I agree mostly with Fontanaman. I have always been a huge advocate of the ES suspension, but now with additional miles and seat time have some reservations. It is still a great suspension, but biased towards comfort. If like FM and I, you have had a well set up aftermarket suspension and like to ride hard, you may be a bit disappointed in the ES. If you don't drag pegs or come close, the ES is still most likely the way to go. I am a bit lighter then FM and don't dislike it as much as he. Perhaps I am not as sophisticated in my suspension evaluation.
On Beartooth Highway and Chief Joseph Scenic Byway while one up and unloaded and shredding the curves I found that setting it at One person + luggage preload, and 'hard' damping gave pretty damned good performance. Perhaps not quite as good as my 09 with Ohlines, and Racetech. But I had that bike set up overly stiff, going one step higher on shock and fork springs than recommended. And it has trade offs. It is pretty harsh one up. But dialed in for a track days, loaded, and two up. In Europe last summer in the south of France and in the Pyrenees, for the first time in my life I wore the sides of the tires more than the center. And they T31s were toast at 3600 miles. Also a record for me. Lots of two-up, heavily loaded, hard riding. The 09's stiff aftermarket suspension performed flawlessly. In fact that suspension handles better two-up than one-up.
I still need to try two-up on the ES but I did do some two-up riding on the '16 ES I previously had and didn't think it was a problem. And perhaps with two-up riding, more comfort is better than outright aggressive performance.
An ES suspension is a compromise that works well for most folks. You can't dial it in exactly, but how many folks do that? For most folks who don't fiddle with their suspension because of the PITA factor, they are afraid to mess with it, or don't know how, the easy push button selection on the ES is an excellent solution that works pretty well. Especially if they change frequently between one-up, two-up, and loaded often. The one caveat there is if you are loading the FJR with a lot of weight (heavy rider, heavy passenger) it may not be adequate for you. But then neither is the stock 'A' model suspension I would guess.
If you ride hard, like performance suspensions and like tweaking them, and getting them dialed in, then get an 'A' model and upgrade with the aftermarket. You'll find the ES suspension biased too much towards comfort.
Maybe one day I will bite the bullet on the 'PITA factor' and actually measure my SAG measurements on the '17 and '14 ES FJRs I own. But don't hold your breath.....
The other aspect he brings up about maintenance I have not looked into. If the ES shock is truly a huge PITA to remove, then that will piss me off. Of course replacing it is a really $$$$ proposition that pisses me off. Hopefully neither of those things need to happen in the normal life of the FJR. So far, anecdotal evidence seems to support that.
With 5 FJRs in my garage currently and 1 in Europe I am no hurry to get another! Honest! Really! I swear to Bustanut Joker!
But someday...... I could see trying to get a cheap, low-mile '18 'A' model and upgrading with aftermarket suspension.
