The playful Dax 125 is Honda’s latest miniMOTO and is dripping in retro cool. There are plenty of motorcycles on the market with features that give them a “retro” vibe. Their marketing verbiage often includes phrases like “retro style meets modern performance,” insinuating that customers will get the best of both worlds. The Honda Dax 125 certainly falls into this category. But giving credit where credit is due, Honda went all-in, throwing in heaping handfuls of “retro” where many OEMs would leave it at a few sprinkles.  It might not be the meanest, fastest, or loudest motorcycle in town. The Dax 125 is here for a good time. That’s the whole point: The Dax 125, new to the U.S. for 2025, is making a play on our emotions. It reminds us of just how desperate we were as youngsters to get a motorbike when we saw the neighborhood kids zipping around on their own.   The shiny upswept exhaust adds to the bike’s retro styling. More chrome can be found throughout. At first glance, the Dax (short for “dachshund,” in reference to the bike’s wiener-dog shape) looks similar to the Trail 125 that was introduced in 2021. However, the Trail 125 was inspired by the Trail 90 and 110 models, while the Dax more closely resembles the outline of the Trail 70 model of the 1970s. It has smaller-diameter wheels, a visually distinct pressed-steel T-bone frame, and lots of shiny bits of chrome. Where the Trail 125 looks right at home trucking through the woods behind your campsite, the Dax 125 belongs in front of your local cafe where every patron can snap a discrete photo as they walk in.  Although the dash’s simple layout is well designed, it can be hard to see in direct sunlight. The Dax is powered by the same air-cooled 124cc Single found in other Honda miniMOTOs (Trail 125, Grom, and Monkey). Like the Trail 125, the Dax has a 4-speed, semi-automatic clutch. That means there’s no clutch lever to pull, but the rider still needs to use the heel-toe foot shifter to change gears, with neutral being at the bottom and 4th at the top. As I discovered while enjoying this mini for the past couple of months, that transmission system is the steepest learning curve required when getting acquainted with the Dax.  Once you get used to the transmission, shifting without worrying about the clutch lever simplifies the ride. GEAR UP: Helmet: Arai Classic-V Jacket: Speed and Strength Daydream Airbag Vest: Alpinestars Tech-Air 5 Gloves: Speed and Strength Starstruck Pants: Pando Moto Mila Cargo Black Jeans Boots: Highway 21 Axle Leather Waterproof  It sounds simple enough: Pop it into 1st after starting the engine, pull out of your driveway, then shift up into 2nd when needed, and so on. The trick is to pay attention to what your throttle hand is doing. Unlike a manual motorcycle transmission, the Dax doesn’t allow you the time to match throttle input to engine speed before releasing the clutch. After a couple miles of the bike lurching and protesting when I tried to change gears (and embarrassing myself when riding past a parking lot full of elementary-school kids loading onto buses), I finally figured out how to smooth out those gear shifts.  The Dax rides on little 12-inch wheels and includes Nissin brake calipers. When upshifting, it’s essential to roll off the throttle for a moment. When downshifting, you need to get the revs up a bit for a smooth shift. Duh, right? But I found that not having a clutch to pull and release to give myself time to adjust the throttle as needed required a more thoughtful and intentional approach to shifting. The key is timing and feeling out how much more or less throttle you need to apply for each shift. Once you get the feel for it, it all starts to click and you’re zipping around town without a care.  The dachshund image below the seat, the playful “Dax” font, and the classic Honda badge perfectly match this bike’s character. Unlike the original Trail 70, which entered production in 1969, the Dax 125 gets the luxury of fuel injection. The little Single is easy to live with as long as you aren’t in a hurry: Honda claims a top speed of 55 mph, although I found my top speed to be a few mph less than that unless I had a downhill stretch to help me along. It also gets pretty buzzy when pushed to its max speed. There’s a simple solution (although it goes against the advice my dad always offers when I get a new test bike): Don’t ride this one like you stole it. Instead, ride it like there’s nothing more important to do today than enjoy the sunshine. It’s not such a bad state of mind to explore.  With a top speed of 55 mph, the Dax can hold its own on a country backroad but isn’t suited for highway travel. Looks like we’ll take the long way. The seating position is straight upright, and the fat and wide bench seat provides plenty of room for adjusting your position while you ride. The seat is a bit hard, but most people won’t be riding the Dax for hours at a time. In front of the seat, the narrow frame, which holds 1 gallon of fuel, makes a convenient spot to stand over at intersections. The fuel filler cap is located under the seat, seat height is 30.6 inches, and claimed wet weight is only 236 lb.   The Dax is the perfect companion for a picnic in the park. It invites you to take it easy and enjoy the day. Suspension includes a 31mm inverted fork with 4.3 inches of travel and retro-looking twin shocks offering 4.7 inches of travel. I found suspension to be perfectly adequate for the type of riding I was doing on the Dax, which was mostly backroad shortcuts near my home and puttering around town. Brakes include a 220mm front disc pinched by a Nissin 2-piston caliper and a 190mm rear disc with a Nissin 1-piston caliper, and ABS is included. There were a couple times while riding when I wanted stronger brakes to help slow me down, although that issue went away once I was more accustomed to the transmission and better able to use engine braking.  The round headlight adds to the Dax’s retro styling. The round headlight is LED, as are all the other lights. The round LCD dash is barebones, only showing a fuel gauge and speed, with a section at the bottom that can swap through an odometer and two tripmeters. The screen is a bit difficult to see in direct sunlight, but it’s hard to be mad at it when you see the little blinking-face image pop up to greet you when turning on the bike. It’s a small thing, but it encapsulates the personality of the bike well, as does the playful dachshund logo on the frame below the seat, complete with wheels for legs and long ears billowing out from underneath a helmet.  The large bench seat offers plenty of room to move around. Many riders would have a blast owning this retro mini. The real question, though, is whether or not the fun it brings is worth the $4,199 MSRP – a price that’s well on its way to affording a small but full-sized motorcycle that can carry the rider on the highway. In Honda’s own lineup, the Rebel 300 costs only $650 more than the Dax and comes with a 6-speed manual transmission and a 286cc Single, as well as more of a “real motorcycle” stance.  The fuel tank is located under the seat, making the frame up front slim and easy to stank over. The answer, of course, depends on the rider. If you’re looking for something easy and fun to ride at surface-street speeds that has lots of personality, the Dax fits the bill. You might be tempted to look for a cheaper option, but the Dax is a solidly built mini. It feels and looks like a quality product, with no shoddy workmanship or corner-cutting bits to be found. It’s not just the Honda badge that will tell you that – poke around a Dax at your local dealership, and you’ll see what I mean.  The Dax offers an unobstructed view of the road. And you can’t ignore the style factor. There are those who buy motorcycles based on specs and practical reasoning. There are those who buy motorcycles based on their personal emotional response to the machine. Most of us want a bit of both. The Dax leans heavily on the emotional side of the equation, but it’s also a capable and dependable mini that offers an engaging and lovely riding experience within its limits. It might not be right for every rider, but if it sings to you, I can assure you that you’ll have a good time aboard a Dax 125.  2025 Honda Dax 125 2025 Honda Dax 125 Specs  Base Price: $4,199  Website: Powersports.Honda.com  Warranty: 1 yr. unltd. miles  Engine Type: Air-cooled, Single, SOHC w/ 2 valves  Displacement: 124cc  Bore x Stroke: 50.0 x 63.1mm  Transmission: 4-speed, semi-automatic clutch  Final Drive: Chain  Wheelbase: 47.2 in.  Rake/Trail: 25 degrees/3.3 in.  Seat Height: 30.6 in.  Wet Weight: 236 lb (factory claim)  Fuel Capacity: 1.0 gal.  The post 2025 Honda Dax 125 Review appeared first on Rider Magazine.