Performance? What is performance?

Here are my views.

Derailleurs and everything else are pretty much two separate categories. (Again, this is my view, and you are free to have your own.) I feel we base our impressions on derailleur (shifting) performance and project that to the other components. I feel this is misguided. It's lovely to have a quick, accurate shift, but it doesn't have all that much to do with your overall cycling experience, unless you are in a competitive race where milliseconds count. Even those of us who compete spend most of our time on bikes in things other than races.

You roll on your hubs all the time the bike is moving. You turn your cranks and pedals most of the time. You brake and shift even less. So I think hub performance matters more than derailleur performance.

And what's the performance difference between one hub and another? Friction is such a minor concern that even the worst hubs don't slow you down significantly. So what are other parameters? To me, durability is paramount. And unless you are very hard on your stuff AND you don't want to replace things, it scarcely matters which hubs, pedals, headset, bottom bracket you use. Most of us who ARE hard on our stuff also love our stuff for the beauty and pride of ownership. With that, it follows that we enjoy replacing and buying. So durability isn't even that important.

Again, I am leaving out competitive racing, which places unusually high demands on bikes.

Look at the crap that delivery bikes have. And it works.

OK, brakes matter. But you can get excellent braking from some moderately priced brakes.

So it boils down to sentimentality and aesthetics.

If you want top of the line stuff -- from any brand --, I think the primary motivators are sentimentality and aesthetics.

This is why it's hard for me to spend the money on top of the line stuff. I built myself a nearly-all-Campy Record bike in 1984. I haven't done the same since then. I just wanted the best.

I can understand buying top of the line hubs if you think you'll rebuild them into a few wheels over the course of your life.

I'm a frugal person. My joy comes from maximizing the balance between money and performance. That's the engineer in me. Anyone can build the best machine in the world given an unlimited budget. You don't even have to be smart. It takes intelligence to make something 98% as good for 30% of the price. So I look for exceptional values. I never find it in the bottom of the line, and I rarely find it in the top of the line.