Another win for older tech?
Maybe I’m missing something, but I have never understood the appeal of electronic shifting.
Are you asking about electronic, or wireless shifting? Because electronic wired shifting is also a thing, and adds some advantages, while wireless adds more advantages on top of that.
I’ve never used either, but from people who have, I’ve heard that the shifting is a lot smoother on electronic shifting than mechanical. Whether smoother shifting is actually worth the price seems to be the debate most people have.
As for wireless, the advantages there become a little clearer and easier to explain. You can put the shifters wherever you want for maximum convenience. In the drops if you spend a lot of time sprinting. At the ends of your aero bars if you’re a triathlete or time trialist. You can even have multiple shifters at multiple positions. Plus, yeah, the stuff @Yawweee877h444@lemmy.world says about removing cables.
As I said though, this is all by reputation. I’ve only ever used mechanical.
It sounds awesome to me if it’s perfected and batteries can get smaller with longer charge.
No. More. Cables. Less stuff and the moving parts of the shifters, etc. Great idea to me, even if it’s still got issues. If I was rich I’d definitely try a build out with these.
but I have never understood the appeal of electronic shifting.
I spoke with a guy who has the Shimano Di2. One of the main benefits is that you don’t have to index the derailleur… it automatically does it and always puts you in gear without any BS.
He also mentioned something about automatic shifting, which sounds interesting.
When integrated with a bike computer, it can do some other cool tricks. The shifters can also control a bike computer, which can be convenient.
At the end of the day, all of my manual shifters (grip shift, brake lever, and trigger…) all work perfectly fine and can’t be hacked. LOL
When you make cycling too complex, it takes the fun out of it, IMO.
I spoke with a guy who has the Shimano Di2. One of the main benefits is that you don’t have to index the derailleur… it automatically does it and always puts you in gear without any BS.
^^^ This.
Cables work fine when you’re dealing with nine or ten rear gears, but going up from that to eleven or more gears, indexing becomes a problem, and an electrically-operated derailleur that can hit a gear correctly, quickly, every single time is nice.
For casual riders this probably doesn’t matter, since people ride around on badly-tuned derailleurs all day long and just put up with it. Heck, even recreational racers probably don’t need it. This is for guys wearing yellow or polka-dot jerseys around France, for whom milliseconds lost to shifting make a real difference.
I’m nowhere near good enough for this to make a difference for me, and I wouldn’t want the complexity, which is why my commuter has no gears at all–I was tired of fiddling and wanted something that would never, ever break.
I feel a wired solution would be better, more reliable and more secure, but wireless is the new black.
I feel a wired solution would be better, more reliable and more secure, but wireless is the new black.
And to be honest, a friction shifter would probably still be more reliable than an indexed derailleur. It’s too bad this “old tech” gets pushed away for newer, more complex stuff :(
