).

Peak performance figures are a claimed 63bhp (47kW) at 9000rpm, with 42lb·ft (57Nm) of torque at 6500rpm. Unusually, to unlock peak power you have to rev the motor well beyond its redline, marked on the dash at slightly over 8000rpm. In fact, it’ll keep pulling all the way to around 10,000rpm. Overall, it feels like a motor that benefits from a confident right hand – it’s not thrashy or peaky per se, but you can sense there’s a lot more oomph and enthusiasm in the top half of the revs than the bottom half. Plodge about leisurely between 2000 and 5000rpm and you definitely won’t be experiencing the DS625X at its best.

There are two engine modes: E (Eco, which it defaults to every time it’s switched on) and S (Sport). The differences between the two are subtle – given the engine runs old-school throttle cables rather than cutting-edge ride by wire, the modes can only really make tweaks to ignition and/or fuel injection timing.

The result is a tiny difference in throttle response, with Eco being slightly slower and smoother than the more abrupt, urgent Sport. Generally it’s a pretty pleasant, well-mannered response – there’s no hurky-jurky snatchiness through the twistgrip, though it doesn’t quite match the velvety refinement of the best ride-by-wire setups.

What is a delight, however, is the incredibly light clutch lever action. The clutch itself uses a slipper/gripper design, and as a result the lever is so effortless to pull in that you almost find yourself wondering whether the other end of the clutch cable is attached to anything. The six-speed gearbox changes easily and accurately, with no missed shifts over our day’s riding.

The DS625X has traction control, though it feels pretty basic – the tech is limited by not having a ride-by-wire throttle or an IMU. When you’re riding ‘enthusiastically’, big lean angles cause the traction control to trigger long before there’s any risk of a slide. The intervention is blunt too – power is cut sharply, and it takes a long time to be reinstated. Thankfully if you’re feeling frisky you can switch the whole thing off, even on the move, by holding one dedicated TCS button down for four seconds.

One final thing worth nothing about the DS625X engine is the ‘E5’ sticker on the fuel filler cap. Most modern bikes have both an E5 and E10 logo, confirming that the bike can be run on either regular or super-unleaded. In the Voge’s case, the absence of an E10 mark implies that it needs to be run on low-ethanol fuel. For some riders that won’t mean any change from their current habits; for others it’ll mean retraining themselves to reach for the expensive pump every time they fill up.

2025 Voge DS625X - Handling & Suspension (inc. Weight)

The DS625X has a solid list of chassis ingredients for a middleweight, road-focused adventurer. Wheels are 19in front and 17in rear, with a tubular steel perimeter frame in between. There are recognisable brand names scattered around it all: KYB suspension, Nissin brakes and Metzeler Tourance tyres.

Looking closer reveals some pleasing details. Wheels are cross-spoke, allowing for tubeless tyres. Suspension is fully adjustable, with the complete suite of preload, rebound and compression adjusters at both ends. And the rear subframe is removable, rather than part of the main frame, making it easier/cheaper to repair in the event of a heavy tumble. Plenty of far more expensive adventure bikes don’t come with these considerations.

Steering is steady – the DS625X doesn’t snap into turns instantly, but rolls in leisurely. There’s plenty of ground clearance from the footpegs, and the Voge feels well-balanced mid-corner. Ride quality can occasionally feel harsh over sharper lumps and bumps, but the suspension certainly doesn’t pogo around or plunge through masses of uncontrolled travel. For the cost, the class and the competition, it’s all pretty good.

Brakes, however, do feel a step behind. They’re not awful, but there isn’t a lot in the way of bite or power from the pair of two-piston sliding calipers at the front end. It’s possible that a different set of pads might improve things, but that’s beyond the remit of our one-day quick spin. A Bosch ABS system is fitted too, and it can be disabled for off-road riding.

Voge claim the kerb weight for the DS625X, with a full fuel tank, is 206kg. That’s about where you’d hope it to be: halfway between a Honda CB500X (196kg) and a Suzuki V-Strom 650 (213kg). How accurate that figure is, and whether it takes into account the standard-fit engine bars, centre stand, fog lights and the rest, remains to be seen – we haven’t had the chance to weigh the bike ourselves. Subjectively, the DS625X gives the impression of being a stout, stocky and sturdy middleweight – it doesn’t feel quite as light-footed as Yamaha’s Ténéré 700 or Triumph’s Tiger Sport 660.

2025 Voge DS625X - Comfort & Economy

Continuing the above theme of size and substance, the Voge DS625X is physically a big bike for the class. Come to it imagining it’s ‘just a 600’ and you’ll likely be surprised. Seat height is quoted at 835mm – this average-height 5ft 9in rider could only just about flat-foot it – and you’re definitely sat ‘in’ rather than ‘on’ it.

Once on the move, however, it feels like the seat would benefit from being positioned even higher. It seems oddly low relative to the handlebars and footpegs, with knees squeezed tighter than they need to be, and a fair reach to the bars. Hovering an inch or two above the saddle makes the riding triangle feel more natural and comfortable. There isn’t an optional taller seat, but riders of average height and above would definitely benefit from one.

Wind protection from the two-position adjustable windscreen is good, with no turbulence or buffeting. The engine is well-balanced and mostly vibe-free at cruising speed too, in part thanks to the 270° crank, and in part thanks to some hefty-looking weights added to the underside of the footpegs. Speaking of which, one other comfort quirk worth noting is that if you ride with your toes on the pegs, the heelplates can end up splaying your heels out, so you ride slightly pigeon-toed. No such problem if you ride flat-footed, with heels on the pegs.

Voge don’t seem to list a claimed fuel economy figure for the DS625X, and our brief test ride didn’t give us a chance to measure it for ourself. But at the end of our day with it the dash showed a claimed average economy figure of 4.4 litres/100km, which works out to 64mpg. If accurate, that would mean the 17.6-litre fuel tank should last over 200 miles before needing refuelling, with a theoretical brimmed-to-empty range of 248 miles.

2025 Voge DS625X - Equipment

For a bike with such a keen price tag, the Voge DS625X’s list of equipment is impressively comprehensive. As standard it comes with all the hardware you see in these pictures: handguards, a centre stand, engine crash bars, a metal skid plate and LED spotlights.

The dash is a huge 7-inch colour TFT, though oddly most of the numbers shown on it (including the large speedo) have been designed to look like old-fashioned LCD segmented digits. The cockpit also contains a pair of power outlets: a 12-volt socket to the left of the dash, and a USB charging port under a rubber flap on the right.

Other tech treats that aren’t obvious at first glance include backlit switchgear, tyre pressure monitors, and scrolling LED indicators that some other companies would charge extra for. But perhaps the DS625X’s most unique gadget is a 1080p dashcam built into the bike’s nose. While you’re riding it quietly records one-minute clips to an SD card installed under the seat, then over-writes once the card is full. Don’t mistake this for an action camera to capture your rides in spectacular style – there’s no way to adjust or control the camera from the handlebars, it just does its thing in the background, ready if or when you might need the footage to back up your side of the story.

With a showroom spec so deep, does that leave anything available as accessories? For now, not much. As mentioned above, riders can add a three-piece set of aluminium luggage when they order a bike for an extra £699. Beside that, Voge’s UK importers say that heated grips and a heated seat will both be available, but price and availability are TBC. There’s no option for cruise control and/or a quickshifter.

2025 Voge DS625X - Rivals

The DS625X joins a rapidly expanding range of middleweight Chinese-built adventure bikes with hugely enticing price tags. Kove’s 510X offers a similar price and chassis parts, though as an A2-compliant bike it’s quite a bit down on the Voge’s power and performance. Moto Morini’s X-Cape, which uses an engine derived/copied from Kawasaki’s ER-6 platform, is perhaps a closer all-round match, though it lacks the Voge’s traction control and tubeless rims. Finally, you can’t overlook the Voge’s closest Japanese rival: Suzuki’s V-Strom 650. The venerable V-twin is more polished and refined, but has a lower standard spec and a much higher price tag – and as it doesn’t meet Euro5+, it might not be around for too much longer either…

Kove 510X (2025) | Price: £5999

Read more

Power/Torque

47bhp / 33lb-ft

Weight

205kg

Moto Morini X-Cape 650 (2025) | Price: £5999 (spoked wheels)

Read more

Power/Torque

59bhp / 40lb-ft

Weight

213kg

Suzuki V-Strom 650 (2025) | Price: £8399

Read more

Power/Torque

70bhp / 46lb-ft

Weight

213kg

2025 Voge DS625X - Verdict

A 95-mile meander along Midlands backroads can’t possibly hope to answer all the questions riders will have about the Voge DS625X. We can’t predict its long-term durability or reliability. Nothing went wrong or caused concern during our ride, the bike looks nicely put together with Torx fasteners where you’d find them on a BMW, and it comes with a two-year unlimited-mileage warranty. We don’t know how the ownership experience will be when it comes to spares and servicing, other than the fact there are currently 60 Voge dealers across the UK, the bikes are imported by the well-established MotoGB, and valve clearances don’t need checking until 26,000 miles. And we can’t accurately forecast depreciation or resale value, other than noting the Guaranteed Future Value on a PCP scheme is around 50% of its initial price, putting the DS625X in the same ballpark as Honda’s NX500 and Suzuki’s V-Strom 650. Spending your cash with a new brand is always going to feel more of a step into the unknown than a familiar, well-established firm, but in Voge’s case the signs look pretty positive. If BMW trusts Loncin to build their engines, it doesn’t seem a ridiculous idea that we might too.

What we can say is how the DS625X feels to ride – and the short version is it’s pretty good: solid, smooth and superbly spec’d. But there is room for improvement in a few areas. The riding position could be better if the seat was taller. The motor could do with a bit more bottom-end. Brakes could bite harder. Traction control could be less intrusive. It’d be nice to have the choice of filling up with regular unleaded.

All in all, the list is mostly niggles and tweaks – there’s nothing fundamentally amiss with the Voge DS625X. It’s a versatile, capable, impressively equipped all-rounder with a decent turn of speed, costing little more than a BMW G310GS, and less than a Honda CRF300 Rally. If that doesn’t set alarm bells ringing in biking boardrooms across the planet, motorcycling’s middleweight landscape is going to look very different in a few years’ time.

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2025 Voge DS625X - Second Opinion

Second opinion: John Milbank

John's quick mini-review on the budget adventure Voge DS625X

Great to ride, looks well built too, is this the time to buy a £6k Chinese bike? BikeSocial’s boss isn’t quite convinced…yet

2025 Voge DS625X - Third Opinion

Steve Rose, BikeSocial Publisher

While the other two testers gave the Voge a workout on twisty A and B-roads, I got the humdrum motorway slogging, mostly because I live 147 miles from the BikeSocial office. My commute takes in most of the M11, half a lap of the M25, all of the M23, ten miles of twisties, and a bit of the A1 and A14 too.

It’s a route that tests comfort, tank range, mirrors and most importantly, a bike’s ability to filter at high and low speeds through mile after mile… after mile of queuing traffic.

Filtering tests a bike’s agility, low-speed stability, throttle response, clutch feel and lightness, gear changing and ability to see over traffic.

This year’s record time door-to-door is held, surprisingly by Honda’s NX500 for its ability to process the most horrendous traffic in the calmest, most efficient manner while maintaining a higher-than-expected average speed.

The Voge DS625X is a similar sized machine with an engine that looks like it might have been ‘inspired’ by the Honda’s motor.

Unlike Martin and John, most of my journey was in the lower two-thirds of the rev range and the top two gears. It’s the first of the latest generation of middleweight Chinese bikes I’ve ridden and I really enjoyed the experience.

The low down and mid-range performance is on a par with Honda’s NX500 plus a decent chunk of additional power when you rev it hard. To me the throttle response felt crisp and direct making it easy to adjust your speed fractionally as busy traffic speeds up and slows down (as it always does for some reason) between 60-80mph. I didn’t experience the jerkiness at low speeds that John did.

There’s enough midrange on the motorway not to need to swap gears unless you need to get away from one of ‘those drivers’ that trigger your spidey-senses. In such cases, drop it down to fourth, gas it through the gap and be fascinated how the DS625X keeps making power well beyond the redline.

There was a lot of slop in the throttle cables on our 600-mile test bike, which could be adjusted out, but didn’t have time to try it. It might be new cables stretching, but in 30 years road testing I’ve ridden a lot of new bikes and don’t remember cables stretching on Japanese bikes. Just saying…

While I’m ‘just saying’ things, the DS625X has to be run on E5 fuel. If you do 6000 miles a year it’ll cost you roughly £100 more (or £2 a week) in fuel (at current prices) assuming you get the same 66mpg that I got. Some riders claim running E5 gets more mpg than E10, but I've never experiencd it conclusively.

Should you worry if E5 isn’t available? Will I damage something in the bike’s emissions systems if I have to use E10? The simple answer is probably not if you have to run it on E10 for a few miles. The engine might run a bit rougher than usual, but most times you'll be topping-up rather than filling from empty so you'll actually have E7.5etc. Fill up with E5 as soon as you get the chance nd everything should be fine.

The DS625X is a slightly bigger bike with more presence than Honda’s NX. It feels similar to Kawasaki’s Versys 650 and filters in the same way. The bar-ends and mirrors feel vulnerable as you filter through the sea of SUVs and vans. The riding position is ok for the top half of your body but more cramped on the legs and knees than I was expecting. The seat is really comfy, but my knees were aching after 90 minutes.

Suspension damping is easy to adjust, but you’ll struggle to change the rear preload

On standard suspension settings the ride is very harsh over motorway bumps, feeling as if the rear suspension is bottoming-out. Martin mentioned it in his review, and I was keen to try some adjustment to see if it could be improved. I’m no expert in extracting the last 1000th of a second from a lap time but I do have a simple method to set a bike up. Pushing down on the forks with the front brake on I want to see suspension that compresses easily, but with some control and then rebounds back quickly but not like a pogo stick. If the rear behaves the same and the rate of dive and rebounding are similar, that’s probably close enough for a road bike.

Setting rear preload to suit the rider’s weight is probably the most important part of suspension set-up, but although it is adjustable on the DS625X there’s no way to access the adjusters without removing the shock (and you can’t set the preload without the shock fitted to the bike). To remove the shock means dismantling the back end of the bike. Maybe that’s why the subframe is removeable…

That’s not just annoying but also a symptom of whoever designed the bike not really understanding how a motorcycle works. Sorry China, it’s another thing you have to learn.

Anyhow, I tweaked and twiddled with the damping that I could adjust, removing a little compression damping at the rear and adding some rebound too and it made a noticeable difference to the Voge’s behaviour over bumps.

Some people might argue that many of the DS625X’s riders might be relatively new to riding and won’t come from a background of adjusting suspension. I’d argue that understanding the dynamics of a bike are a vital part of becoming a smarter rider and if you can make your bike more comfortable to ride, why wouldn’t you take the time to learn the basics?

At the end of my time with the Voge I’d come to like it a lot. You get a lot for your money and the £700 saved over a Honda NX500 would buy a full set of Voge luggage for the bike.

I keep seeing references in reviews to how the DS625X is ‘Like a BMW GS for a third of the price.’ That’s clearly piffle and a testament to the tenacity and invention of Voge’s UK PR team. Even if you discount the missing 70bhp, shaft drive, electronic suspension adjustment, lean-sensitive ABS, 45 years evolution of the riding position, Telelever suspension, keyless ignition and ability to demolish miles more effectively than anything else… Even if you dismiss all of that, the GS you’d buy for three times the Voge’s price would be packed full of half a dozen additional features too.

And it will be worth 70 per cent of its cost price after three years. And there will be an established dealer, with fully trained technicians close to my house who can look after it. Right now, no one knows how much a three-year-old Chinese bike is worth. I did a speculative quote on ‘We Buy Any Bike’ and got no reply.

Voge has a network of 60 UK dealers, which sounds a lot, but the nearest one to me, living on the South coast is in London.

All of which is important because this is the moment when Chinese bikes are going mainstream. Some of the machines (including this one) perform well enough to compete. The build quality of the Voge DS625X is excellent, but longevity is still an unknown. Our test bike had a non-working TPMS tyre sensor at 600 miles. Service intervals at 3750 miles are less half that of Honda’s NX500 meaning your Voge will be halfway to its seventh service by the time your Honda has had three.

And the big unknown is depreciation. The build quality and performance are close enough to Japanese standards to take away some of the worry. But Voge is just one of seemingly dozens of new Chinese brands building their brand right now and resale values are still unknown. If buying on PCP you have some potection because there is an agreed final value.

I really enjoyed riding this bike and it’s the first Chinese machine I’ve ridden that I could genuinely see myself owning. But right now, I’m still not sure if it’s a better buy than an ex-demo NX500 for the same price. £6199 might not be a lot of money for a 581cc motorbike, it is still a lot of money and there's plenty of choice of new and nearly new bikes out there for the same cost.

2025 Voge DS625X - Technical Specification

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