The Tutoro seems to be well regarded by the people who on it and it as simple as hitting a bump in the road. No electrical to connect, no vacuum lines to cut. Just bolt on and hit a bump and you've oiled the chain. Love the simplicity of this unit.
Unlike Chris, I'm a shaft drive kinda guy. Checking the drive system is fine at home every 10-15K miles when up on the table. Otherwise my preference is not to spend time futzing over it.
I've said it a lot, the KTM experience is worth the hassle of a chain...but if I can reduce that hassle I'm certainly willing to do that.
Here is something else KTM is doing right...marketing their new bike. Yamaha should really take a page from them on this one. Shouldn't cost much money, and I can tell you as the target audience for what they are selling, it's very effective. Explaining the upgrades shouldn't take a marketing genius to tell you it's a good thing.
No way in hell I'd give up my current SAS any time soon. But someday in the future I'll want to upgrade. I suspect I know what that future bike will be. I'm drinking the orange Kool-aid and it's very, very good.
At 0:55 in the video the number one point in their overall summary is "Feeling Fast." That really is one of the top, most critically important features of this bike. Not that the bike "is" fast...obviously it is. But it feels fast, and I have no idea how they pulled off that trick. What do I mean trick...?
I owned an FJR once for less than a month. Fantastic feat of engineering. Yamaha at it's best. But to me, the bike felt slow in the twisties. Going through a set of nice curves at a reasonably quick speedometer reading, the bike was so well designed it felt slow and uninteresting. Only wicking it up to very high speedometer readings made it feel exciting to me. The SAS is exactly the opposite. The ability to blast the throttle out of curve and into the next, speed shifting as needed to keep the RPMs where you want them and repeating that massive acceleration from curve to curve to curve is exhilarating beyond my fondest wishes, but when I finally glance down at the speedometer I'm no where near the numbers I had to do on the FJR. The bike is "Feeling Fast", but it doesn't require stupid high speeds to get that feeling.
Don't get me wrong, that does not mean the bike can't handle those speeds. It's actually very at home there, but it just doesn't force you to have to do those speeds to feel fast. That's an amazing trick in my book. The psychology of feeling fast and satisfied...absolutely love the experience.
Pass the Kool-aid.