Hero Xoom 125 First Ride Review

With the Destini 125 covering the family scooter front in Hero’s 125-cc scooter portfolio, it is the job of the Xoom 125 to be the fun and exciting offering. We went to New Delhi to ride it

The second member of the Hero Xoom family has been launched and we went to
the national capital for its first ride. The scooter allotted to us was the top-spec ZX
variant in the Inferno Red colour. I was happy about it because that was the colour
that had caught my eye the previous day during the presentation. It looks akin to
the Xoom 110 to slot itself into the same family but different enough to stand out
as the more powerful and premium scooter of the two.

As I got astride the scooter, two things drew my attention: the seat and the
instruments. The instrumentation is in the form of a straightforward LCD screen
divided into two parts for primary and secondary information, the latter of which
has a slightly lower screen resolution and can be cycled through to display different
menus. It’s basic and it works. The seat looks sporty and, therefore, does justice to
the character of the Xoom 125. There’s a concave curve in the middle of the seat
which separates the rider and pillion portions. When I tried to shift backwards for a
more relaxed and slightly stretched out riding position, this curve got in the way.
Since I’m 5’ 9”, sitting ahead of the curve as intended wasn’t much of a bother. If
you’re a taller person, this is something you should keep in mind.

The footboard is on the smaller side as well; there wasn’t much space left after
putting my feet up and there’s also a protrusion in the front part of the footboard
which means it’s narrower at the centre. Fortunately, Hero have provided two
reasonably spacious storage pockets on the front apron of the scooter and the left
pocket houses a USB charger in it. The pockets taper downwards but, in my
opinion, the storage is enough to carry your daily essentials.

Hero stated during the product presentation that the under-seat storage of the
Xoom could fit a full-face helmet. The helmets that had already been placed in the
storage compartments of the show bikes were full-face ones but they were basic helmets with small shell sizes. When I tried to fit my own helmet in (a KYT TT-Course, size L), the lid didn’t close by a long way. The Xoom also had a slight alignment issue wherein the seat didn’t always land on its latching points while closing it and we had to consciously place it exactly at the centre for it to lock in place.

The Xoom 125 features Hero’s i3s technology which shuts the engine off when you
happen to be stationary for more than a few seconds. If you don’t want this to
happen or find it slightly annoying, which I did after a point, you can turn it off via a
nice and clicky switch on the right side of the switchgear. All the buttons on the
scooter are similarly tactile and give a good amount of feedback while operating
them.

Hero sought to emphasise the fact that the Xoom 125 prioritises performance in the
way it has been designed and engineered. It’s powered by a 124.6-cc engine
producing 9.9 hp and 10.4 Nm. They claim it is the fastest scooter in the segment with a 0-60 km/h time of 7.6 seconds. While we were very eager to test this for ourselves, Monday rush-hour traffic in New Delhi gave us limited opportunities to do so.

The scooter felt eager and lively during the low-to-moderate speed city runs
that we did and it did feel reasonably quick on the few brief open stretches of road
that we came across. However, we had to contend with traffic before we could see
how fast it would really go. At the speeds that we were doing, it felt composed and
refined.

The balance between handling and comfort was satisfactory as well. I felt the
suspension was slightly on the firm side but at no point did it feel uncomfortable.
The large 14-inch wheels also aided in making sure that road undulations did not
pose much of a problem. Moreover, the scooter handled well in the city and zipping
through traffic went like a breeze.

While searching for a convenient spot for the photo shoot, we ended up going off
the beaten track towards a clearing some distance away from the main road. The
path we took was extremely rocky and sandy, mostly used for walking and rarely by
bicycles or two-wheelers. I had my DOP as a pillion while getting there and the
Xoom bounced its way over the rocky terrain, only grounding out a little bit
once over an especially large rock. The scooter acquitted itself well during this quick
stress test.

Two variants are available in the Xoom line-up and there are enough add-ons in the
top-spec ZX for it to make a compelling case for itself. While the base VX costs Rs
86,900, the top-spec ZX is priced at Rs 92,900 (both prices ex-showroom, Delhi).
For the extra money that you pay for the ZX you get two more colour options,
metallic red and matte yellow, as well as sequential turn indicators, a front disc
brake, machined alloy wheels (as opposed to cast alloys on the VX), turn-by-turn
navigation, the front storage pocket, USB charger, an illuminated engine start-stop
button as well as a boot light.

This pricing makes the Xoom 125 a competitor for the TVS NTorq 125 (priced at
around Rs 89,500, ex-showroom), a favourite of many in this segment. How the
Xoom 125 fares against it and how it performs in the real world will be revealed
once we get the scooter for a proper road test.

All in all, the Xoom 125 felt like a fun, premium offering from Hero which definitely
deserves a test-ride if you’re considering a scooter in this segment.