It looks like they didn't have to do any real R&D work on the APEX. It's pretty much old Rival stuff with some moutain bike technology thrown in. The levers are no different than the Rival except it's all aluminum and the cranks are the old non-otc cranks. All the features are there. You can run just about any cassette you want depending on your RD. I think that this could be a good cheap racing group too. This stuff you can thrash and replace.