Originally Posted by
staehpj1
If you are an experienced rider with a well established riding posture, then I don't see much value in them. Then again if you want a different posture for commuting or whatever than you want on tour maybe it makes sense. Personally I never change my stem and my road and touring bike are set up the same.
Agree. In addition, I've owned stems like the one the OP linked to and found them to be somewhat prone to failure. Which is to say: I've owned two and they've both failed after a relatively small number of adjustments. One refused to lock in place, the other became permanently wedged.
That said, I now use Specialized's
Comp-Set shim-adjustable stems on the majority of my bikes. The Specialized model doesn't allow infinite adjustment, but it's light, reliable, and reasonably priced. It's a great stem in it's own right and the adjustability certainly doesn't hurt. If you're going adjustable, it's the only way to go in my book.