A warm day in Montana in mid-March gave us the perfect opportunity to take our brand new fleet of 2022 GPX dirtbikes out for a day of testing. We loaded up and drove out to Radersburg, Montana to do some riding and filming and develop opinions on these Chinese machines. One of our bikes of focus was the 2022 GPX FSE 300R.
This bike is a liquid cooled, electronic fuel injected 300cc 4 stroke dirtbike. It comes fully street legal with blinkers, brake lights, mirrors and a headlight. It also includes a motocross style number plate and all of these additions can be easily removed to make it more of an off-road oriented machine. The bike isn’t the lightest there is but carries it weight well, tipping the scales at 254 pounds full of fuel and ready to ride.
I was immediately impressed with the chassis. The bike feels and handles much like a KTM and I felt right at home. After only a couple of laps on the bike I was feeling comfortable and flicking it around with ease. The suspension is surprisingly good; I didn’t expect it to be bad, but it exceeded all of my expectations. The forks have amazing bottoming resistance and eat up small bumps well. The suspension truly feels competitive with the setups on modern Japanese or Austrian bikes. I might not have been able to tell the difference if the forks were unbranded and you told me to compare them to modern Showas, KYBs, or WP.
The brakes are strong but not as good as Brembos. Brembos are the gold standard in braking so that might be expected. They did not leave much to be desired, but could have a bit more bite if I’m being picky. Now that I’ve established how impressed I was with the chassis, let’s talk about the engine.
The EFI feels like it could use some tuning at the low end. The bike does not have a very crisp throttle response right off the bottom and requires a little clutching to ride well. As soon as you hit the mid to top end of the power, the bike is happy and runs flawlessly. The power is far from aggressive; it is very smooth and manageable. Compared to a 250F race bike from a Japanese or Austrian manufacturer, this bike is not as fast and not nearly as aggressive. That said, it can be ridden quite hard and is still a ton of fun. I think this could be a perfect dirtbike for somebody getting into riding or someone who doesn’t enjoy the abrupt and strong power of all of the modern race bikes.
The only real issue we experienced with this bike was the handlebar mounts coming loose. We aren’t sure if this is a result of inferior rubber bushings being used. When we got back to the shop we used Loctite on the bolts and will follow up if we experience this issue in the future. If this issue is persistent, the clamps can be swapped out with OEM KTM or aftermarket alternatives.
For the price, this bike is hard to beat. That being said, depending what you are looking for I might recommend the GPX FSE 250E, which is an even cheaper option that performs pretty similarly. We did a comparison of these 2 bikes, and you can click here to give that a read and watch our YouTube video. If I was in the market for a new race bike, this would not be it. If I was looking for a fun and smooth trail bike with the added bonus of being street legal, I would have my eyes on this GPX.
