Non branded Shimano SPD-SL cleats - any good?
topcattim
Posts: 766
Has anyone tried buying non OEM Shimano SPD-SL cleats. I'm looking to buy some new ones, and I see that the branded, i.e. original Shimano cleats are typically about £11 branded, but non-OEM are only £6-59 from Ebay.
Half of me thinks that they've got to work fine, but the other half of me doesn't want to mess with one of the contact points on the bike. Any experience out there?
Half of me thinks that they've got to work fine, but the other half of me doesn't want to mess with one of the contact points on the bike. Any experience out there?
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Comments
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They may well be exactly the same, but its a £4 saving.... A set of cleats will last a year or more depending how much riding/walking you do. Why penny pinch on such a critical part? Just buy OEM.0
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Ive just taken delivery of a set of non-branded cleats, so i'll let you know how I get on once they are mounted and have been used. May be a while though, I'm back on the spd's at the moment.0
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ravey1981 Do you not think they are a rip off for what they are, two pieces of molded plastic ? i can get through 4 or more sets in a year.
I've been using the copys for a couple of years. They hold up pretty well compared to the real ones. I'd say they are about 75% as good but can wear abit faster, and are slightly less positive to clip in. The bolts and washers included are abit heavier too.
I dont think i will buy the overpriced Shimano ones again. i remember walking into a bike shop for some. The price tag was £20. I walked straight back out. The shop is now closed down.
They are cheaper on Aliexpress. Search SM-SH11 SPD-SL
£4.69 delivered here
http://www.aliexpress.com/item/Self-loc ... 23565.html
At that price you can stock up and have spares ready.0 -
I rode generic Look cleats for 20 years, no issues. It's a piece of moulded plastic.0
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I bought a pair of supposedly shimano cleats from ebay last year but it was a bit of a false economy. I'm sure they were fakes (they still had the shimano logo printed but they just seemed different, no rubber on the back corners for example- and they were supplied without the normal packaging) and I paid the £11 or so for them.
They clipped in fine, but the rubber on the front of the cleat was ripped off in a couple of weeks for the foot I clip in and out with, and a couple of months for the other which made them much more slippery to walk on, and also immediately started wearing the structural plastic so they wore out much faster.
I went back to getting them from Wiggle/ CRC since and they are so much better for walking in and reduced wear rate.0 -
trailflow wrote:ravey1981 Do you not think they are a rip off for what they are, two pieces of molded plastic ? i can get through 4 or more sets in a year.
I've been using the copys for a couple of years. They hold up pretty well compared to the real ones. I'd say they are about 75% as good but can wear abit faster, and are slightly less positive to clip in. The bolts and washers included are abit heavier too.
I dont think i will buy the overpriced Shimano ones again. i remember walking into a bike shop for some. The price tag was £20. I walked straight back out. The shop is now closed down.
They are cheaper on Aliexpress. Search SM-SH11 SPD-SL
£4.69 delivered here
http://www.aliexpress.com/item/Self-loc ... 23565.html
At that price you can stock up and have spares ready.
They might seem overpriced I suppose but you're paying for the fact that someone has researched which is the best plastic to make them from and for things such as quality control, rather than some guy in china* pouring his generic black plastic mix into a mould that he's most probably taken from an original. The cost saving even at 4 sets a year just isn't enough for me to choose the hooky ones over the OEM's.
I bought a load of mach3 blades on ebay once, they looked like mach3 blades, they fitted the razor and you could shave with them. Then I used a proper blade again and saw the difference. Now I've got a drawer with a load of crap fake mach3 blades in it. Lesson learned.
*Its probably more than one guy and they probably work for Shymanu or something.0 -
IME fake and cheap stuff is usually utter cr4p, poor VFM and IMO often morally wrong.
Getting decent stuff in a sale or secondhand is as good as it gets.
£11 for new cleats is not a rip off. Copying someone else's products. Now thats a rip off.
The manufacturer and anyone buying them are ripping off Shimano, and you have the cheek to say you are being ripped off lol.
If any of you cheapskates developed, made, and sold something of your own I doubt you would want to sell it at the same price some guy in china could copy it for.0 -
£11 for new cleats is not a rip off. Copying someone else's products. Now thats a rip off.
The manufacturer and anyone buying them are ripping off Shimano, and you have the cheek to say you are being ripped off lol.
That's funny because Shimano actually ripped off Look then, who originally invented the clipless pedal. Along with the slant parallelogram rear derailleur originally done by Suntour. Along with electronic gears originally done my Mavic. Along with the closed cam quick release skewer originally done by Campagnolo. And the list goes on.
£11 (RRP of £19.99) for cleats is definitely a rip off. You must really enjoy giving your money away.
The cleats above are branded Tiebao. They manufacture and sell sports and cycling shoes.
http://www.tiebao.cc/
http://www.aliexpress.com/store/200900
If the cleats were really that bad. They would get negative reviews and they wouldnt sell any. Im sure they have tried to make them as good as they need to be. They are pretty simple things to produce how hard can it be ?0 -
trailflow wrote:£11 for new cleats is not a rip off. Copying someone else's products. Now thats a rip off.
The manufacturer and anyone buying them are ripping off Shimano, and you have the cheek to say you are being ripped off lol.
That's funny because Shimano actually ripped off Look then, who originally invented the clipless pedal. Along with the slant parallelogram rear derailleur originally done by Suntour. Along with electronic gears originally done my Mavic. Along with the closed cam quick release skewer originally done by Campagnolo. And the list goes on.
£11 (RRP of £19.99) for cleats is definitely a rip off. You must really enjoy giving your money away.
The cleats above are branded Tiebao. They manufacture and sell sports and cycling shoes.
http://www.tiebao.cc/
http://www.aliexpress.com/store/200900
If the cleats were really that bad. They would get negative reviews and they wouldnt sell any. Im sure they have tried to make them as good as they need to be. They are pretty simple things to produce how hard can it be ?
What cr4p analogies lol. But great for those tightwads looking for reasons to justify buying fake/illegal stuff.
(Not that I am saying those cleats are fake or illegal. They are probably fine. Guessing they are just not quite as 'premium' quality, but perfectly safe, which is the main concern for most people).
Hey, Oakley did not invent sunglasses, so the fake and illegal poor quality copies are great and morally fine everyone.
Its probably the same saddo's who pretend they have Oakleys that will want to pretend they have zero float and buy the red 6 degree cleats (I would quite like red 6 degree cleats myself though :oops: but not to pretend they are zero float).
So Shimano's development of their Di2 is akin to some guy pouring some plastic into a mould to directly copy something?
So everyone happy to buy genuine cleats is some kind of mug who is 'giving their money away'?
I'll concede that the Shimano ones probably do not need to be so expensive, and its fair enough for alternatives to be available if the patent has run out, but 'rip off' is a bit strong.
Charging 30% more for the tubeless ready rimmed version of wheels would be a good use of the term rip off, as they are only slightly different to the clincher version, and the fact wanting tubeless may get people to be buying new wheels in the first place should be enough to warrant any additional manufacturing/distribution etc. costs shouldn't it?
Swings and roundabouts a bit I guess though. Companies have to make money.
Maybe they lose money elsewhere (through no fault of their own) and need to make it up where they can.
That would seem reasonable to me.0 -
It strikes me that there are two issues here. One is related to to intellectual property. And one is related to quality. I don't know how long the Shimano patent runs, how far it extends, i.e. whether it is possible to have something similar that doesn't break their patent, or even it is still in place. However, I'm going to have to leave that to the lawyers - the cleats on offer here aren't, as far as I can see, making a claim to be "Shimano", and if they were, I figure that Shimano can find them as easily as I can, and take legal action. I don't always buy branded, if I can save money - I've just bought a bunch of hayfever tablets at 2p a tablet - if I bought the branded type from Boots, it would have cost me roughly 30p a tablet.
The other issue is with regard to quality. Again, I don't know how good the non-Shimano cleats are, but I think I'll have a try. The parallel with hayfever tablets is that they are exactly the same chemical action, just no placebo affect from the "brand name". I wonder if that applies to the plastic of the cleats as well, or if there really is a quality difference.0 -
The placebo effect alone would make the genuine cleat worth it though wouldn't it?
How much is the extra per year divided between all those revolutions and clip in/outs?
Commuting may be about cost cutting, but cycling for pleasure needs to be a little bit more special IMO.
I have bought a few cheap things that people on here argue about being great, just to see for myself, and every time it just proved that the different/cheap thing was the wrong choice for me.
They were not bad, just not as good as the real thing and poorer VFM IMO.
There is a sizeable list of things in my life where I have stupidly bought the third party alternative rather than the genuine item.
Sometimes it does not matter, but usually I have found it does.
People that find a cheap alternative often seem hellbent on championing it.
Sometimes choosing to insult the people who buy the 'official' or decent option.0 -
I used a few pairs of the Tiebao ones, and a pair of Wiggle's cheaper Lifeline ones. Might be a coincidence but my knee problems seem to have gone since I went back to proper Shimano cleats a couple of weeks ago. The Tiebao/Wiggle ones didn't feel like they had anywhere near as much float. Especially the Wiggles ones, which also didn't seem to have enough lateral adjustment.
The Tiebao ones are VERY difficult to clip out until they are worn in, nearly toppled sideways a couple of times.0 -
I'm a firm believer in don't go cheap on expensive or highly technical items. Things like cleats are perfectly fine.0
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To the OP - why not hazard the £6.59? - worst case they're crap and you're down £6.59 (which is the price of 2 pints of beer - or less if you're in London), alternatively you may love them unconditionally and be up £4.41 versus the Shimano part.0
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I've been using the lifeline ones and they're very good, but they do have less float than Shimano. They feel slightly harder so I expect them to last longer. I have to do a bit of walking either side of my commute and find the Shimano ones wear very quickly.0
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I'm a Look user and for the last couple of cleats I've bought, I've gone with the Exustar Look-compatable cleats, and I actually find them better than Look's own. I only did it out of curiosity, and glad I did. So to the OP, yeah, go ahead. If they don't last as long, well, they were cheaper, and at least you now know.0
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I'm using knock off shimano (yellow) cleats bought from ebay and prefer them to genuine shimano cleats. I have two pairs of shoes and so use both sets depending on weather and the knock off cleats actually click in more positively than the genuine cleats. I was thinking of also buying a set of the lifeline shimano cleats as theyre apparently better wearing than the shimanos.0
