Kawasaki Z650 2020 review: the middleweight that makes the jump easy

Kawasaki Z650 overview

Buying a big bike can be intimidating, coming from something smaller. It can be a sizeable jump in terms of performance, ease of use, and price. But there are a few motorcycles that make that leap a lot less daunting. And one such example is Kawasaki’s middleweight, the naked Kawasaki Z650.

Styling and changes

In this new iteration, Kawasaki has made some changes that not only differentiate it, but set it apart from its predecessor.

• The first, unsurprisingly, is the engine, which is now BS6 and Euro 5 compliant.
• The second, and more notable, is the design. Kawasaki has stripped away the few curves of the older model, sharpened up the lines around the tank and the headlight, and given it a new paint scheme.

What this has done is give the bike a much more dynamic and provocative design. Something the Japanese manufacturer refers to as Tsugumi.

There is some functionality amongst this new form too. The new LED headlight not only looks great, but also does a pretty good job of illuminating what’s in front of you.

Then there’s the addition of a TFT instrument cluster. It is a rather compact unit, but one of the crispest ones we’ve seen at this price point — at least from the rider’s point of view, because it can look quite pixelated up close. This unit can also be connected to Kawasaki’s Rideology app. The Kawasaki Z650 misses out on:

• phone notifications,
• navigation,
• and connecting to the app only allows you to look at the ride statistics on your phone.

Engine specifications

Once you get past the cosmetic changes, you will find that the Kawasaki Z650 is largely the same as before. At its centre is a 649cc liquid-cooled parallel-twin engine. In this BS6 avatar it makes the same peak power of 68 horsepower as before. Peak torque, at 64 newton metres, is down by 1.7 newton metres, though that is not something you will notice.

Performance

And not that you will simply complain either, because the Z650 is quick. And if you’re eager with the throttle, the front end will lift up easily in first gear. Push all the way through the 6-speed gearbox and you would blast past 100 kilometres per hour in a sports-car timing: 4.8 seconds.

Exhaust

Complementing that performance is a more guttural exhaust note. Kawasaki has tweaked the intake and exhaust to comply with the latest emission norms. And these changes seem to have affected the way the Z650 sounds.

The lower revs are loud and bassy. But this is an engine that likes to rev, and with this BS6 update we found that the bike emits a slightly more raspy, throaty note. And that added some much-needed aggression to the experience.

Now, this is undoubtedly an engine that’s happiest higher up in the rev band. But it’s also quite tractable at slow speeds. You can carry a gear higher and a fairly light clutch. This means you can avoid an unwarranted forearm workout while you’re stuck in traffic.

Ergonomics

Something else you will be happy about is the ergonomics. The setup is right, the seat is low, and the handlebar is flat and wide. Now I’m five feet ten inches tall, and this bike fits me just right. When I’m sitting up, it is rather good to ride. One thing for sure: your back is not going to hurt on this, even on a longer tour.

But tuck in at higher speeds and it gets a bit cramped. This is because the handlebar is quite close to you, and this tends to bring your elbows in contact with your knees.

Alright, so this is a bike that you can live with in the city. But where the Z650 really thrives is in the twisties. An impressive mid-range makes it super fun for darting from corner to corner.

Tyres

And it could have been even better with nicer tyres. The new Dunlop Sportmax Roadsport proved ok in the dry. But they do get fairly squirmy in the wet.

Ground clearance

There are a couple more aspects where we’d like to see some improvement.

• First is the brakes. Stopping power is decent, but we found that the ABS sometimes intervenes rather prematurely and quite aggressively.
• Second is the ground clearance. At 130mm the Z650 bottoms out over most sharply angled speed breakers, even without the weight of a pillion.

Conclusion and price

And there you have it, the new Kawasaki Z650.

• It looks good,
• it’s easy to ride in the city,
• and it’s proper fun out in the twisties at just under ₹6 lakh.
• It’s also the only proper Japanese middleweight street naked in our country.

Now, given our riding conditions, I also think this is one of the easiest first big bikes to step up to. There is enough performance on offer, it’s easy to live with, and it’s fairly affordable. But we will see a competitor motorcycle soon, to be launched sometime next year. And that is the all-new Triumph Trident 660, which I think is going to kill this segment for sure.

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A note added in 2026

This article was published twice on the old site. It first went live on 1 November 2020 at /kawasaki-z650-review/, and six days later at /kawasaki-z650-price-in-india/ with keyword-bearing headings and a handful of sentences adjusted. Both copies are the same road test. This page is transcribed from the second, which is the capture named above; the earlier copy is the evidence that the date belongs to the journalism and not to whichever crawl came first.

A different article later took over this address. From 16 May 2021 the legacy URL carried “Kawasaki Z650 2021 Price, Specs, Features, Review”, which broke the same ride material into short bullet fragments and added a separate specification and pricing treatment, including a different ex-showroom figure and a section on pricing in the USA. That is a separate document with its own date, and none of its later material has been imported here. The November 2020 article gives its price only as “just under rupees 6 lakhs”, and that is how it stands on this page: a 2020 figure, not a quotation, and kept out of this page’s structured data.

There is no Z650 entry in the current catalogue, so nothing on this site revises what you read above: the price stays the November 2020 one the article gave, and the 4.8 seconds stays a 2020 stopwatch result rather than a measured figure today. We rode the supersport version of this same parallel-twin four days after writing this — the 2020 Ninja 650 review — and the other Kawasaki pages on this site are the catalogue records for the Ninja 400 and the Z1000. The Triumph Trident 660 forecast in the last paragraph has not been recovered as an article here.