Aprilia RS 457 road test, review

The RS 457 looks and feels like a higher-capacity motorcycle than it is and takes great inspiration from the RS 660. It captivates you from every angle and the only sore point is the exhaust that looks unfinished in comparison to the rest of the motorcycle. I won't go over everything that has already been reported but instead focus on whatever I noticed during my time. Though the switchgear and parts look high quality, the direction buttons don't feel tactile enough and feel especially numb to the touch with gloves on.

 

A rare few times the switchgear didn't respond to my input and I had to either wait or reboot the system to snap it out of its slumber. I can't yet confirm if this is a fault in the switchgear or if it's the TFT that doesn't respond to input accurately. On regular use, the buttons and TFT work perfectly fine. However, accessing the plethora of features hidden in the TFT will require a lot of memorization of buttons and sequences and it's only then that you notice the switchgear sometimes doesn’t respond as you’d expect. Additionally, the TFT though crisp and very well laid out occasionally shows a few pixels while displaying messages on the screen. This too happened on rare occasions and appears to be more of a software issue since turning it off and on sorts the issue.

 

Apart from these little issues there have been no problems over the five hundred odd kilometers we’ve ridden in the past week and the rest of the motorcycle feels well put together. 

 

The RS 457 has Bluetooth enabled call and music control functions enabled via the Aprilia App. The call alerts are neatly displayed on the screen and this is a helpful feature but once again the lack of feel in the direction buttons meant it was easier to use my helmet intercom to control the calls. 

 

The turn-by-turn navigation feature is powered by Here Maps and works well for the most part but it can be difficult to find some addresses on the map. The guidance arrows also occasionally go blank which did make me miss a turn or two along my journey. All things said, the system could be a bit more seamless, but the TFT is still much nicer than what the Japanese currently have to offer.