I've always admired the quality TVS has to offer. Still have my 2007 VICTOR GLX, beautiful machine, still goes on rock solid. 0.13 NM improvement from the GLX.
Superb dash by the way, but I guess one gotta get used to the vice-versa readings.

All in, excellent package. Great photos.

Cheers!
VJ

Fantastic review sir.

I just wish the bike had a fifth cog, that wouldn't have left anyone to crib about the bike.

A well detailed, neat and precise review.
Reading this made my first impression on Phoenix, a real good one.
Expecting a real life satisfaction too from this TVS product after a long wait.

This products looks quite promising to me. And the improvements are quite appreciable, even if they're small tid-bits. The things like the Spring Series suspension, paper filter, the seat, fit and finish impressed me, and the dash blew me away considering its a commuter class bike.

If TVS creates a big image of the bike with some awesome ads like they do with the RTR, it can surely achieve what it deserves. Otherwise, I doubt it will get the deserved response, considering commuter-class people's lack of interest & knowledge and their love for Munjal family.

Does it really stand up against the Bajaj competition ? It just about matches the significantly cheaper (50k ex-showroom) Discover 125. Discover 150 (which is around 53k ex-showroom) and Discover 125ST (55k ex-showroom) outclass it in every single aspect atleast on paper. The only feature that the competition lacks is the presence of hazard lights (for which I believe TVS indeed should be commended and all other manufacturers should follow the suite in incorporating this very simple feature in all their bikes). Is this too little, too late from TVS ?

Awesome write-up as usual Still i don't understand that if a 125cc can have full DC, then why not a 180cc?

Yes Vijay, the bike felt good and looks solid. The dash is different. About the photos - they are a mix of what I'd snapped and those provided by TVS .

To be honest I whole-heartedly agree that a fifth cog would have been the icing on the cake. The engine has just the right capability to use it. But then another gear probably would have changed the engine internals by a lot. I usually give the product developers the benefit of doubt about the wisdom of not going for something that seems obvious to us users. They have worked on it far longer than us after all and within constraints that we probably will never get to know.

Thanks neevarp16.

Yes, it is a promising product. Even though the actual sales figures get influenced by a lot more factors than mere advertising, let us still hope the country's commuters give this one a long look past, as you rightly point out, the Munjal cadre stuff.

The commuter segment is ruthlessly 'real-time usage and practicality' oriented and the purchase decisions here are made with performance standing somewhere in the middle of the priority list. Even there the 'performance of economy' usually stands above the 'performance of dynamics'. That is one reason why TVS seemed to have built the Phoenix as a 'pure' commuter that makes no pretense of straddling or even leaking into any other category. The CD100 became a best-seller at the dawn of the Indo-Japanese tie-ups in India more than 2 decades ago just on that premise and history has lessons that can come in handy years later. How this bike stacks up against such formidable competition as the Discover series will only become apparent with time. I may be repeating the obvious but one of the prerequisites of getting a purchase decision in your favor is to make the decision easy and simple in the first place. Effective product design and even advertising for that matter is not about 'allurement' but about 'drastically reducing the burden of decision making ' by presenting a certain choice as 'obvious'. I see the Phoenix 125 doing that for a lot of aspiring commuter bike customers.

Thanks Krish. And yes, with batteries and regulators cheap and reliable, the benefits of a full DC system should be ubiquitous. Design inertia probably is the culprit here.

I think the 2012 Apache RTR 160/180 (with the Devils Eyes/DRL: Daytime Running Lights) has got DC lighting.

Only the ABS version has got full DC.

now, thats what we call as a review, hats off to you sir, and thats the reason you should be posting more actively on xbhp.

a very positive review, feels good, somehow though i feel, its name is too complicated to be remembered by its target customer segment for too long. change the name, and market it aggressively, and it can be a winner.

the foot-pegs and all, really did reveal some deep thought process behind the design.

OT: you have revealed the test track of TVS to us (we had seen a part of it that tests wet conditions with ceramic tiles and sprinklers, in a video), can you do the same about BAL, i was and am very eager to know, what kind of test track BAL has.

I agree with you there. But if I were to give YOU a choice like Discover 125ST vs Phoenix 125 vs Ignitor vs Stunner for your next premium 125cc commuter, which would YOU pick and why ?

Thanks Prince and yes I'll be around more often.
The name is a bit unusual but then even worse cases that are much harder to pronounce have not really been detrimental to the brands' popularity. Cases in point being Goetze, Peugeot, Renault, Apache or even age old ones like Britannia and the present day Harvest Gold for that matter.

A choice is a mix of subjective and objective elements. And only worth an investment in effort and time if it is to be made for real. A hypothetical situation like the one you present here may just be a single line question but a proper answer would warrant an exhaustive comparison which in any case is not the purpose of this tread. Call it evasion or prudence, the choice is yours .

125cc giving 50-55kmpl is less less !

I dont think OldFox did a mileage check, he was just assuming it will deliver. I am sure he will clarify.