Originally Posted by
terrymorse
Those ultra-wide cassettes baffle me, but the Shimano road groups seem to be making small, conservative changes:
Ultegra 12-speed cassettes are now either 11-30 or 11-34 (I think those are the only choices).
Ultegra 11-speed came in 11-25, 11-28, 11-30, 12-25, 14-28, and 11-32.
Ultegra 10-speed had roughly the same ranges, except no 11-32.
Ultegra 9-speed had 11-23, 12-25, and 12-27.
I'm still using 11-28 10-speed, which is all I really need.
It’s not the cassettes that are the problem in my opinion. It’s the crankset. People what the low gears of the wide range cassettes but there isn’t a reasonable way to get from the high range to the low range without a lot of fiddling. For example, the
following gives the same speed (mph) and, thus, the same low gear for the two cranks but getting from one range to the other is a jarring gear change. The triple gives a much more reasonable change from high range to the middle range. If you need the low range, the change to the lowest range is still pretty good.
