Electronic vs mechanical shifting: the pros and cons

[Music] thanks for joining us today from alpine cider in one diligon a charming little town about 20 minutes ride from bright in victoria's high country we've been up here for the week testing many many bikes and one of the things that we found with testing so many bikes was that there were so many different group sets that we were handling over over the week so we thought we'd pull together ian and dave to talk about some of the key differences between those group sets and specifically the difference between electronic and mechanical indeed and i think it's a really important topic to discuss because we've seen especially in the last six months even the last 12 months a whole new range of high performance very integrated road bikes at the market that are basically pushing uh electronics in and forcing mechanical out and you see that through some you know bikes like the new specialized tarmac sl7 that just can't be set up with mechanical shift cables because the way the handlebar routes the cables through the stem and then through the headset there's just no room for those cables you can only fit a wire or even better wireless system so yeah i figured it's a pretty good topic to discuss okay so to kick things off ian can you talk us through the basics of mechanical versus electronic dave i can and i'm so glad you asked so mechanical is operated by a primitive system which involves a cable running down from the shifter to the derailleur as you change the shifter the cable tension changes moving the derailleur and then you have electronic group sets which come either as a wired uh group set which is campagnolo's eps or shimano's di2 or a wireless group set which is sram's etap so those are the basic types but why are we seeing such an increase in these electronic groups at stave so it comes down to a number of factors but electronics are in a crazy way simpler so rather than having to worry about where and how that mechanical cable is routed from the handlebar to the back of the bike or the middle of the bike electronics really simplified the process so you can just have one wire that goes out from the handlebar down through the frame and splits off to a battery and two derailleurs you don't have to worry about reinforcing the frame or which direction the cable is running it can basically be done anyway in the case of wireless it's far simpler again you don't even need holes in the frame to handle such wires or any cable it's just a matter of syncing up those derailleurs and bolting them on so it really is simplifying things the other reason that we're seeing electronic come to the forefront is the way it shifts so rather than having your mechanical advantage trying to push that derailleur to shift the gears you now have motors doing the work for you so rather than having the force to overcome you know the front shifting you have a motor that forces that chain up there and it gives a much quicker more positive shift the other element is that mechanical cables they do go out of adjustment they do get dirty they do wear out they can fray by comparison an electronic drivetrain it's robotic as long as you remember to keep that battery charged or the batteries charged uh it's always going to work the way you initially set it up and i think that's a really good point you talked about simply simplification before and more from an install side of things but for the end user there's a simplification of you know you don't have the cable stretch but you also don't have gears going out of an alignment or if you do it's very simple to go through the process to to realign those there's no no trim or feathering that's required that's all automated so it's a very simple system for for an end user yeah and that trim being especially with shimano group sets is uh when you've got a two ring or a three ring set up on the front and you've got multiple gears on the back the chain basically can rub the front derailleur and you have these little micro clicks in the shifter with a mechanical setup that lets you adjust that for that rub for example on shimano di2 their electronic version it automatically adjusts so you don't have to worry about that rub it'll it'll figure out what gear combination you're in and and keep things quiet from there so it's quite a slick system there's also cool things you can do like programming it so that it automatically up shifts on the the front derailleur if if you reach a particular shift point yeah which is kind of cool yeah so certainly especially for newer riders there's um you can design it to be far more intuitive that you know there's no longer the the left shifter that doesn't match the right shifter in terms of which which levers you have to push for which direction the derailleurs go you can adjust it to to basically just uh be the same front to back or that you don't even have to worry about what the front's doing it's all automated so yeah and essentially also because you're talking about something electronic that's happening you don't even need to have the levers you can set up additional uh buttons to to alter the shifting as well which is something that you obviously can't do with mechanical yeah that's right you can have um satellite buttons so you can set up buttons in the drops or on the top so yeah you can have multiple points of shifting uh which is also really clean it can't all be upside though no so obviously there's the price electronics are still very much at the premium end of things and they you know they start in shimano they start at shimano altegra level uh which in the di2 is actually equivalent in price to shimano's durace mechanical so it's not a cheap group set uh in tram it's it's at the force level it's still you know a lot of carbon components it's a lot of wireless technology it's still a very expensive group set there's also the fact that you have to remember to charge your batteries which is not an issue you have with mechanical and then when things do go wrong you have less chance of fixing them yourself so if you were to have an electronic failure uh or fault out on the road um chances are you're not gonna have gears for a while whereas with a mechanical setup you could effectively carry a spare cable with you if you knew what you're doing or you could find a local shop and every local shop is going to have a cable to get you going again also i don't think uh with a mechanical setup anyone's ever pinched a wire putting back their seat post after traveling somewhere with the bike no no so first world problems there that's right the other benefits mechanical uh that it's lighter so not having a battery is still saving you weight the weights of the electronic systems are coming down all the time but they are at this point still heavier than the lightest mechanical options the other thing to keep in mind is that it's more of a common complaint with shimano di2 where the buttons can be a bit small so especially for people that live in cold climates that have to wear thick gloves it can be a little tricky to separate the two up and down shift buttons from each other and that can be a little bit vague not such an issue of mechanical shifting and that's why occasionally you'll see the top pros come pariru bay they'll spend the entire season on electronic shifting come peru bay where there's cobbles and they want that feedback and that separate control you'll occasionally see mechanical gearing come back into use right you mentioned earlier that there's this uh sort of convergence towards electronic gearing and that people are moving that way and the industry is moving that way do you think that that has negative implications for the amount of development that is being put into mechanical group sets is is the mechanical group set uh an endangered species i think so i think competition's a good thing right competition drives innovation and the development of products and we're seeing a lot less competition in the mechanical space sram has done very little with its mechanical groups in a number of years now and they've clearly been investing in the wireless technology uh meanwhile shimano they they have progressed their mechanical group sets but it it remains to be seen whether we'll see that happen in the next iteration of of durace and ultegra so yes i think it's not good news for the mechanical loyalists to see such a drive towards electronics that said the benefits i believe outweigh the negatives i'm just waiting for the prices to come down right do you think in five years time we'll be having people saying save the gear cable in the same way that they say save the rim brake unfortunately i think we will so i i really don't want that my personal bikes have mechanical shifting i believe your personal bikes have mechanical shifting i'm a bit of a mix okay you're a mix i love electronic shifting but also i don't have to work on it myself so sure so yeah and that's the thing is uh personally when i'm recommending bikes to people that don't want to replace their own gear cables i'm saying go di2 if you can afford it or go sram's etap because once you set it up charge your batteries you won't have to worry about the cable maintenance and especially with the latest crop of road bikes that are routing cables through the headset and all these things it just really eases the the system it really will save you money in the long run if you go with electronic upfront there are also some special considerations when we're talking off-road use andy when we were testing uh that canyon exceed before uh you're mentioning that perhaps the shifting wasn't quite as quick as you're used to yeah that's right i think there was definitely a noticeable lag in between shifting uh activating the button and feeling the shift at the cassette i think it's probably not so much of an issue on the road because you generally have a little bit more time there's no hills that sneak up on you you can generally see them coming from a mile away but with mountain biking generally you need that shift pretty instantaneous uh for it for a change in train so that was that was a really noticeable thing on the uh on the exceed yeah and speaking of off-road use we're seeing the use of clutch derailleurs more and more for um chain retention and i have to say the electronics make a lot of sense there because those clutch trailers have increased the amount of force that's required at the lever to move that derailleur and now we're seeing uh a motor basically handling that for you so it's a good positive thanks for joining us for this chat today uh of course if you liked this video or any of our other videos please click subscribe uh if you'd like more information on on this please head to cyclingtips.com for a full article and it's been a busy week for us this week hasn't it very we've got plenty of other interesting videos and articles so make sure to head to cyclingtips.com

Channel: VeloVeloVelo

Views: 80,874

Keywords: pro cycling, road cycling, cyclingtips, the beauty of cycling, road racing, cycling tips, Di2, shimano, ultegra, electric vs mechanical, 2021, field test, group test, vs, sram, force, wireless gears, electric gears, electric gearing, eTap, SRAM eTap, tiagra, 105, versus

Id: EMJWFJoh-hk

Length: 10min 40sec (640 seconds)

Published: Wed Jan 20 2021