Hero Xtreme 250R – Is this Better deal than the 250 Duke? What is new on Hero Xtreme 250R

Hero Xtreme 250R: Historically Hero has very much been a mass Market brand but in more recent times we’ve seen them steadily Venture further and further into the premium space with bikes like the Maverick and the Charisma today we’re riding a bike that sits at the top of the extreme lineup the company’s sportiest Naked Bike the most powerful hero on sale today this is the Hero Xtreme 250R.

Now at the heart of this bike is a new liquid cooled engine, well I say new but essentially this is a stroked out version of the 210cc motor we’ve already seen in the Charisma.

So now displacement is up to 249 CC you get 30 horsepower and 25 new Metros. And all these numbers combined with some other aspects of the motorcycle make it pretty easy to see that this has been benchmarked against the KTM 250 Duke.

In other words it wants to be the sportiest 250cc bike out there the engine pulls quite cleanly and strongly all the way across the range. it’s fairly tractable at the bottom and then you’ve got a nice even spread of talk all across and there performance to be found in revving this bike pretty much all the way up to the red line.

Batter performance of Hero Xtreme 250R

The extreme feels quick and performance is definitely not an issue but that’s not to say that this engine is perfect.

This is the most powerful Road engine that Hero has ever built so it’s venturing into new territory. And you see that in the refinement department where the company hasn’t quite got it nailed yet. Across all the bikes present at the media ride some were quite smooth others were a little Buzzy and some were fairly Gruff and vibe.

The extreme we Road for most of the day was Vibe free at the handlebars but there were quite a few vibrations felt through the seat tank and foot pegs. And some of the Bodywork near the front of the bike was Buzzy when revved.

Premium feel bike

So of course this bike is part of the extreme family and the smaller members in that family the extreme 125 and the extreme 160 those feel more like sporty commuter motorcycles. The Extreme 2 though feels more like an out and out sport bike.

And that’s most evident in the suspension setup the smaller extremes do manage a degree of plushness in the way they ride here especially at low speeds it can feel a little jarring and unforgiving there’s definitely a hard Edge to it.

And it feels firmly damped this gets a little better as speeds rise or with a heavier Rider on board. But by and large every day this is not going to be the most comfortable bike to live with.

And there are rivals in this space that manage to feel equally sporty, while still offering you Superior ride Comfort the flip side of this firm setup is that it beautifully complement the trellis frame to create a fun handling package.

Good safety features

The Hero Xtreme 250R feels Nimble and agile through the twisties quite happily and predictably responding to Rider inputs it’s also got grippy mrf zapper FX1 tires to back it up though the front isn’t a radial and this sweet chassis package combined with a fairly quick motor make the extreme a reasonably fun bike to ride out on the open.

Road hero says it’s aiming this bike at people who value grabbing attention just as much as the riding experience so they have made an effort to make this bike look striking and there are certainly elements across the bike that do grab your attention.

But I’m not quite sure it all comes together cohesively as a design it’s definitely got some muscle to it which is nice but some areas feel a little overdone. And busy when you dive in for a closer look you can see certain areas where the extreme feels built to a cost near the headstock.

You’ll find some quite unsightly welds which is UN fortunate, because it’s right on your eye line when you look at the instruments certain sections of the frame on our bike. Also had rough surface finish and untidy WS but vital touch points like switch gear feel reasonably good.

Good price for Hero Xtreme 250R

And finally the big question of price the Hero Xtreme 250R starts at 1.8 lakh rupees meaning that in the 250 CC space it undercuts the likes of the Suzuki sx 250 and is a good deal cheaper than the likes of the KTM 250 Duke.

But then again it isn’t as well, equipped as the Duke either there are no TFT screens or quick shifters here you get a simple LCD Dash and LED headlight and dual Channel ABS with two modes.

Speaking of instrumentation it’s the same fairly basic mono Chrome LCD display that you see on the Charisma it would have been nice to see a TFT or at least a color LCD display on the top variant.

So how does one sum up this bike well if you’re shopping in and around the 2 lakh rupee mark for a Performance Bike. There’s a few different ways you could go on the one hand you could do something like the Pulsar ns400 Z.

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Which takes more of a Brute Force approach to Performance giving you the maximum displacement. And power for the money and at the other end of the scale you’ve got something like the Yamaha R15. Which is only 155cc. But with a sharp focus on handling and sportiness and somewhere between those two bikes is the Hero Xtreme 250R it’s definitely got more grunt than the R15 but without feeling as heavy as the ns400 Z it strikes a nice Middle Ground as a sporty 250cc naked and as always with hero the value proposition is quite strong.