2025 Harley-Davidson Street Glide Ultra - Road test review

Harley-Davidson’s flagship touring machine is a big, beautiful beast with one flaw that’s impossible to ignore.

2025 Harley-Davidson Street Glide Ultra
2025 Harley-Davidson Street Glide Ultra
Category
Engine Capacity
1923cc
Price
£28,495.00
Pros
- Beautiful, with high-quality fit and finish
- Excellent for long, cross-country hauls
- Loads of useful storage space
Cons
- Inescapably heavy
- Linked brakes are a pain
- Infotainment system takes several minutes to boot up

It’s hard to get past the weight of the 2025 Harley-Davidson Street Glide Ultra. It’s an attractive and desirable machine - glistening with quality, heritage, and presence. It sounds good, it rides brilliantly. But, man, it’s heavy.

And I say that as a Harley apologist. Normally, when I hear people lament the heft of one of Milwaukee’s iconic machines I respond that the bikes’ weight is kept manageably low and that it’s the sort of thing you get used to quickly.

But even after two weeks with the Street Glide Ultra, I was fighting and fearing its roughly 400 kilograms every time I threw a leg over.

Which is a shame. On most other counts, the Street Glide Ultra is an excellent touring weapon. It’s the sort of motorcycle that makes Europe feel small. 

2025 Harley-Davidson Street Glide Ultra
2025 Harley-Davidson Street Glide Ultra

So, would I buy one? Let’s weigh up the good and the bad (See what I did there?).

Some background

Touring is Harley-Davidson’s bread and butter. In 2024, its so-called ‘Grand American Touring’ segment represented roughly 58 percent of its total motorcycle sales. Until the advent of the Honda Gold Wing, Harley-Davidson’s motorcycles defined what touring was in America. For many, they still do; Harley dominates close to 75 percent of the touring motorcycle segment in the United States.

In the Land of the Free, they refer to the Street Glide Ultra as a ‘full dresser.’ All the bells and all the whistles. It is designed to go far in luxury and comfort. It’s a new model for 2025 but at a quick glance it is visually indistinguishable from the Ultra Limited it replaces.

I mentioned in my review of the 2025 Street Bob that Harley is very intentional in the consistency of its styling. So, of course the modern Street Glide Ultra carries visual cues that were on the Electra Glide way back in 1969, when the MoCo first started offering its iconic batwing fairing.

The 2025 Street Glide Ultra (pictured) is hard to distinguish from the 2024 Ultra Limited
The 2025 Street Glide Ultra (pictured) is hard to distinguish from the 2024 Ultra Limited
The 2024 Ultra Limited (pictured) is hard to distinguish from the 2025 Street Glide Ultra
The 2024 Ultra Limited (pictured) is hard to distinguish from the 2025 Street Glide Ultra

But the similarities between the 2025 Street Glide Ultra and 2024 Ultra Limited are incredibly close (see images above). They are so close that I can’t understand why Harley’s created the former and dumped the latter. If I had to hazard a guess, it would be rooted in the fact that the Street Glide bagger (which looks like the Street Glide Ultra without top box and lower fairing) is consistently one of Harley’s best-selling models. 

There was a time, not too long ago, when Harley sold more Street Glides in a year than all its other models combined. I’d assume that Harley feels it’s a name that sells.

First impressions

Occupying about as much visual space as a Toyota Yaris, the Street Glide Ultra is a motorcycle with presence. If someone uses the ‘sorry mate, I didn’t see you’ excuse when you’re riding this thing they are visually impaired.

(Jumping ahead to the riding experience: I did actually have someone cut me off when I was on this bike. Which gave me an occasion to discover that its horn is LOUD and will scare the living hell out of the bloke who was staring at his phone while he drifted into your lane. A definite plus.)

The Milwaukee Eight V-twin engine delivers nonstop smiles
The Milwaukee Eight V-twin engine delivers nonstop smiles

One of the reasons Harleys cost so damned much - and this one, starting at £28,495, certainly costs a lot - is that they are built to a certain standard. The quality here is undeniable. From clutch lever to floorboard, pannier latch to paint, every aspect of this bike has the look and feel of something that is built to last.

This contributes to a motorcycle that is visually stunning - the kind of bike you sit and stare at. It is not, perhaps, gorgeous in the way of a Ducati or MV Agusta, but it holds the eye as a Ford Ranger Raptor might. There is beauty in the bigness. Shining, beautiful bigness.

Hoist your leg over the bike’s 725mm seat - doing your best to avoid catching a boot on the topbox/passenger backrest - and you are welcomed by one of the finest butt rests in the biz. Your seated stance is wide here, so the low seat height is deceptive; there’s a lot to go between your legs and it helps to be tall if you want to straddle it with feet flat on the ground. I’m 6-foot-1; I wouldn’t want to be any shorter on this bike.

But, as I say, it’s all-day comfy. Hands fall naturally to the big, shiny ‘bars, allowing shoulders to relax. The grips and shiny levers are standard Harley fare: built for large, strong hands. Feet rest easily on the massive floorboards.

2025 Harley-Davidson Street Glide Ultra
2025 Harley-Davidson Street Glide Ultra

The dash is car-like, with stereo speakers on either side of a 312mm TFT touchscreen display that takes about two minutes to fully boot up. Fortunately, you can get on the go before the display is completely awake but it means you’ll be sans navigation for that time and will have to acknowledge notifications on the go (About three minutes into every ride the bike would tell me that it could not find “Steve’s iPhone” and I had to fiddle about on the grip to find the button to clear the notification).

Both grips are littered with buttons to allow you to control and navigate the infinite features and settings contained within the TFT display’s pages. The buttons are largely intuitive IF you are able to look at them, but can be fiddly when operating with gloved hands. The buttons are not backlit, so plan on not using them at night.

Below the display is a slide-out shelf/drawer for your phone. The drawer is lined with rubber to absorb vibration and keep said phone from sliding around, and there is a USB-C port for charging. I loved this feature. Almost all bikes these days have places to plug in a phone, but very few have a place for that phone to be while charging.

The drawer is not lockable, nor are the glove compartments in each of the lower fairings. Equally, the glove compartment hatches are one of the few areas on this bike where I’d raise an eyebrow in terms of quality.

The top box holds a lot of stuff
The top box holds a lot of stuff

Again lifting eyes roadward, the bike’s fixed windscreen occupies much of your lower view. It is an effective screen in terms of weather protection, but is, in my opinion, sub-par when compared to the magic screen on the Low Rider ST.

Engine and transmission

The Street Glide Ultra is driven by a “twin-cooled” Milwaukee Eight 117 cubic-inch V-twin engine. That’s 1923 cc in Not America. And “twin-cooled” here means that the bike has liquid-cooled cylinder heads but retains much of its air-cooled aesthetic and feel. 

The twin cooling means that, despite its weight, the bike is able to claim peak outputs of 107 bhp at 5,020 rpm, and a very beefy 129 lb-ft of torque at just 3,500 rpm.

Unlike the models in Harley-Davidson’s cruiser line-up, the engines of the different touring models do not have different tuning. But you do get three modes - Sport, Road, and Rain - which affect power delivery pretty much as you’d expect.

2025 Harley-Davidson Street Glide Ultra
2025 Harley-Davidson Street Glide Ultra

With all that weight helping tamp down vibration, the Street Glide Ultra accelerates with remarkable smoothness. Fortunately, you don’t give anything up in terms of thrust. You get all of the addictive, torquey goodness found on lighter H-D big twins. And there is something deeply satisfying about getting a bike this large to hustle out of roundabouts with such urgency.

Befitting the spirit of a touring bike, the sound of the standard exhaust is a little less Biker Mice From Mars than what you might get from the cruiser line-up. The up side of this - apart from making you less likely to be the target of neighbourhood noise petitions - is that you are able to hear the mechanical workings of the engine a little better. It helps you appreciate the engineering at play.

In terms of the six-speed transmission, I’m not sure if it was just an issue with the bike that I rode or if all that weight creates additional strain, but I found things to be particularly agricultural. True, no Harley’s transmission can be described as slick, but that’s never bothered me before. On the Street Glide Ultra it was problematic.

Shifting gears was akin to lifting a 4kg kettle bell with my toes. Sure, I can do it, but I don’t want to do it over and and over and over again. Getting stuck in stop-start traffic on the A350 had me feeling the burn. 

2025 Harley-Davidson Street Glide Ultra
2025 Harley-Davidson Street Glide Ultra

What it’s like to ride

You’ll need a strong left leg to get this thing off its stand, and a strong right leg to keep it from carrying on the other way. 

Harley says this bike weighs 393 kg “in running order.” If I understand that phrasing correctly, it means that there’s enough fuel for the bike to, you know, run, but that the tank is not full. Top up the Street Glide Ultra’s 22.7-litre tank and I’m willing to bet you’re pushing upward of 410 kilos. Add a 75kg rider and you’ve got a hell of a lot of mass to deal with. Half a ton without luggage or a passenger.

At speeds above 15 mph, though, the bike is wholly manageable. 

At highway speeds, it is bliss. I have ridden pretty much every big touring bike that’s come along in the last 15 years - from Harley-Davidson, Indian, Victory, BMW, Kawasaki, and Honda. On the motorway, this bike is easily one of the best. Thanks in no small part to a fantastic suspension. It is just so smooth, so relaxed, so comfortable. I would choose this over a car for a cross-country haul.

2025 Harley-Davidson Street Glide Ultra
2025 Harley-Davidson Street Glide Ultra

Within that same context, the cruise control works brilliantly - holding steady, smooth speed even on steep inclines. The bike’s excellent LED headlight throws a huge spread of light, effectively eliminating any concerns you might have about riding at night. Its heated grips are delightfully toasty (although, navigating to their controls in the menu requires too many steps). The stereo is clear and loud enough to be heard at 75 mph, while wearing ear plugs and a helmet.

You get my point: if you’re going a long way, the Street Glide Ultra is one of the best ways to go.

It’s thoroughly enjoyable on A roads and fast, flowing B-roads, too. As long as you’re not muscling through sharp corners, the Street Glide Ultra moves with a floating nimbleness that belies its girth. It can be a whole hell of a lot of fun.

Until you hit traffic, or a country lane, or need to do anything that requires low-speed finesse. At that point, the heavy unwieldiness of the Street Glide Ultra can be overwhelming. Riding the thing becomes physically and mentally demanding on a level that I just don’t want for day-to-day activities. Navigating the car park at Tothill Services should not make me feel as if I’m participating in some sort of Japanese gameshow challenge.

A drawer holds your phone (or the key fob)
A drawer holds your phone (or the key fob)

Another aspect that failed to win me over was the bike’s “Cornering Enhanced Electronic Linked Braking” system.

Harley explains the system like this: “This feature electronically applies braking effort to both wheels when the rider applies the front brake lever and, on some models when the rider applies the rear brake pedal. ELB can help many riders achieve better braking performance. It boosts braking power when needed while minimizing or stopping the linking for lighter braking or at lower speeds.”

In application, it’s annoying and off-putting. Way back when I was 15 years old and taking driving lessons (they get us on the road early in the States), my driving instructor had a car with an additional brake pedal on the passenger side, allowing him to intervene when he felt I was approaching a situation with too much gusto.

Harley’s ELB system reminds me of that. I’d be approaching a roundabout or the like and feel the pedal depress more firmly - as if the bike had decided that I didn’t know what I was doing - and then by unsettled as the whole show hobby-horsed from hard braking. 

2025 Harley-Davidson Street Glide Ultra
2025 Harley-Davidson Street Glide Ultra

Technowhizzbangery

One of the key selling points of the Street Glide Ultra is that it is loaded with technology to make your ride safer and more enjoyable.

The aforementioned cornering linked brakes, riding modes, cornering ABS, cornering traction control, cornering drag-torque slip control, vehicle hold control, tire pressure monitoring, keyless start, cruise control, and heated grips are just some of the rider aids that come standard.

The bike’s infotainment system is brimming with information and features. Apple CarPlay compatible, it offers sat-nav, stereo, and controls in 25 different languages. With the right equipment, you can get voice recognition, so theoretically you could be riding along and just ask the bike to identify the nearest petrol station. I didn’t test this feature, however.

In terms of tech and electronic features, nothing is left on the table with the Street Glide Ultra. Outside of its considerably more expensive CVO models, this is the best that Harley has to offer.

So many buttons!
So many buttons!

Verdict 

The longest road in the United Kingdom is the A1, which boasts 410 miles between its start and finish. The longest road in the United States, meanwhile, is US Route 20, which runs 3,237 miles from Boston, Massachusetts, to Newport, Oregon. I drove that road once; it took me five days.

The Street Glide Ultra was made for American roads - both in terms of distance and design. It is built for long hours in the saddle, navigating wide, well-paved, and technically unchallenging highways. 

If I still lived in the horizon-stretching flatness of the US Central Time Zone, I would love to have this thing sitting in my garage; it would fill me with glee and purpose and ambition to explore. But since I live in West Sussex, I’ll admit that a part of me was quietly relieved when Harley’s logistics team arrived to take it away.

The Street Glide Ultra is prohibitively large for British or European use. It’s just so damned heavy. Knowledge of its weight (and, to a lesser extent, its size), eats away at one’s desire to take it out for a spin. Thoughts of having to wrangle it on local roads makes you not want to bother. 

Even more buttons
Even more buttons

It is not the sort of bike you jump on at the end of the day when you’ve got 45 minutes free and the weather’s just right. Instead, it is a long-haul machine for routes you have researched, making sure you’ll avoid tricky junctions or mud-covered lanes.

In and of itself it’s a great bike, but it’s not a great bike for here.

UK and European riders keen to get the Harley touring experience would be better served by the more affordable, lighter, and better-handling Low Rider ST. No, it's not quite as plush, it doesn’t have a top box the size of Twickenham, and it doesn’t have an infotainment system. But it also doesn’t have brakes that second guess your actions and it's markedly more user friendly on the roads and in the situations that we encounter most often.

In a sentence: the 2025 Harley-Davidson Street Glide Ultra is simultaneously a motorcycle that I absolutely love and that I definitely do not want. Other riders will be fine with the bike’s weight, and I wish them many happy miles.

For more motorcycle news and reviews written by motorcyclists stick with Visordown.

STARTING PRICE

£28,495

ENGINE

1923cc twin-cooled Milwaukee Eight 117 V-twin

POWER

107 bhp @ 5,020 rpm

TORQUE

129 lb-ft @ 3,500 rpm

TRANSMISSION

Clunky six-speed manual

WEIGHT

393 kg

FUEL CAPACITY

22.7 litres

SEAT HEIGHT

725 mm

WHEELBASE

1,625 mm

TYRES (FRONT)

130/60B19 M/C 61H

TYRES (REAR)

180/55B18 M/C 80H

BRAKES (FRONT)

Dual disc

BRAKES (REAR)

Single disc

SUSPENSION (FRONT)

49mm dual bending valve forks

SUSPENSION (REAR)

76.2 mm dual outboard emulsion with preload adjustability

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