Originally Posted by BikeWise1

I work on bikes for a living and I will tell you all the Sram stuff-even RED-has more slop in the pivots brand new than the same level of Shimano part after thousands of miles. I just took a worn out, 2 year old Rival group off of a nice carbon Specialized after the rider, frustrated with the sub par Sram durability rode my 8 year-old Shimano equipped bike and marveled at how beautifully it all still worked.

YMMV, but all of us here have ridden every component group available to us, and to a person, we're all back on Shimano.

But hey, at least Apex is cheap...