Originally Posted by alanbikehouston

The editors of "Cycling Plus" are lukewarm about road bikes that use the Tiagra group. Their reasoning is that a $600 bike with Sora is a good bike, with components that work well. To get a substantial and meaningful upgrade, a cyclist needs to move up to a $1,200 bike using Shimano 105. To the editors of "CP", the benefits of Tiagra are far too modest to justify upgrading from a $600 Sora bike to a $900 Taigra bike.

And, if someone looks carefully at the 2006 105 group versus the 2006 Ultegra group, the differences are trivial...hardly enough to justify someone selling his $1,200 105 level bike to buy a $2,000 Ultegra level bike.

From a "bang for the buck" point of view, the Shimano Sora and 105 groups offer good value. The Taigra and Ultegra groups offer a bit more style and polish, but at a high price.