The best review I found of these bikes was in ride magazine, I have it somewhere was a great read. Whilst I'm new to this forum and have only been on an unrestricted licence for a few months myself, I have been riding for 4 years and am lucky enough to have "test ridden" a few mates full power bikes. For me personally, I am extremely pleased that I settled for the Fazer because as a bike it is the best all round package, is comfortable, really is fun to ride and inspires me with confidence. On my budget it was a choice of Fazer, Hornet, SV and dare I say it....bandit.
Hornet from the off was an instant no, I just really didn't feel comfortable on it and thought it was too small (I am 6 foot 4). It is a good little bike no doubt, I agree with the hooligan comment, it is light and powerful but that isn't really my style and I would buy a supermoto for that, plus having a mate crash his at 110mph from a random tank slapper was a big eye opener.
My dad has an SV, I have ridden it on a few occasions and it is great fun, probably more so than mine in
certain situations. Sounds lovely, handles and pulls well but fells a bit weezy the faster you go. His looks great but some look a bit strange in my personal opinion, doesn't feel as well built to me as the Fazer either but would be my 2nd choice.
Not as of yet ridden a bandit but a lot of my friends had them and they all put me off unfortunately. As bikes they all feel very heavy and bulky, plus all my mates crashed theirs for various dodgy reasons, mostly riding like idiots so probably unfair to attribute that directly to the bike. One of my mates does have a nice one though which he bought in May and is the mark 2 faired version, he has never been on a Fazer so we're going to have a little test of each others soon once I weld my down pipes up next week so that I can say I have tried them all. I like his bandit but doubt I would ever own one. Another mates GSX 1400 that he kindly let me try on the other hand! Pwhoar.....
