Didn't watch that video from him... but from his others -
disc brakes suck
disc brakes are slow
disc brakes are the cause of every crash
new bikes are built like crap
new bikes are heavy donkies
integrated cable routing sucks
new bike prices are insane

Awesome Dura Ace equipped bikes can be found on facebook marketplace all day for $300 Australian.

OH, and only eat sugar. Nothing else, just sugar.

As someone who watched a lot of that YouTube and built a Winspace T1500 with a mix of Force and Rival I will say you are pretty spot on price wise and while $4K-$5K isn't cheap, that same bike would be $7K-$9K if it was big name brand. Simply put there really isn't a cheaper way to get an Aero bike of this quality and performance at the price you spoke of. Also looking at your range of bikes I can easily say yeah the T1500 isn't an all day in the saddle bike where I would want to do a century in but comfort wise if you take away the wider tires and flexing seat post it has been just as "comfortable" as an Canyon Endurace. I think the obvious thing is the fact that since these aren't really carried in stores as complete bikes, there is no way in testing them out and we all have to go by word of mouth.

BTW the bike as shown weighs 18lbs.
https://cimg4.ibsrv.net/gimg/bikefor...dad4c908ed.jpg

Durianrider is a bit of a bloke. He has a lot of passion and I think at his core his believes actually make sense but like any internet troll he is a tad too polarizing. For years he went on and on about anti carbon about how it fails and is just a landfill junk yet went on to sell his "own" carbon bikes and then promote other brands like Winspace. He is anti disc brake but cycles only in Australia and Thailand which is very different from where a lot of his core audiences cycles which need/want disc brakes. He promotes buying used bikes, which is fine but doesn't realize most people don't have the marketplace and eye to spot clean bikes nor the mechanical ability to fix bikes. I do agree with the sentiment that bikes are overpriced, but his whole idea that modern bikes have planned obsolescence is stupid, since Di2 11 speed or older tech is still pretty plentiful.

That's a nice looking build!

Yeah, even shopping Canyon's Outlet, it looks like $6500 is the lowest you could get an Aeroad with electronic shifting.

The other thing I wonder about aero bikes, especially with deep section wheels is stability in crosswinds. It's almost always at least breezy here, and that means at least some of the time I'm dealing with crosswinds. I love the look of an aero frame with deep section wheels, but I fear being blown around too much.

Builds an aero bike then slaps a quadlock on to perch a giant cell phone atop the aero bike.
Apologies, I have a bad sense of humor. I just noticed that and chuckled.
The bike is super cool and if any of the Chinese brands made a carbon road bike frame(or gravel) in my stack and reach, I would be really tempted to pick one up. The fact that so many will paint what you want is even cooler.

Thanks!

Canyon makes amazing bikes but IMO they have really lost me QC and price wise. The Ultimate and Aeroad are still amazing bikes but $6500 for a direct to consumer bike is still a lot since at that price you could build a Winspace T1500 with SRAM Red. When I brought the bike to be built up at my LBS the mechanic had no clue who Winspace was and 6 months later I met three other riders who built T1500s up at that same LBS.

I am a pretty small and light rider but honestly the deeper wheels aren't that bad since they aren't V shaped. I mostly ride on covered bike paths so the wind is minimal. Either way the money you saved not going big name brand you can easily buy two carbon wheel sets: one deep and one mid/shallow

lol yeah it's a bit of an oxymoron. However even though I went all in with now two aero bikes I do think the industry has been too obsessed with aero and to OP's point, weight has been forgotten.

But my opinion is that electronic group sets make sense just they are really heavy especially Rival AXS. I never was too much of a weight weenie but after riding Rival AXS I really started to reconsider my bike part choices and became okay mixing and matching groupsets

Why not?

The $1,300 tires on my truck are depreciating. My $220 Nikes are depreciating. My $250 dinner out with my family was gone in 90 min. Sometimes we spend money on things that just give us enjoyment.

A friend built up a T1500 frame with Ultegra mechanical and Hunt 50s. His XL (also white) frame alone weighed in at 1320g. Total build with Assioma PM pedals 8.6kg. Around $4500 total cost. Not something I'd go for but he seems to like it as well.

Yeah total for my Winspace T1500 Force/Rival AXS not including the pedals, cages, and accessories was $4200 and that included a LBS building it up. Some of the biggest weight savers or at least keeping the weight down was TPU tubes (36g) and carbon saddle 130g. Again OP's question posts was people getting more cutting edge bikes but them weighing and costing a ton more. I think going to a Chinese brand or mixing groupsets you can skirt this problem to a huge degree since 18lbs, $4200, 12 speed electronic shifting as shown for an Aero bike IMO can't be had via any big bike brand period. Whether you can get behind a Chinese brand and allow yourself not to care about the name on the frame is your own prerogative but the crazy thing is there are even cheaper brands like Elves and Yoeleo that provide very similar quality

So, Cannondale claims their aero bike with deep section aero wheels *can be* 3 min faster in a 40k TT over its regular race frame with normal wheels. 2 min faster with equal wheels.

I'm guessing that 3 min savings is at or about 300W (what most tests quote), going 40k into the same wind conditions the entire way. Probably dead flat, no tail wind sections...

That was the basis for my post above. Take a 2k 105 road bike with decent tires, real world conditions with stop lights, traffic, head/cross/tail winds, dogs - and the real biggie - being human and not holding 300w for an hour - how much time does that extra $5-8k really save? A minute? No time if you get stuck at a few redlights?

Not to get into some rant, but your body is one of the biggest depreciating assets yet we keep going. Houses are even depreciating assets, it's just the land that appreciates. IMO if something brings you joy and makes you a better person whether emotional or psychically then $8K if you can truly afford it is 100% fine. Now, people have different definitions of "afford", but IMO afford means you can either replace or repair it without going broke or touching your savings. Yes Americans live beyond there means so I am not here to promote $8K bikes but a modern $8K bike IMO is awesome but is what a Force eTap or Ultegra Di2 bike?

I 100% agree. It hasn't stopped me into buying into the aero marketing buzz, but yeah in real world scenarios aero IMO doesn't matter as much especially as a smaller rider. On a shallow light wheelset I can spin up and climb better, granted I do makeup time on the flats and descending with an aero bike.

I was thinking about an aero bike on yesterday's ride, when facing a 15 mph headwind for 6 miles. Sheesh.

Certainly enjoying my mostly depreciated and used S-Works stuff. If my salary was 500k an S5 DA build with Princeton CW could be fun. To each their own equation...

Performance gains are relative and marginal, but that doesn't mean they don't exist. Just because it's measured at 300 watts doesn't mean there aren't any gains at 200 watts.

Honestly if you're just riding along solo and don't care about performance, then none of this really matters and you are probably wasting your money buying bikes that are performance oriented. If you race or ride in fast groups or chase Strava KOM's/etc, then you already know that these things can be the difference between a pack finish and podium, or finishing the ride with the group or getting dropped.

I've only seen a couple real world 40km tests with ~25-40s time savings for aero vs non aero frames and cockpits (identical tire, tube/tubeless, rim profile, etc, wheelset combos). Manuf marketing depts, otoh, triple or quadruple frame timing cda figures in their own tunnels. Unlikely gap but not a surprise. Even TourMag in Germany, who publishes some of the more substantial aero bike reviews, lacks the resources to report frame cda values with standardized equipment. Good stuff either way though:
https://www.tour-magazin.de/rennraeder/aero/
If you can't read German, there's Google Translate for websites... that c68 at 4800 euro is a comparative bargain.

Agreed. There are marginal gains - I guess the talking points are the $$$$$ required for those marginal gains. It costs a metric crap ton of money to get a slight advantage in chasing KOM's, or to win a local crit. And while there are marginal gains in flat land speed, there are marginal losses in climbing bikes.

Where it really costs a crap ton of money - getting kids into the higher levels of the sport. Kids with talent and no money are screwed.

Is that price model sustainable? Is that price model turning away new riders, young riders?

A top quality road bike - with pedals and some carbon fiber, can cost more than a Honda CBR600R street bike. No matter how you shake it - that's insane.

100% agree. The cost of entry into bike racing is too high, and is definitely a barrier for many.

I'm sure someone will say the bike doesn't matter, the athlete does. Just get out there and race on whatever you've got, etc. I get it, you can race on anything, but equipment starts to change the game pretty quickly in bike racing. If you're giving up 20-30 watts to the person next to you just because you didn't want to, or don't have an extra $2k to buy the latest wiz bang aero whatever, you're basically resigned to a lower level of competition. This becomes especially apparent for junior racers.

You're conflating "cost of entry" with "cost of owning the best equipment."

I'm not necessarily talking about "the best equipment", I'm talking about mid-level and used equipment that doesn't immediately put someone at a disadvantage. The vast majority of Cat 5 and junior crit racers at my local races are on carbon wheels, for example. I guess we could argue about how much advantage that really gives them, but the reality is that anyone who shows up for one of these entry-level races and isn't on carbon wheels is immediately at some level of a disadvantage. Plenty of people see that and make the upgrade before they even try their first race, so that's a "cost of entry" for most.

Sure, some people choose to spend more than they need to when they start racing. But, they could start without those upgrades, and they would be just as competitive. (The difference in fitness levels at CAT 5 greatly exceeds the difference in equipment.)

Fully agree. I had to switch from 2300 EUR – 6.7 kg bike in 2015 to 3800 EUR - 7.7 kg bike, both non “aero”. The price now for an equivalent 6.7 kg bike (yes, including the compulsory electronics and more carbon) would cost close to 9000 EUR.
For sure, I will highly enjoy my new acquisition (and its electronic toys), despite the downgrade. But I cannot stop observing that the actual prices are insane, and I could never justify such investment if it did not come mostly as insurance compensation for the old, damaged bike.
Users get no performance gain for the huge increase in prices. On the contrary, there is a substantial downgrade at least in weight, for most brands. At most, users get some electronic toys and I guess that a substantial proportion of the price increase goes directly to the extra profit of the producers. I am wondering where this market will be 2-3 years later. Now… I am already out of it.

My wife only allows me to complain about the price of something once. After that, she cuts me off with "Stop! You sound like an old man!"

Maybe you just chose the wrong bike for your priorities - which appear to be tightly focused on weight. Although I think it's fair to say that a UCI legal 6.8 kg bike with electronics, disc brakes, aero frame and wide rubber is inevitably going to be more expensive than the previous generation of lightweight bikes with rim brakes, narrow tyres, non-aero frame and mechanical group. But outside of dedicated hill/mountain climbs, weight is really not very important at all within the range we are talking about. Club racers can be highly competitive on 7.7 kg bikes in the vast majority of events. It's far more important to have good overall aero and the right tyres.

I didn't target aero, as it goes higher in price. Weight in my benchmark was without pedals. No aero, 8 kg with pedals – not quite special, I’d say. That's why one would be surprised to find out that the price is substantially higher than in the past - this is just the evolution of the market.

The premise of this thread is comparing a bike that has 12sp electronic shifting to a bike that had 11sp mechanical. One can debate the value of this as an "upgrade", but this plays a major factor in the cost increase being cited.

There's been an avoidance of specifics in this thread, but I'll give a few examples to show my point:
2023 Specialized Roubaix Comp w/ SRAM Rival AXS = $5200
2023 Specialized Roubaix Sport w/ 105 mechanical = $3500 (This bike is identical to the SRAM Rival AXS model in all aspects aside from groupset).

Electonic shifting adds a whopping $1700 to the price.

For a 2015 comparison, the Specialized Roubaix SL4 Elite Disc (w/ SRAM Rival mechanical and hydro discs) = $2800 MSRP, which is roughly equivalent to $3500 in today's dollars. This is the same cost as the current bike with 11sp 105 mechanical.

I'm not going to hunt down weights, but I would be shocked if that 2015 Roubaix was any lighter than the 2023 model. My guess is that both are in the 19-20lb range.

This is pretty common with lots of youth sports and activities. I spent a bunch of years dishing out top-end race bike money every year for my daughter to play travel softball.

Interestingly, in the UK you can currently buy a 105 mech disc group for around £450 and Rival AXS at around £1200 (including power meter). 105 Di2 is also around £1200-1300.
So entry-level electronic shifting currently adds around £750 to a mechanical build - but you do get a power meter thrown in. From the above example it sounds like the cost difference on a complete bike is a lot higher, at least for now.

My 2022 Canyon Endurace with Force AXS, Quarq PM, DT Swiss carbon wheels and integrated carbon bars was £4500, which I thought was very reasonable for the spec. There's also a Rival build now with alloy wheels for £3300. There is currently no mechanical group option with my SL Frameset, but I recall the previous Ultegra mechanical build with alloy wheels was around the £3k mark.

I suspect this is 11 speed 105....in other words the old/obsolete version..... it looks like future 105 groups will be Di2 only and cost 3x as much. I hope they wise up and come out with a mechanical version but I am not holding my breath. And asking for a mechanical version that supports rim brakes would be perfect, since I am dreaming maybe ask for that too.