Originally Posted by
speshelite
I've been a big fan of shimano componentry since the late 80's with the introduction of hyperglide. That single innovation made off road riding so much more enjoyable and practical it was a joke.
I've always been super impressed with their "higher" end stuff (the top two groups on the road and mtb side respectively). Until now. I feel like they've fallen off the back a little.
On the road side, SRAM has taken a big leap forward with wireless electronic. The wireless aspect is a huge boon for esthetics, not to mention simplicity in installation. Third the simplicity of the shifting controls is unparalleled. Shimano meanwhile decided inexplicably to go with a wired system, adding a great deal of clutter and hours to the install time. Four shift controls vs two is inferior ergonomically as well.
On the mountain side, shimano has fallen off the back sticking with a wired system and only very recently adopting a single ring design. Single rings have completely taken over the mtb market and reviews for Eagle, their 12 speed, are very positive.
I just saw the recent designs for dura ace and ultegra and the cranksets look absolutely awful. There is no innovation: basically minor tweaks with a major downgrade in esthetics.
I hate to say it, but shimano is becoming a stodgy, very conservative company afraid to take risks and innovate. They'd rather refine proven designs rather than risk striking out by swinging for home runs.
I feel like Eagle and Etap are home runs (well, maybe etap is a triple). Whereas Shimano is focused more on hitting a ton of uneventful singles. It's like Frank Thomas the Big Hurt vs Ichiro Suzuki.
My sense is that SRAM is poised to take the industry lead in components innovation. That's not a bad thing, but they were so dominant for so long, maybe it just took a rogue company like SRAM to show up Shimano's weaknesses.
If cost were no object, I would be going with Etap and Eagle, no question.
Who do you think becomes the market leader in the years to come? Will Shimano hang on as the top dog or can SRAM take the lead?
Shimano Di2 is
far more configurable than ETap. You want paddle-style shifting on Di2 (or any goofy config to do shifting), you can set it up on your phone in 30 seconds. You want auto-shifting of the FD-you can get it. Both are things AFAIK ETap cannot do. Also it has none of the obnoxious "features". Etap:
-The FD parallelogram bulges outboard it preventing it from working with certain cranksets, depending on arm-Q-factor.
-The battery bulges out back and to the inboard capping tire-size on many framesets. Hence why you don't see it on bigger-tire bikes, and only SRAM's 1X systems.
-The FD braze receiver is molded such that it caps high/low adjustability on the plethora of bikes with fixed FD brazes (and not clamp-on collars)
-The FD doesn't even have auto-trim.
Di2 is all around a home run, aside from needing to route wires. Which is only annoying once in the lifetime of a frame-and is only a problem on certain cranks/BBs depending on if they were designed for Di2 cable routing internally through the shell or not. Claiming Di2 is stodgy and not innovative is just plain funny. Further some of the above "features" SRAM has told reviewers they have no intention of ever actually fixing.