Deore vs MT520 brakes
 

I've just bought a bike that came with MT400 brakes. My previous bike had excellent SLX brakes. I wanted to reuse the SLX brakes, but needed new hoses and pads and it all was too expensive to mount those 7 y/o brakes on a new bike, so I decided to sell the bike with them.

I have weak hands (and a history of tendinitis) and appreciate a lot having brakes that are powerful with as little force as possible.

Right now I'm considering replacing the MT400 with the following options:

- Deore M6000 brakes for 89€.
- MT501 2 piston brakes for 87€.
- Dual MT520 4 piston brakes for 112€.
- MT520 4 piston front brake and MT501 2 piston rear brake for 100€.

All levers have Servowave (which I like) and are almost identical (some branded Deore and others MT500). Is this really the case? or are the Deore better brakes? I'm really leaning towards last option, as I'm pretty sure I don't need 4 pistons in the rear, but will probably appreciate them in the front.

Thanks!

Dual MT520
https://www.singletracks.com/mtb-gea...ce-for-enduro/

Finally pulled the trigger and bough dual MT520. I still can't get around the fact that a 1400€ bike comes with crappy MT400 brakes. I would have been happy with "basic" Deores I think... :mad:

The nice thing is that the wife's bike is going to be upgraded from Avid BB7 chinese clones (yes, that was risky), to MT400 :lol:

The BR-MT520 is the basically the same caliper as the new Deore BR-M6120 caliper.

Well, I don't care about the logos. I just wanted something that braked with as little force as possible. 4 pots are probably overkill for what I do (mainly cross country with a few technical descents), but at 112€ it was unbeatable. Even cheaper than my 7 year old SLX brakes.

I'm going to break the scale though... I was used to an 11.5kg bike, and now I'm riding a 13kg one and adding heavy brakes to it. Although to be honest, this one has a dropper post and 29x2.35 tires instead of "flimsy" 26x2.00.

Pay attention to what pads you’re getting.

Organic pads. They're the ones I wanted as I don't want to replace the rotors (yet).

I really can't understand how it's possible that a, otherwise well equipped 1400€ bike, can come with such a crappy brakes and rotors though. I've seen that it's common in all brands though. A friend of mine has a 1500€ Orbea with MT200 brakes 🤦‍♂️

Settle down, you mentioning Deore brakes a few times in previous posts, I was just letting you know that you bought Deore brakes without the Deore name on them.

Wife's $1900 Cannondale also came with mt200, so far she isn't complaining but her other bike she was using off-road was a cross with cable discs so I'm sure its better. While I know higher end shimano brakes work better even a basic shimano hydraulic disc is an impressive thing. I upgraded both kids' bikes from cable to MT396 which are Alivio level and they stop quite well and the kids went from four finger squeezes to 1 finger slow downs and 2 finger stops. All depends what you're used to.

Well, it depends what you're trying to ride. Today I rode a 37km route with 800m of ascent and didn't have any problems with the brakes as it was mostly undulating terrain with a few climbs and short descents. On tuesday however, I rode a 28km route with 1100m of ascent and they were definitely not up to the task on the steeper inclines. One finger braking was definitely not comfortable, and with 2 fingers I got tired.

IMHO, if the bike has a dropper, it's expected that the user is going to ride over difficult terrain, and that deserves something more substantial than a couple of cheap MT400.

I really feel like the interface of pad to rotor is the most important thing, and everything else is a matter of adding adjustments and durability. They also don’t seem to change very fast. The new brakes that come with new group sets are usually a matter of matching the styling.

Slx or XT work great.

I don't agree. Lever ergonomics are important too. MT400 lever is too long for comfortable 1 finger braking, and you can get more power out of a shorter Servowave lever, Servowave levers also have way more pad-clearance which makes it really difficult to hear the dreaded "ding ding ding" when a rotor suddenly rubs the pads in every revolution.

I agree, as I said, I've been running SLX on my previous bike. I'm not sure I'd buy them again though. This is why I only considered Deore and MT520, as they have the same braking power and only lack tool-free adjustment (I can live with that) and use different (and cheaper) materials on some parts.

I have finally assembled the brakes. The bike came with low end rt10 rotors which I'm going to change them in the future, but didn't intend to do so right now.

On the shimano website they're listed as compatible with mt520 calipers as long as you use organic pads. However, the rotors are wide tipe, while the caliper uses narrow pads. This means that part of the rotor track, on the inside, is unused by the pads. Will this cause any problem?

EDIT: finally managed to ride with the new brakes. No problems with the rotors as far as I was able to notice. Excellent brakes for 112€, gone back to effortless one finger braking which is really nice.