Originally Posted by UCSDbikeAnarchy

Middle of the road is a good place to be, IMO. my road bike has Sora junk, and I can feel a huge difference when shifting on someones bike with tiagra/105. Althouhg admittedly DA stuff proably does work a bit better and saves some wieght but not worth the extra money. In terms of MTB I have ridden hard-tail treks with both deore/lx and xt/xtr. In pretty much all conditions, they shifted the exact same. The only real different was the weight.

my current mtb has sram x.9, but only beacuse I got a really good deal. I test rode a x.7 bike and it felt fine. Someone else sugested that you look for the best, and then take it a notch down. I would look for the worse, and then take it a step or two up. (of course in some cases that might end you up in the same place).

There is certainly a sweet spot in the middle where the quality is high and the price is fairly low.