Cycle News Staff | March 19, 2020
Acerbis X-Factor Handguards Product Review
Since 1973, Acerbis has been offering high-quality, innovative products that are designed and manufactured at their headquarters in northern Italy. They recently sent us one of their most popular products, the X-Factor Handguards, to review.
Big but stylish, the Acerbis X-Factor handguards provide a lot of protection for hard-core woods riding.
Built for extreme enduro, the handguards are designed to be both tough and good-looking. The spines of the handguards are made from 35mm Anticorodal metal that’s up to five times stiffer than typical aluminum. These are held in place with a solid steel bar-end expander and a 19mm thick aluminum bar clamp for added rigidity and strength. The assembly is offered with bi-injection-molded, vented covers that protect the rider’s hands from rocks and roost, and they’re offered in 10 popular colors to match your bike’s OE color. Acerbis also offers individual replacement parts for the X-Factor handguards, so if you do manage to break something, you don’t have to buy a completely new kit.
Acerbis X-Factor Handguards Product Review | The Lowdown:
Stand-Out Feature: Beautifully designed, Italian-crafted, and it fits perfectly
MSRP: $139.95
Quality, right down to the packaging.
Acerbis X-Factor Handguards Product Review | Rider Analysis:
We installed the X-Factor handguards on a KTM 350 EXC-F. To start, the packaging for the X-Factor handguards gives you some indication of what you’re going to find inside even before you open the box. Maybe it’s just us, but nicely packaged products give you a good feeling about the company you’re doing business with—it tells you that they care enough to take the time to do it right. That quality continues once you open the box and start installing the product.
You get a lot for your $139.99, plus the kit comes with several sizes of tapered inserts to ensure that you have the correctly sized bar clamp for application. This is a super nice touch since there are so many different handlebar shapes and sizes nowadays. This ensures that the X-Factor guards will stay exactly where you want them. The bar-end expander is nicely done, fitting into the handlebar and tightening down securely, and the colored handguards fit perfectly. The orange coloring of the plastic shields matched our stock KTM perfectly, and we have plenty of reason to believe they will match your bike perfectly, too, no matter what color it is. After all, we’re talking Acerbis here—they’ve mastered the art of color matching long ago.
The X-Factor handguards are easy to install and mount solidly to the handlebars.
We got to work testing the handguards on an East Coast ride thick with hardwood trees, roots and slippery rock gardens, and while we scratched some plastic here and there, the levers and the handguards themselves held up well without anything breaking, including fingers! As advertised, the guards are as strong as a tank, and they held up well to our abuse. We were very impressed with their sturdiness.
And wherever you position the guards on your handlebars, they will stay there seemingly no matter what after you’ve cinched everything down. We had no issues with the guards moving, bending or slipping up or down; definitely a solid fit.
The X-Factor handguards are larger in size than most traditional handguards, which we liked. As a result, they offer plenty of hand protection from the elements, including cold wind, and there is plenty of clearance between the levers and your fingers, another thumbs up from us!
Overall, we are very impressed with the Acerbis X-Factor handguards, they’re durable, built well, easy to install and, perhaps best of all, look good on the bike. So, whether you’re riding an extreme enduro or blasting across the desert, we feel you’ll be quite happy how well the Acerbis X-Factor handguards will protect your hands, fingers and levers from roost, brush, trees and wind. CN
For more information, visit www.acerbisusa.com
