its all personal preference IMO. for me: Campy>shimano>sram.

i dont think that sram will ever be the market leader until they come out with still cheaper groupsets. most people getting into road biking want a <1000 bike to get their foot in the door. shimano OWNS this market.

Good marketing has sold worse things than triple cranks.

Where's Pcad. He needs to read this thread to convince him to convert to Sramism.

Shimano is now forced to compete with SRAM so this will benefit us while the price wars are going on but it's pretty safe to say once SRAM establishes a solid hold on the market and grows the prices will start going up; this is why I might get another set of Rival now and save it for a build later on.

triples aren't going away.

Mtn bikes
touring bikes

SRAM has decided not to **** with their shifter mechanism, and to keep things simple has found a way to use the exact same double front shifter with a 'triple-type' drivetrain. Kudos to them, and I think it's a good idea for most recreational riding. I also know from my brief experience towing a trailer up some hills that if I was doing it day in and day out that I could make it work on a 34-32, but can absolutely understand the desire for a 30-34. One other thing - people buy products based on what they could possibly use at some point. Case in point:SUVs. If there's any perception that a double won't work for them, then they're stuck with SRAM. At least with shimano the sales man can say "we can just swap cranks to a triple, your left shifter is compatible if you ever decide to go that way". With SRAM it's "trust me "

that said, maybe when my 9spd campy gives up the ghost on my cx bike Apex will be out and it's off to the races with me

With compact cranks and longer and longer cassettes, the need for a triple becomes less and less. Why have multiple sets of front shifters, cranks, FDs, etc. in you inventory/lineup. There's R&D and production costs associated with a larger lineup.

In cost. Cost, money, dollars, $$$$, not performance.

People are psyched that maybe Apex could be OEM worthy for bikes under 2 grand.

https://www.cannondale.com/usa/usaeng...0RA94C-CAAD9-4

$1799 with rival

This is why I hate bicycling. They can't write a critical review. You don't test wide gear ratios on hills! You go test it on the flats where you'll be thinking "ugh, if I speed up I'll be spinning normally, or I can slow down and drop a gear."

Oh, here we go:
Ah, a real review.

There we go. There's that BS where they cater to sell you the product instead of reviewing it!

Oh, let me correct that. The under $1700 bikes.

Nit pick, nit pick.

10% under your mark isn't nit picking. I'm guessing Apex bikes will be in the $1400 range -- 30% below your mark, add in discounts and end of year......$1200.

Sure it is, because you found one of a few bikes that actually fell below $2k with Rival on it (and it's not even rival, it has tektro brakes: I didn't say anything because it's only 12.5% of the group). It fell 10% below. There are road bikes people buy all the way down to $900. So your bike misses half of the range of bikes Rival is missing on.

That's a big group of bikes. It's a very big group.

The article indicates that apex will have trigger shifters for flat bars as well. That tells me they hope to get on high end flat bar road bikes.


It didn't sound to me like SRAM was planning to sell Apex as low as it needs to be to compete with Tiagra, but maybe they're planning to give much better deals to manufacturers. So, to clarify: We're talking about Tiagra and Sora bikes, although I have little hope that Apex will compete with Sora. The bike you referenced would probably come in 105 on the Shimano side, might even have a random Ultegra part thrown in.

this isn't going to sound nice, but wtf are you talking about?

You go from talking about sub $2k Apex bikes to $900 bikes that don't come with Rival.

Nowhere does SRAM say what group they are specifically competing with. It's been inferred by this thread from Sora all the way to possibly Ultegra. The bike I referenced would be 105/ultegra at that price point....competing with Rival.

So you'd expect a lower price point for Apex competing with.....105/Tiagra.

Congratulations, you figured out what I was obviously talking about when I said sub $2k bikes. I should have just said tiagra/105 bikes because apparently there's one $1800 bike with Rival. My second point was that the $1800-$2000 bike is only 20% of the range I originally said SRAM is missing: $900-$2000 (which I called "sub $2k").

So I called it nit picking.

Then I stated that I thought you were right, it'd hit in the $1400 range and it would miss out on competing with Sora.

You pissed me off with that inane post about one Cannondale bike.

To me SRAM is like a drag car, lots of raw power but very little refinement. I ride SRAM now, shimano and campy in the past. The other two just have more elegance and quality.

SRAM took the stance of, it's light and it shifts, what more do you want? That is enough for most people but to get that lightness they sacrifice the quality/durability. Anyone that says the red drivetrain shifts as smooth or quite as 7900 or Record is full of it. There is a reason people put DA/record/kmc/wipperman chains with SRAM stuff to quite it down.

I don't think it's quite so simple. To me the 7900 brifters don't seem refined at all: They feel kind of cheap (I'm sure they're not) and the amount of movement before engagement on the right side downshift lever seems, well, embarrassingly large. Maybe that doesn't bug you after you use it?

I think each company has some parts that it's just clearly better at. For SRAM though, they seem to be very good at hitting a price point that appeals to people who'd be looking at Ultegra.

eh, i think the shifters will hold up well in the market, but it probably should be mixed with a rival RD and a sensible cassette.

You want inane?
https://www.bikesdirect.com/products/...p_cf_rival.htm

Very funny. Seriously though, nothing on bikes direct counts...

Apex should be quite reliable. It looks like old Rival with the new shifter technology. I think it will be a good group for racing. I won't use the Apex crank but go with a Rival crank and probably Rival brakes. Most of the weight is in the solid arm cranks (like the old Rival crank before OCT) and the aluminum shifters. 225g is only about a 0.55 lbs anyway.

where is pcad to tell us once again his bike shop doesn't like sram?

i have a feeling he will be here soon enough to rag on SRAM

Don't underestimate the use of a triple crank on a dedicated touring bike. I've normally set mine up with the top two chainrings about the same as I do a double on a road bike, then have an extremely small third chainring for those times when you've got a steep climb and a full pannier load. It's the best of both worlds: Road gearing for the flats plus a built in climber.

While the triple is going to get marginalized (I'm old fashioned, I've never seen the need for a triple on a stripped road bike), it's never going to go away. It's too useful.

I think the Apex group will land right between Tiagra and 105.

definitely not for shift quality.