That is not exactly my experience. We don't "ease up" when making a shift. If you're mashing the pedals, you can't shift - keep the cadence reasonably high and shifting is usually good. When approaching a hill you learn to shift before your cadence drops too low. One thing different about the Rohloff is that the indexing is in the hub, not the shifter. Because of this, there is always a little play in the rotary shift that doesn't always feel positive; you have to rotate the shifter slightly to take up the play in the cable before you can shift. Good shifts are noticeably better than a derailleur - they are instantaneous; that is, you don't get the slight lag of the chain moving from one cog to the other. We occasionally get stuck "between" gears (I don't know what exactly is happening inside the hub) and have to shift back and try again. The most annoying thing (to my stoker, at least) is that at least once on every ride I will forget which direction to twist the shifter and shift down when I meant to shift up.