Mysterious Lady

Would a SRAM X.5 rear derailleur be comparable to a Shimano Deore? Or more like the Shimano Alivio derailleur (or Acera?)?

thanks!

Talldog

Never use SRAM X5 but judging by the price point I would guess it is closer to Alivio than Deore. However, this may be an apples vs oranges comparison. Most mid level and up components work very well. Most get dissed because the owners don't maintain and adjust them as required.

Mysterious Lady

Thank you, talldog! Regarding your above statement, how do I know when it needs adjusting and what other maintenance should I be doing? Is that something a newbie can learn through... watching youtube videos or something? I would like to learn to do basic maintenance w/o relying on my lbs for every little thing. But then again, I don't really know what I'm doing. lol Different topic than the original post, I realize, but if you'd care to share your opinion, I'm listening!

SuperDave

One-stop shopping for just about any maintenance procedure you can think of:

https://www.parktool.com/blog/repair-help

Mysterious Lady

Thanks a bunch! I've looked at Sheldon's site quite a bit, but this Park Tool site will be much more helpful to me for this type of thing. Appreciate it!

SuperDave

Between Sheldon Brown and Park tools, I'm usually quite able to impersonate an expert.

justfitme

How you were able to compare from pricing point of view - it is so confusing for example on Jensonusa you can get set of Alivio shifters for $20 and the set of X5 is $57 and set of LX is $47...

on ebay X5 rear derailleur goes for $45 average, alivio for 20-35 and deore for the same as X5 45 dollars.

This is pretty much goes with common line-up
X0-XTR
X9-XT
X7-SLX
X5-Deore
X4-Alivio...

of course you can't say Accord and Camry are the same cars, but they compete directly...

jsdavis

The LX line has been discontinued in the US for at least a year. The model number on the LX shifter is M580 and the current Deore shifter is now M590 and M660 for the LX and SLX shifters. It should be safe to assume the LX shifters are a few years old thus driving their prices down even though they are new. Then again the Deore M590 shifter is also $76 so I'm not entirely sure what's going on there.

Mysterious Lady

Thanks for the additional input!

SuperDave

Cutting to the core of the original question, by the time you're considering upgrades to/purchases of X.5/Deore (or whatever), you're already in the realm of "stuff which is gonna last you until you're bored with it." At this level of build, your attentiveness to maintenance is far more important than the initial quality of the group. Anecdotal: I'm at 7 years and >10k miles with the Shimano XT group on my Jamis, maintained with attentiveness, and I've never had to adjust the rear derailleur. Much less change a cable or something intrusive like that.

A10K

The biggest difference between Shimano and SRAM stuff has to do with the style of shifting; Shimano's RapidFire Plus alternates between thumbs and index fingers for up and downshifts, while SRAM's shifters use thumb levers for both directions. I own a hybrid I built up with older XT components (M750), and recently got to demo an MTB with X5 components for about six hours, and in my opinion the X5 shifting blows the XT away; the shifting was just on a hair-trigger, and many times I found myself accidentally shifting when my finger got too close to one of the paddles on a big bump. Don't get me wrong, the XT's are solid components and shift reasonably fast, but the X5's have that little extra snapiness in their action that affects satisfaction way more than performance.
Test ride both to see what you prefer; I expect the M750 group to last me as long as I ride it, if not longer, but just prefer the feel of the newer SRAM components.

jsdavis

Some newer Shimano shifters have "2-way Release" which means the lever that releases the cable can be manipulated with thumb or index finger. So shifting can be thumb-thumb or thumb-index.