Is di2 worth it?

janwal

I have Di2 on a Ridley Excalibur and have to say it is superb to use.It never misses a change.Have just had the software updated this week and can now hold the rear shifter and changes up or down through the gears are continuous until you let go.It has made it even better.One thing I find really good about Di2 is that when you are braking you change gear with just your finger tips at the same time.Very useful for late junctions or hills to get into right gear for setting off again as the changes are so quick.Only charged it once so far this year.
Also just put 11 speed Ultegra on my Titanium winter bike.Again a very good system.Precise,clean changes(.I had been using older 105,5600 and it is so much much better than that).Especially the front changer,it is now superb with much less lever movement.Now thinking of changing the Ti frame for a Trek Domane disc and transferring it over to it.Should make a super comfy,well specked bike winter bike.
If I had the money though I'd go for Di2 everytime.It is just so good and precise every time.Very much a fit and forget system,apart from charging the battery.But you get into the habit of checking it after every ride,Hold down the right lever and if you get a green light it's still charged.Any trimming of the chain should it be needed takes only seconds using the junction box and shifters.
Go for it if you an afford it,you won't regret it.But they are both very good systems

mamba80

V strange, the folk who are all for Di2 really try an put down those that don't prefer it with stupid luddite style insults - is this to try and justify their expensive choices that don't make them any faster?

Personally, I would never buy Di2, not because of function but because I like the simplicity of a mechanical system, ease of mtce and I enjoy messing around with bikes...what an earth is wrong with that? if you don't, then get Di2, I couldn't careless over that choice.

electronic is excellent but with the advent of 6800 and 9000, the main adv di2 had over grps like 6700 or 7900, has narrowed significantly, TT accepted.

oh and I think Ui2 and Di2 states the difference between the 2 systems, even if its not a Shimano term.

as I said, the op asked for VFM, not what is better.

meanredspider

mamba80 wrote:

V strange, the folk who are all for Di2 really try an put down those that don't prefer it with stupid luddite style insults - is this to try and justify their expensive choices that don't make them any faster?

Personally, I would never buy Di2, not because of function but because I like the simplicity of a mechanical system, ease of mtce and I enjoy messing around with bikes...what an earth is wrong with that? if you don't, then get Di2, I couldn't careless over that choice.

electronic is excellent but with the advent of 6800 and 9000, the main adv di2 had over grps like 6700 or 7900, has narrowed significantly, TT accepted.

oh and I think Ui2 and Di2 states the difference between the 2 systems, even if its not a Shimano term.

as I said, the op asked for VFM, not what is better.

Actually, what is strange is that it always starts with someone saying Di2 is "a gimmick" or similar - like this:

styxd wrote:

ben@31 wrote:

Is di2 worth it?

Of course not, don't be daft! It's just a gimmick. The noly folk who claim it's "worth it" are those that have spent a good deal of money on it.

It's a bike, a beautifully simple mechanical machine. Why spoil it?!

That naturally brings out a response in the Di2 folk :roll:

If you enjoy fiddling with your bike, that's fine - avoid all of the maintenance-free innovations. I'm sometimes surprised that the anti-Di2 folk ever moved away from levers on the downtube - STIs take away all of that "fun". In fact, the derailleur itself is a bit of a "gimmick".

From my point of view, Di2 (I believe the D stands for Digital) allows me to spend more time focusing on just riding - that makes it great VFM

Bar Shaker

I don't see any 'luddite' comments. I also see don't see how anyone who doesn't use it on at least one of their bikes can turn around and say 'save your money'.

If someone had it on one of their bikes and said 'it isn't worth it' that would be valuable feedback for the OP. I have never met anyone in such a position (on here or in the real world) who thinks that.

Di2 stands for Digital Integrated Intelligence, it is then described as Ultegra Di2 or Dura Ace Di2. It's not complicated.

dennisn

This is one of the the weirdest topics yet. About a third of the responses are yes, a third or so say no, and another third say something off the wall.

Is it worth it? Who is anyone kidding here? It's worth it if you want it. If the OP wants a showoff / bling bike then electronic shifting is a must, at least as far as I'm concerned. If he thinks it will help him win, well, then he needs help. If he just wants something to get him down the road then they ALL will do that.

OP - nut up and decide a few things for yourself.

blablablacksheep

My two pennies here..

Road bike mech dura ace
TT bike Di2

Dura ace was awesome, in every way, the only issue was.....keeping it awesome, as gears/brakes did need a LOT of attention to keep it top notch all the time. By this i mean LBS job as i spent hours messing with gears to no avail.

DI2 on TT is awesome, the shifts are as good as mech although i wouldn't say "better", but one thing is certain. Fit and forget! massively.
Cons; changing up hills it isnt as robust as the meh and ive had a good few chain slips compared to mech(maybe bad luck but heard simular story from other riders with DI2)

MisterMuncher

Another tuppence worth:

I have bikes with 4600 Tiagra and 6800 Ultegra. I've ridden Ultegra Di2 a few times as well. The jump from 4600 to 6800 is much, much more pronounced than than from 6800 to Di2. It's yer standard diminishing returns dilemma. 6800 is lovely, Di2 is very lovely.

In your shoes, building a new bike, I'd try a similar bike with Di2, and one with 6800 with the much better wheels you'd be able to afford. I know which I'd pick.

DKay

mamba80 wrote:

V strange, the folk who are all for Di2 really try an put down those that don't prefer it with stupid luddite style insults - is this to try and justify their expensive choices that don't make them any faster?

Personally, I would never buy Di2, not because of function but because I like the simplicity of a mechanical system, ease of mtce and I enjoy messing around with bikes...what an earth is wrong with that? if you don't, then get Di2, I couldn't careless over that choice.

I think you are confusing picking great big holes in someones argument as 'stupid luddite insults' and nobody intelligent chooses Di2, thinking it's going to make them faster.

I have bikes fitted with mechnical and Di2. I have no vested interest in trying to 'justify' why I have the latter. If it was crap, I'd say it was crap and so would others. Fact; Di2 requires less maintenance and faff and if you enjoy messing about with bikes, then Di2 offers you scope to 'mess around' in ways that are impossible with mechnical.

It's quite telling that those who are against Di2, have never used it, or certainly never used it for a significant length of time. I would guess that the vast majority of Di2 users have also used mechnical and are simply the best placed to offer a non-biased opinion.

mamba80 wrote:

as I said, the op asked for VFM, not what is better.

As far as I'm aware, the two go hand-in-hand.

birdie23

For rear shifting I probably wouldn't be too fussed for Di2, though not having to index is nice but where I think I'd really like it is for front shifting. Levers generally need a fair swing and a fair force to shift to the big dog and setting the front derailleur up can either be a doddle or a real pain. So I guess it depends whether you think that's worth the cash.

meanredspider

blablablacksheep wrote:

Cons; changing up hills it isnt as robust as the meh and ive had a good few chain slips compared to mech(maybe bad luck but heard simular story from other riders with DI2)

I don't think that's logical - after all, the mode of operation is identical. The only difference is that it's faster and done with more power. I respectfully suggest, if there's an issue, it's because the initial adjustment isn't right or something is worn. Changing under load is one of the advantages of Di2 too.

sloppyschleckonds

How much to replace a rear mech after an off?

dennisn

SloppySchleckonds wrote:

How much to replace a rear mech after an off?

I don't believe that people who want it care too much about the money. It's their hobby(if you will). They want it. Pros and cons be damned. Whether one is better or worse than than the other is strictly up to the user.

DKay

It costs a lot. Too much I'd say and I DO care about the money, as I don't earn tons. Although the cost of a 6870 rear mech is comparable to a mechanical 9000 Dura Ace item.

Although how often does a rear mech break? The mech hanger usually breaks/bends before the mech anyway and you can't ever overshift into the rear spokes once you've correctly set things up. I've never seen anyone break a rear mech on a road bike in all my years, mechanical or otherwise.

meanredspider

SloppySchleckonds wrote:

How much to replace a rear mech after an off?

If it senses an impact, it has a crash protection mode, like the family jewels, tucking itself out of harms way. I've scraped mine (RD I mean - not the jewels) a few times but it still works fine. Costs about the same as a decent pair of bib shorts to replace.

Ultimately, it's like anything on the bike - more sophisticated (whether that's CF, Ti, Dura Ace, ultra-light etc) the more expensive it is. I love it because I don't even need to think about changing gear before it's done. But road cycling is notoriously conservative - whether that's ratchets and wire to change gear or bits of rubber squeezed against the rim to stop. Anybody that's studied TRIZ will know that nothing gets less sophisticated and that electronic shifting is inevitable as is wireless shifting in time.

DKay

meanredspider wrote:

SloppySchleckonds wrote:

How much to replace a rear mech after an off?

If it senses an impact, it has a crash protection mode, like the family jewels, tucking itself out of harms way.

You learn something new every day.. 8)

apreading

Personally, part of the appeal about bikes is their mechanical beauty - Di2 loses that beauty somewhat. I work with technology and deal with at at home and its constantly frustrating. Its nice to have something the opposite of that - a bit like steam trains or petrol cars (pre microchips even better!) compared to electric.

I have never ridden Di2, I am sure it is very nice in operation.

My only experience is on a cycle tour - out of 12 people, 5 had Di2, during the week 3 had issues with their indexing - all Di2 members and was not possible to sort by the roadside, so they limped to the end of the day then went searching for someone with the tools/knowledge... I am sure if we knew what we were doing it might have been easy to solve but nobody did, nor the guides, and nor did the bike shop in the first town. This lack of knowledge will get better in time, but with mechanical you can usually 'see' what is happening and reason out how to fix it, maybe with some trial and error.

meanredspider

apreading wrote:

Personally, part of the appeal about bikes is their mechanical beauty - Di2 loses that beauty somewhat. I work with technology and deal with at at home and its constantly frustrating. Its nice to have something the opposite of that - a bit like steam trains or petrol cars (pre microchips even better!) compared to electric.

I have never ridden Di2, I am sure it is very nice in operation.

My only experience is on a cycle tour - out of 12 people, 5 had Di2, during the week 3 had issues with their indexing - all Di2 members and was not possible to sort by the roadside, so they limped to the end of the day then went searching for someone with the tools/knowledge... I am sure if we knew what we were doing it might have been easy to solve but nobody did, nor the guides, and nor did the bike shop in the first town. This lack of knowledge will get better in time, but with mechanical you can usually 'see' what is happening and reason out how to fix it, maybe with some trial and error.

I understand the point about appreciating the "mechanical beauty" (I'm a chartered mech engineer) but that's also what I appreciate about Di2 - it just works. A cable stretches, wears, gets dirty, corrodes, frays - it's quite a compromise.

Personally, I struggle with the idea of finding it hard to sort indexing issues on Di2 - you can actually adjust it whilst riding (hold the button in for a few seconds and then adjust using the shifting levers - hold the button in to switch back) - it's actually how I do it in normal circumstances. Once it's properly set, it's both accurate and precise and doesn't need touching again unless something is changed (wheel/cassette type of thing).

Bar Shaker

Indexing Di2 is beyond simple. You do it while riding. You had 5 users and none of them knew how to do it? Nor did an LBS??

It's not new technology.

Some would believe you.

apreading

Bar Shaker wrote:

Indexing Di2 is beyond simple. You do it while riding. You had 5 users and none of them knew how to do it?

Admittedly, they may have fallen into the more money than sense camp but even the experienced guides who knew how to adjust mechanical gears didnt have a clue. Based on what you say, it does sound really simple and access to google would have helped but we didnt have access on the road, or the desire to try and guess how - I guess with the expense nobody wanted to experiment and risk doing more harm than good.

Bar Shaker

apreading wrote:

Admittedly, they may have fallen into the more money than sense camp

I suspect this is the main beef with most of the Di2 haters. It is often the only explanation for why people choose to make up Di2 fault stories, on threads such as this.

When these stories are so obviously not true, they are very sad to read.

Of course that may not be the case with your story and I am sure you could name the LBS... and he would remember 3 Di2 users coming in and him telling them that he didn't have a clue as to how to index Di2... nor did he have a phone number for Madison/Shimano. :roll:

apreading

Bar Shaker wrote:

apreading wrote:

Admittedly, they may have fallen into the more money than sense camp

I suspect this is the main beef with most of the Di2 haters. It is often the only explanation for why people choose to make up Di2 fault stories, on threads such as this.

When these stories are so obviously not true, they are very sad to read.

Of course that may not be the case with your story and I am sure you could name the LBS... and he would remember 3 Di2 users coming in and him telling them that he didn't have a clue as to how to index Di2... nor did he have a phone number for Madison/Shimano. :roll:

I couldnt name the LBS, it was in Europe on an organised tour - the guides just drove to a nearby town/village and tried the first shop. When that was no good they tried another and all was OK.

I am quite prepared to accept, given the explanations, that Di2 is really simple, possibly even simpler than mechanical to index and requires less regular adjustment. As I said at the start, my impression that this was not the case was formed on observations of others rather than personal knowledge.

It is obviously an issue that there are plenty of uneducated people around though, but then I guess most of these people would not be able to adjust mechanical gears either... I think anyone with a bit of experience would have had a go at mechanical gears though, but because of the expense and 'mystique' due to perception of it as 'exotica', nobody wanted to touch it without the correct knowledge. This will change in time and the knowledge will spread and the prices will come down.

I dont hate Di2 personally, although I was put off it by these observations, which I know have a more rational explanation for and this issue is largely overcome in my mind.

I just dont want it myself because I like the beauty of a mechanical system working in perfect harmony and have no problems with that mechanical system with the added benefit that it is alot cheaper. I still lament the old days when you could strip down a ford capri with the Haynes manual, understand how it all worked and do anything yourself!

DeVlaeminck

Bar Shaker wrote:

apreading wrote:

Admittedly, they may have fallen into the more money than sense camp

I suspect this is the main beef with most of the Di2 haters. It is often the only explanation for why people choose to make up Di2 fault stories, on threads such as this.

When these stories are so obviously not true, they are very sad to read.

Of course that may not be the case with your story and I am sure you could name the LBS... and he would remember 3 Di2 users coming in and him telling them that he didn't have a clue as to how to index Di2... nor did he have a phone number for Madison/Shimano. :roll:

Why would anyone make up stories of Di2 not working - some kind of anti-electrical prejudice...they make their living fashioning mechanical groupsets out of scrap metal? Don't talk daft, some people have had problems with Di2. A mate of mine had trouble with poor shifting on Di2 slipped a gear and crashed knocking himself out - similar to what happened to one of the Downing brothers with Di2 - yes that could happen with mechanical too - the difference is nobody is claiming mechanical shifting is infallible. Another mate manning a feed stop at LEL had a couple of Di2 users asking for recharging. I've seen pros with Di2 have it stop working mid race.

Bar Shaker

Nobody is claiming any bike component is immune from poor installation/set up. When that happens, it is hardly the fault of the equipment, no matter what it is.

What all Di2 users have said is that once it is correctly set up (and this is easy to achieve), it is 'fit and forget'. It isn't that it requires less maintenance, it is that it requires no maintenance.

Perhaps the requirement to recharge it occasionally really is a valid reason not to buy it. If you have trouble remembering to charge your Garmin, Di2 may not be for you.

cougie

I've one mate I know who has it. His malfunctioned and he was stuck in one gear for the ride.
I've been riding for decades and I've never had a mech break on me. It's just not as reliable in my experience.

At the moment - the advantage of the whizzy noise and being able to change from the tops isn't enough to want to make me change.

meanredspider

cougie wrote:

I've one mate I know who has it. His malfunctioned and he was stuck in one gear for the ride.
I've been riding for decades and I've never had a mech break on me. It's just not as reliable in my experience.

At the moment - the advantage of the whizzy noise and being able to change from the tops isn't enough to want to make me change.

I respect those that don't want to move. I don't think for a minute that it's for everyone. And, certainly, there will be faults with Di2 - it's put together by humans: my LBS didn't plug my leads into the shifters on my Foil properly for instance. I even set off for a quick ride the other day and realised my battery was still in the charger - so I know I'm not immune (and certainly embarrassed as I arrived back home a minute after I'd left). Apart from that though it's been totally and utterly reliable for 3.5 years on one bike and a year on the other. I've never had that sort of totally reliable operation from mechanical shifting - not a single missed change (even operator caused) and no compensation adjustments once it's initially set up. But that's only to say that there are no reliability downsides. The upside is the operation - a tiny flick of the finger that's subconscious. Now I know a lot of people either don't want to pay for that or even appreciate it (the same as anything with a price tag - expensive bibs or shoes or tyres or wheels) - that's fine. I just don't understand the need to sling rocks at it that comes from some.

cougie

Mind you - I'm still on the original Look Delta pedals too...

I do like the whizzy noises DI2 makes. I'd probably be all over the block changing gear just for the hell of it for the first month.

ben@31

For those who upgraded to a di2 groupset. Did you fit it yourself or take it do a dealer to be fitted by them? Would you need a di2 specialist to fit it?

If I bought it from my frame it would have to be an external fit.

Thanks.

DKay

I fitted mine myself as part of my very first complete build. It was very straight forward and I found it less faff than fitting a mechnical groupset.

meanredspider

ben@31 wrote:

For those who upgraded to a di2 groupset. Did you fit it yourself or take it do a dealer to be fitted by them? Would you need a di2 specialist to fit it?

If I bought it from my frame it would have to be an external fit.

Thanks.

Did the first one (on the Volagi) myself. As above, it's very easy and a lot less of a faff than mechanical. How hard can plugging a bunch of cables in be? (Except my LBS didn't manage to plug them in properly on my shifters (need a firm "click") when they assembled the Foil for me (too lazy having just done a CR1)). Seriously, if you can do mechanical stuff, you'll breeze Di2