6 Reasons 1x Gearing Is Better: Why I love it and why you might too

this video is sponsored by deck shell there are lots of hot topics in the world of cycling right now none more so than the number of chain rings on your bike it used to be three then it became two and now one is very popular but it's won by the group set for you well in this video i'll share the reason i like one by based on many years of testing bikes with different group sets on and dispel some myths like speed cadence range and gaps so i'm not here to sell you one buy i don't work for the manufacturers it's based on my personal experience and why i like one buy and some of the reasons might work for you uh but i'm not saying one bite so everybody it clearly isn't but there are many reasons many cases where one bite can work really well and offer certain benefits which i'll cover in this video i'm also not worried about the pros what the pros need or what the pros want because i'm not a pro you're not a pro i'm riding at normal speeds in normal real-world situations without support cars and closed roads so what the pros need and want is something else i'm not focusing on that i'm focusing on what we all need uh for riding in the real world which at moment is covered in snow here in the cotswolds so let's dive in the question i get asked the most probably is is it fast enough i think this stems from the fact that people arrived that the smaller single chain ring on the front is going to limit your potential speed at the higher end and on descent but let me tell you that is rarely the case and there's no shortage or top end speed with a setup like this so on this bike i can easily do 35 kilometers per hour with four sprockets remaining and in theory this 38 92 sprocket top gear will take you up to 70 kilometers per hour for comparison a 5211 setup which is quite common will take you up to 78 kilometers per hour so not much in it when you get up to that sort of heavy speed which is going to be on a mountain descent let's face it you're far better off going into an aero tuck to try and minimize your drag than trying to spin out at 70 plus kilometers per hour which will require a crazy cadence so i think that easily dispels the myth that a one by setup will hold you back at the top end unless you're a sort of rider spends your whole time smashing around in a 53-11 and it's like you and you don't have a pro contract then hello what are you playing that so the lack of speed is not an issue with one buy you can easily go to a bigger chain ring on a setup if you do want more top end speed but as i said i can do 35 37 kilometers per hour i still have four sprockets remaining freeze so there's no worry that i can't go as fast as my energy my legs my talent will take me on a setup like this so the gears are not nothing holding me back at top end it's my lack of fitness more often than not the other big question that people have about one buy and whether it's suitable for them is the gear range now bicycle drive trains have come a long way in the last 100 years go back 20 years and five or six pockets on the back was standard and that's why a double or even a triple was needed to increase the range of gears but now we have 11 12 and even 13 sprockets on a cassette so the need for a double or triple is much less than it used to be and a 1 by setup now with 12 or 13 sprockets as is the case here gives you all the range you get from a conventional two by setup and in some cases much more that sram eagle 1050 or 1052 setup borrow from the mounted bike that you can use on a gravel bike video linked above if you missed that gives you massive range more range than you can ever need and i've used that setup in the italian mountains and let me tell you i had no problems getting up the steepest climbs or bombing down the fastest descents on the other side so range isn't the issue you can clearly get a big range with the modern one by drive training now borrowing all that mounted by technology that we're seeing so range really isn't an issue we're one by and in fact it's a clear benefit of one bite in many cases because you can get a bigger range one by their many to buy setups this is probably the crux of the issue and one of the natives that people commonly point out as a reason not to adopt one buy is the gaps between the sprockets on the cassette and if you are obsessed about being the perfect optimum cadence at all times then one by probably won't be for you but i'm fairly confident the number of people obsessed about being the perfect cadence at all times are probably very small and most people will ride at a wide range of cadences and can work around some of the inherent compromises were one by which are getting much less with the advent of 12 and now 13 speed cassettes like we have here i think part of the problem is a visual one cassettes on one by gravel and mountain bikes are massive compared to road bike cassettes but it's worth looking more closely at how road bike cassettes have evolved so way way back in the day and the 1121 corn cob cassette was fairly standard and 1125 would be a climbing gear but a modern road bike group set like durace for example has an 11 30 which is simply massive compared to what we had back in the day and the 11 32 and 11 34 are fairly common on lower end or endurance bikes and if you look at 11 32 for example the gaps are fairly sizable in some places and my experience based on riding road and off-road bikes with two buy and one buy over the last 15 years is that the steps or the gaps are rarely the issue that many people make amount to be now admittedly a big cassette like sram's 1050 which you get many mountain bikes and now a gravel bike if you want it does have some quite large gaps at the business end of the cassette which can be an issue sometime but of an emphasis on sometimes most of the time it's not a problem it's much less of a problem running off-road than it is on a road the only time i really found a one by gatsby a slight problem we're on a road bike on a fast group ride when the pace was being set by somebody else so i wasn't in control of how fast i wanted to go and it was usually too fast for my taste but the number of times i was in the wrong gear were minimized by the fact that your changing gears quite a lot on a group ride especially here in the cotswolds with quite undulating terrain it's not a flat for long going up and down so you're constantly changing gear so the percentage of that ride that i spent in the not quite perfect gear was very very small and most time it wasn't an issue now the issue of cadence is an interesting one and i looked through some old strawberry data and paid out one typical ride of about three hours for some hills and flat roads and my average cadence as an rpm or revolutions per minute was 88 for the entire ride and i maxed out at 117 but a large period where my sweet spot was between 90 and 100. so that's a fairly small band from 90 up to 117 with 1900 being the biggest average so 10 revolutions per minute between a minimum and maximum and that's my sweet spot i'm not sure how many people have a similar experience with their cadence with a higher or lower i'd love to know your thoughts on a topic down below whether you go for bigger gears or time or lower gears do you spin to win or do you grind to whatever grinding gets you bad knees usually so um so it's an interesting topic and like i said if you're obsessed about being that perfect cadence all the time one buyer might not be for you another absolute hot potato of a topic is cross-chaining and some cyclists lose their absolute mind over cross-chaining so it's a bad thing should avoid it at all costs your life depends on it but is it really that bad well no it's not really that big a problem in my experience yes there might be more stress and strain on the chain at certain angles but in my experience it's impossible to detect whether chain is wearing out faster on a one bite versus a two by the differences are so small but what about efficiency surely cross training is less efficient than the perfect chain line at all times well one study i found showed that cross chaining made no measurable impact on the efficiency of the drivetrain in total and the other factors bear in mind that the number of times the amount of time you spend cross chaining is very small now of course you can make the argument that a perfectly straight chain line can be the best for efficiency at all times but even on a two bite or three by you're not gonna be in that perfect straight chain line at all times unless you're riding in one sprocket on a cassette at all times so there will be some degree of angulation even on a two bite or three by just on a one bite it might be more extreme but you're not riding in those extreme gears at all times you spend most of your time in my experience in the middle range of the cassette only using those bigger sprockets or smaller sprockets for a shorter amount of time so the cross chaining isn't really a factor i know a lot of people make it out to be a big problem but it really isn't a big problem and i've been riding one by two by three by bikes for most of my life and i've never had any issues from cross chaining whether it's efficiency concerns or a chain and sprockets wearing out more quickly so i think we can put that one to bed has not been a big issue that many people make it out to be maybe in the pro ranks where a few watts can make a difference yes but as i said for normal riders like you and i it's not really an issue i also think one buy looks much better as well it's clean it's simple it's uncluttered now personally i don't think derailleurs or mechanisms look that nice at all even when they're wrapped up with carbon fiber and other exotic materials so having one less mechanism is one less ugly thing hanging off the frame attached to a frame so it looks clean looks modern looks uncluttered unfussy and i like that now in an idle world i'd love all the gear mechanisms to be hidden away from sight so in the frame boston bracket or rear hub even but we're a long way from that happening but this is a step in the right direction and definitely looks much better to me there's also frame design benefits by removing a front mech which we can see very well on this 3t explorer race max you can redesign this area to be more optimal in terms of stiffness weight and also air dynamics we've seen that on the 3t strata and the vlo which i reviewed linked above if you missed that and we're seeing them re redesign this area in a way you can't when you have to accommodate the front mech now of course those aero gains or stiffneck gains are subjective of course you can believe or not believe their claims around improvements like getting rid of the front mech allows in this area but definitely something that will be exploited further going forward and the other factor especially important on a gravel bike like this where tie clearance is everything is that you can increase the tire clearance keep the chainsays short and also keep the q factor the distance between the pedals nice and narrow like you get on the road bike rather than the wider stance you get on a mountain bike so getting rid of the front mech has clear frame design benefits and i'm sure we'll see much more in this area development in the future i find one by drivetrain trains much quieter than two by or three by as well these modern groupsets have a clutch mechanism in the back which stops the chain slapping on the derailleur there so much higher tension and that's a rough ground or pave makes the bike much quieter and protects the frame from damage as well you also don't have the front mech rubbing on the chain in those extreme chain angles as well so you have much less noise so unless you like a noisy bike one by is definitely a quieter setup so those are my reasons for really liking one buy and why it works for me now i'm not here to try and pull the wall over your eyes or convince you to buy a one by i'm not in a pocket of the industry selling one by group sets this is my honest unbiased opinion based on years and years of testing different types of bikes with different group sets and how i come to really enjoy the benefits of mumbai and why it works for the riding i do here in the real world which is very slow today has to be said so i know it won't be for everybody but for lots of people i think one buy works really well i want to dispel some of the myths because i see lots of comments online people saying this and that's about one by one doesn't work are people who clearly haven't tried it now the biggest takeaway from the video is to give it a go if you have the opportunity to try one by try it and then decide whether it's for you or not i've had the opportunity to try one bite on many many bikes which i know i'm very fortunate to have the opportunity to do so if you can try it it might open your eyes and i know it won't be for everybody but i think a lot of people can benefit from one buy in a way that i've benefited in the last few years and i think they're definitely more room for improvement 13 goes a long way to improving it this really smart cassette design on this echar group set works really well link to my review that group set above if you missed it and just to reiterate i'm not worried about what the pros need or want we've seen some well publicized issues with one bite and a pro proton but i don't give a toss what the pros need i want to be honest i'm a normal rider like you riding normal roads without support cars or closed roads um and here in the real world one buy works really well anyway those my thoughts on one buy want to share them with you get your thoughts on them as i said i'm not trying to force it down your throat i know it won't be for everybody but i'd love to hear your thoughts on one by whether you've made the leap to one by have you enjoyed it or have you gone back to two by and it's not worked for you um let me know what you think down below i'd love to know your thoughts on this very interesting topic in the world of cycling at the moment anyway that's all for now make sure you like this video enjoy watching it and subscribe if you haven't already and i'll leave you with my sponsored message for this video this video has been sponsored by dexshell a manufacturer of a wide range of waterproof gloves socks hats and other accessories keep you warm and dry whether it's snowing outside or it's pouring down the rain so check out their full range at their website linked down below

Channel: David Arthur - Just Ride Bikes

Views: 141,515

Keywords: cycling, bikes, road bikes, gravel bikes, mountain bikes, tech, reviews, bike reviews, cycling reviews, bicycles, cycles, 1x, gearing, sram etap, eagle axs, campagnolo, ekar, 1x13

Id: WWFSDqSOe5o

Length: 14min 48sec (888 seconds)

Published: Tue Jan 26 2021