Originally Posted by
rosefarts
What I find interesting about your post, is that the bike you’ve just described seems a lot better than similarly priced stock bikes from the shop. The wheels, the seatpost, the crank. The mechanical shifting was definitely a weight choice, not price.
The Aethos or whatever doesn’t have anything close to that.
It doesn't seem "a lot better" to me. Just very different. An S-works Aethos would be similar money with top-tier components throughout, including latest gen DA Di2 etc. Frameset cost is pretty similar too if you were building it up from scratch.