Originally Posted by
PeteHski
You can pick and choose which of the “fancy” marginal performance features you like. If weight is your main priority then you could buy something like an Aethos and compromise on aero efficiency. But most people have realised that weight is not actually the most important factor in a high-end bike unless they are competing in hill climbs.
We don't need to run in circles because we agreed this: 1 kg lighter bike can only give marginal gains (0.2-0.5 km/h on flat / climb, maybe?). My point is that 5000 EUR/USD is already a very high price that should offer you the fancy light weight as well. I could buy a 6.6 kg bike with 2300 eur 6-7 years ago. Now a 5000 EUR / USD bike is 2-2.5 kg heavier and part of this difference comes from lower grade (cheaper) carbon fiber used, compared with 6-7 years ago.
If you put it the other way around, once they reduced costs on carbon fiber and increased the weight, the reasonable price would be below 4000 EUR/USD (the extra of almost 75% vs the old bike price being inflation, disk vs rim brakes and electronic vs mechanical shifting). But still, there is a premium price of 5000 vs max 4000, which is not justified in any other way than greedy...