Popeyecahn

My experience is limited to the one test ride on the Felt, but once I understood the SRAM shifting I was good and the 1x was growing on me. What I didn't like was that the frame was more compliant than I liked, the SRAM hoods were blocky and large and since I'm looking at stock builds only, the 44/11-42 gearing on the VR had a little less going for it on the high end (yes the low end is better, but I'm OK there with my current setup) so all in all I wasn't sold at this point. That may change in the future though.

jaxgtr

I recently converted my Trek CrossRip from drop bar to a flatbar 1x11. I picked up a combination of XT and SLX parts for everything I needed to replace, kept my 105 crank and put on a Wolftooth 42 tooth ring on it in combo with a 11-42 cassette. I love the fit of the frame and now I don't have to worry about possibly replacing wheels.

Use it as my daily commuter\crappy weather bike and works like a champ and was way cheaper than what I was looking into. I had been looking at getting a belt drive\internal hub option, but really did not want to lay out that much cash. I did everything for about a 1/3 of the cost of a new bike and got far better parts.

Dave Mayer

I think everyone is missing the point here. 1 x drivetrains are a major development, and serve a profoundly important purpose in the future of the industry.

The purpose of the bike biz of course is to increase sales and profits. 1 x drivetrains create a new 'thing' and sales feature to draw in relatively new cyclists. By discouraging new riders on the "complexity" of front shifting, it creates the sales justification for new product.

But the implications of the 1 x drivetrain go far beyond simply eliminating a chainring - it enables years of subsequent follow-up development with drivetrains.

Because 11 cogs mean relatively large jumps between gears, this creates the justification for increasing the number of cogs in the rear beyond the current 11.

For decades, the bike industry has been locked in a arms race of adding another cog to the cassette for the sake of sales churn and planned obsolescence. When we got to 9 cogs, we were well past the point of diminishing returns. With 11 x 2 drivetrains, the number of cogs at the back is absurd, and forces real pressures on bike designers and engineers in terms of materials and dimensions. Plus cost pressures: 11-speed chains are simply more expensive to make that 8-speed chains.

So with a conventional drivetrain, the move to '12-speed' would have been clearly seen as idiotic, even to the most gullible buyer. But with 1 x drivetrains, it now becomes a somewhat justified goal, and lays the path to 13, 14 etc. speed cassettes.

Another advantage of the '12-speed' wheelset and cassette, it forces designers to widen the stays of road bikes to 135mm and beyond. There is simply no more space with conventional frame design to handle even the current 11-speed cogsets. Despite the real disadvantages to riders of wider rear stays in terms of the Q-factor and heel strike, trust me, wider stays are coming - to facilitate the coming 1 x 12 cassette. Of course the real significant benefit of changing the frame standards, is that it renders obsolete whole previous generations of road frames. Sales turnover potential!

Trakhak

Indeed. Plus, 1 X 11 enables credulous riders to feel like renegades. Buy 1 X 11 from the man so that you can stick it to the man!

kbarch

The 1x market is essentially a different market from the 2x market. Just like the 3- and 5-speed market was different from the "ten speed" market back in the day.

There is little indication that an additional cog would be of any use in a 2x setup - the trick is just to assemble the right series to go with the right pair of chain rings. On the other hand, in a 1x setup, to match the gearing available on a well-selected 2x11, we'd need at least 16 cogs, or 17 gear elements including the chain ring. A 2x11 has only 13 gear elements total.

The idea that 1x11 are being promoted just to open the door for even larger cassettes and wider seat stays is quite a stretch of the imagination. That's not to say that someone won't decide to make a bike with a 16 cog cassette; surely it would become as commonplace as a V16 car.

joejack951

You don't need to wait for 12 speed: https://www.sram.com/sram/mountain/family/x01-eagle

HiBoost

I'm relieved to see so many of you who are also not buying into the 1x for road craze. Half of my buddies around here have converted and talk down to me like I'm some kind of luddite. Then we go for a ride that has more than 1000' of climb and as I'm spinning along at 95 rpms they are grinding out in the mid 60s and calling me a cheater. Gee, sorry that bullet in your foot hurts. And as far as all this complexity and reliability talk... I've got a 2010 bike with Ultegra that hasn't had the front der so much as adjusted in 7 years. Same cable, same everything. Where's the headache in that? Even when I talked with a SRAM rep at an event last year, he conceded that "outside of the MTB realm, 1x is really just a way to simplify shifting for inexperienced/new riders. You'll never see it in the pro peloton." Not to suggest I'm in their ranks. But quite to the contrary, if they need 2 chainrings why on earth would I think that I'm strong enough to not?

DrIsotope

Reading this gave me a good laugh, so thanks for that at the very least. AFAIC, a ride with less than 1000' of vertical doesn't have any climbing in it at all, unless that 1000' came in one 4-5 mile hit. Oddly, I manage +200ft/mi climbing just fine with 1x10. If the best they can do up a hill is mash 60rpm, they chose the wrong cassette, the wrong chainring, or both.

HiBoost

I think that's fair on both accounts. Most of them run a 48T chainring which cracks me up even more being so close to the 50 on my compact. I refer to riding in my big ring as my simulated 1x mode but they don't laugh. And yes, sadly, we don't have a lot of sustained climbing around here. But, we do have 8-12% grade "hills" (duration of 3-5 mins) so there's still opportunity for complaining if you are way out of gear.

DrIsotope

Yeah, they deserve whatever pain they get. As someone who runs 1X, I'm the first to admit that you have to give something up to get rid of that front derailleur-- either top end, or bottom end. Unless you live in Florida, I can't see living everyday on 1X with a 48T in the front.

I run a 42T chainring, and love it-- there's no motivation at all to pedal on long descents, because I spin out at around 31mph.

Jarrett2

This.

If you think it through a bit, you can hit a 1x setup that delivers your needs.

Just yesterday a buddy I was riding with said something like, "I get a kick out of watching you spin that pie plate so fast going up these hills." Meaning, I had a lot more climbing gear available to me than his 2x setup did.

Bottom line, I don't need 22 gears to get my rides done. 11 is plenty. And that's with 20%+ hills in the mix.

HiBoost

I'm a mediocre cyclist, so without question some of you are going to be strong enough to do things I just can't. But I still say there's no free lunch. More gears = more likelihood of staying in your most efficient cadence range. When I throw my bike on the trainer I swap to a 12-25 vs the 11-28 because even the 11-28 has steps that are bigger than I like when I'm at my limit (2x20s at 105% FTP for example, where even 5 rpms can make or break me being able to hold it).

So yeah, you can pick a chainring and cassette that gives a huge range, but it's always going to come at the cost of bigger steps. To me it's the same concept as car transmissions having gone from 3 and 4 speed to now 7 and 8 speed - more gears lead to tighter rpm ranges which lead to higher efficiency.

FrontRanger

Same here--horses for courses.

Camilo

True statement. I have one (cyclocross with slicks, but also treaded, studded tires when needed). The geometry and weight is not a road bike. Plus, without looking at any specs, my guess is that the crank ring would be different on a cross bike vs. what he might want on a road bike. I do know that a typical cross double is a lot different than what I want on a road bike.

They're a great option for versatility, but not quite a true road bike, to me at least.

I do and it's a great bike with perfect shifting.

Camilo

I like these comments. The developments beyond, say, 8 speeds have been marginal improvements, but certainly do encourage sales. 9, 10, 11, single front, disk brakes. All have some good purpose and are beneficial and truly desired by some riders. But they also drive the market so eventually, it is tough to find the bikes without the huge cassettes, single front rings, and disk brakes. So there's much less backwards compatibility and those who don't either need or desire the new drive trains and brakes won't have many options. New offering s for disk bikes already far exceed rim brake bikes as far as I can see. In the MTB world, I think the same could be said for 1X vs 2X, let alone 3X fronts (believe it or not, some of still see utility and benefit to a triple!)

I want to buy my wife a new high-ish end bike, but I'd really, really like to have it compatible with the wheels I already have. But 11 speed hubs and disk brake offerings are not and they're becoming ubiquitous.

Now if I were relatively new and/or didn't have a stock of bikes so I was just thinking purely of and individual bike, I'd probably be perfectly happy with an 11 speed disk bike. In fact I'm warming to disks, having been a curmudgeon about it up til now. But don't think the benefit outweighs my desire for compatibility in the "stable".

Probably won't warm to a 1X11 unless I move because I am old and have very steep hills, rolling hills, etc where more gears are better than fewer. I have a triple on my gravel/commuter and love it. My wife has a triple on her road bike and loves it. I have compact doubles on my road bikes and use both rings and all sprockets (8 or 10) every ride.