Shimano 105 vs Ultegra: Which Groupset Should You Choose?

now there's a time in every road cyclists career where they decide that the only way to get to pro level standards of performance is to upgrade every component on the bike one of those components is the group set and in this video i'm going to compare the shimano 105 group set with that of the shimano ortega group set and give you some thoughts on whether or not you should pay to upgrade perhaps you found this video because you're looking to spec your new bike either with shimano 105 or ultegra alternatively perhaps you already have a shimano 105 fitted bike and you're considering upgrading to ultegra either piecemeal or wholesale in one big swoop one big swoop i'm here to tell you that you will be better served by going with the 105 option and hopefully that will become clear why over the course of this video hi i'm monty this is sporty cyclist and on this channel i make videos from the perspective of an enthusiastic mammal road cyclist my videos cover topics like road bike maintenance training product reviews generally anything that i think might make yours and my cycling life better so let's get into it firstly what do we mean by group set will shimano make a number of them essentially it covers the majority of the main components on the bike starting at the front you have the handlebars with the shifters and the brake levers should say handlebars are not part of the groupset in the middle of the bike whoever says that you've got the chainring the cranks chain and the cassette you also have the brakes whether those are calipers or disc brakes those form the main components of your group set so i think it's helpful when talking about shimano 105 and ultegra to understand the general range under the shimano road bike group set scale so starting at the top of the range you've got dura ace that's followed by ultegra and then shimano 105 and then on the shimano website there is sort of a line drawn literally actually that demarcates those three group sets from those that come below on lower spec bikes for completeness below that line you have tiagra followed by sora and claris it is clear cycling wisdom that whilst tiagra is more than adequate for all of your road cycling and probably sportive and enthusiastic road cycling needs you must assume tiagra and at least go for 105. that's not really the subject of this video so let's assume that you're already in the world of 105 ultegra and let's move on now in addition to needing to know the model range name dura race ortega 105 it's also important to know that there are different model generation families in order to demarcate different generations of the same model range shimano uses a series of numbers the current ultegra right now is the r8000 range the current 105 is the r7000 range and that r7000 range was released in 2019 that's 11 speed the r8 000 was released in 2018 and again that's 11 speed now a deep dive in terms of model numbers is probably too much for this particular video but important to know if you are upgrading from 105 to ultegra components or indeed downgrading from ultegra down to 105 you need to make sure that you are operating within the sort of same compatible model range families so the clear one for me i have a 105 setup which is 5700 now that's 10 speed and that dates back from 2010 as i'm upgrading to ultegra as i have upgraded to ultegra components before i've needed to buy those components from the equivalent 10-speed ultegra group set which is six seven zero zero if i had bought them from six eight zero zero which is the next generation of ultegra it's a very strong likelihood that those wouldn't have worked well with my existing setup if you are upgrading make sure that you do your homework maybe i'll link to a relevant post in the description below to help you find information on that now i think i've managed to garble that enough however if you're just looking to buy a new bike and you're considering between 105 or ultegra then you'll be getting the current models r8 000 ultegra 11 speed or shimano 105 r7 000 11 speed got that move on one clear reason for choosing ultegra over 105 is that ultegra is the only one of those two group sets which has electronic gears that's denoted by having the di2 nomenclature now i've not personally used di2 i am aware of friends who have expect on their bikes and they love it so if you are really into getting electronic gears that's using mini electric motors in the front and rear derailleurs in in order to change gears rather than having cables driving spring-loaded mechanical derailleurs clearly ultegra is the choice for you is 105 gonna get di2 that question has been hanging out there for many years certainly since the last generation which is when ultegra was electrified and there seems to be no sign of it arriving yet my view and i have absolutely no information on this whatsoever shimano is going to be slightly wary about making a very strong shimano 105 offering which is so good that there's no real reason to upgrade to ultegra other than the fact that ultegra has di2 and therefore ticks that box for those people that want to get electronic gears but i'm not going to spend the cash in order to upgrade to full-on professional dura ace so you're buying a new bike and you're looking to choose between the two group sets so how much are you going to end up having to pay for said bike well when i bought my trek domain 4.3 back in 2013 that was specked with full 105 albeit two generations ago and that bike cost me 1 800 pounds from memory i think the old tegra version was well into the 2 000 pounds now the difficulty we have when looking at the prices of bike spec with 105 and ultegra and comparing the two is that often there are differences in other specs as well in particular wheels where you tend to see nicer bikes with ultegra are spec with nicer wheels that are materially better than those that are on 105 spec bikes generally speaking from the reputable bike manufacturers you're tending to see that 105 spec bikes tend to come in around a 2000 pound mark 2 500 alternatively bikes that are spec with ultegra tend to be in the range of two and a half to two point seven thousand pounds who says two point seven two thousand seven hundred pounds similar sort of number in dollars perhaps up to three thousand three thousand two hundred dollars as always you might well find a bargain particularly if you're looking at an older model if we're talking about ultegra spec bikes that are di2 you're looking at another maybe 500 pounds so significant jump up in terms of cost of bike if you are going with ultegra it's worth pointing out that generally speaking bike manufacturers do not spec ultegra gear systems on aluminium bikes so you can buy some excellent aluminium framed bikes for instance you could buy the aluminium version of the cannondale synapse for 1 300 pounds that comes with 105 and that would be a great beginner bike in fact it'd be a great bike full stop but you're not going to find an equivalent bike like that with ultegra if you're gonna go for ultegra then you're really very much into the carbon bike frame territory now one argument you might hear in favor of ultegra is the fact that it weighs less than 105. now this is undisputably true disputably it's not like i've weighed them a bit of light googling tells me that the weight difference between ultegra and 105 if you include most of the main components is about 200 grams now that is less than your full water bottle and is less than the food that you might put in your pockets at the start of the ride if 200 grams is going to make the difference for you in a road cycling performance scenario then you're probably a professional and you probably should be going for dura race so i will not accept the argument that you should go for ultegra over 105 from a weight perspective you could lose 200 grams off your midriff and that would be far more beneficial to your overall ride cycling performance and would not hurt your wallet in the same way as upgrading to ultegra okay rant over what i will accept as an argument in favor of one or the other is aesthetics now it's certainly the case that my old style 105 from 2011 definitely looks old-fashioned it doesn't have the chunky forearm design that is sported by most ultegra group sets these days but the current generations of 105 and ultegra are rather similar now your personal view might be that the ultegra has a little bit more finesse perhaps than the 105 but for me i quite like the chunky 105. but to be honest there's not much in it and you'd have to be pretty anal from a group set spotting perspective to notice the difference when you're out on a ride for me there's not much in the aesthetics front either now in the blog post version of this video which you're welcome to read i'll include a link in the description below i attempted to create a table showing the price of the full group sets ultegra 105 if you to go out and buy the whole thing on wiggle or some other website today to be honest it's a bit of a fruitless task because i don't think anyone really goes out and buys a full group set with a view to fully upgrading their bike in one go the chances are if you're thinking about upgrading from 105 to ultegra you'll be doing so on a piecemeal basis which is exactly what i did a few years ago in that scenario you're going to be more interested in the difference in price between ultegra and 105 components on a piece-by-piece basis now it's quite difficult and probably quite tedious futile to go through the whole component set and list out the price differences here but generally speaking you're going to be paying 20 to 30 pounds more per component on ultegra kit versus 105. as you start adding more and more items that difference in price soon starts to add up so should you upgrade each component on your bike from 105 to ultegra as it wears out well you can do i certainly did it but to be honest i didn't see a noticeable improvement so in my case i managed to knack in my 105 front derailleur and i replaced it with an ultegra one which was fine it worked i probably then added a cassette and then moved on to the chain the problem with doing so is that generally you're sort of adding stuff piecemeal and you don't notice that improvement because it is so gradual i'm not the best in terms of keeping my bike clean so whilst i was adding these components the remaining components that were left on the bike were probably slightly worn down and that probably held the performance back of the overall system so if you've been watching this channel a while you'll have seen that i recently renovated my trek domain 4.3 road bike i replaced a number of components i stripped down cleaned and rebuilt a number of other ones by doing that all in one go i noticed a really material improvement in terms of the drivetrain performance the changes became smoother and more positive in a way that i never noticed when i was replacing individual components and upgrading them in the case of that overhaul i only used 105 and 105 level equivalent components that step up in overall performance was much greater than any individual benefit i felt from component by component improvements to ultegra so if i can give you one tip if that's what you're thinking of doing i would put your money and effort into giving your bike a total overhaul with existing components before you think of upgrading to ultegra as some sort of panacea for improving the performance of your drivetrain but perhaps you're watching this video because you simply want to make a decision between 105 and ultegra for your new bike so the question is which is the better group set and the answer is undoubtedly that ultegra is the better group set in terms of performance but is it the best group set for you it's probably worth bringing up the concept of the trickle-down effect the trickle-down effect is where the performance improvements that are introduced at the very top end of the shimano range gradually move down the model families as each one gets updated over time say for example we have the technology that was in the dura race group set that was used by bradley wiggins to win the tour in 2012. that would have then been used in the next generation of ultegra that was released in 2014 and then trickled down further into the latest generation of 105 that was released in 2019. so effectively the shimano 105 group set that you might buy on your road bike this week is the same technology that was used to win a tour de france in 2012. the performance of that particular group set is going to be pretty strong now the current generation of ultegra will of course include some of the technology and the improvements that came in and the last generation of ultegra so again we'll be a step up from 105 but the point i would make is that you or i as an enthusiastic road cyclist we don't need anything more than 105 now you might want to spend a little bit more because you'd like to have a bike that says ultegra on it and i wouldn't blame you part of this is about the aesthetics and just the sheer enjoyment about getting bike technology i absolutely wouldn't stop you from spending the money in order to get an ultegra equipped bike very likely that the next bike that i save up for and buy will have ultegra on it just because i fancy a shimano ultegra bike but i will be seriously having a word with myself and saying do you really need an ultegra bike when 105 will do absolutely everything you need and satisfy every potential performance requirement you might have for your road bike and that's it really the only clear argument right now for getting ortega over 105 is if you absolutely definitely must have electronic gears and here endeth my sermon now do you have a different view to me are you absolutely committed to ultegra over 105 let me know in the comments if you found this video useful hit the thumbs up icon below if you'd like to see more videos from me on road cycling please do hit the subscribe button i've been monty this is sporting cyclist the mammal channel and i'll see you on the next video riding 105. [Music] you

Channel: Sportive Cyclist

Views: 48,861

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Length: 14min 44sec (884 seconds)

Published: Sun Dec 06 2020