which bike should I buy?

egray

Hello everybody, I am new to road biking and I am trying to decide which bike I should buy. I have a choice between two different canyon road bikes: The Ultimate CF SL 8.0, and the Ultimate CF SL 8.0 disk. These two bikes are actually the same as far as I can tell, except that the latter has disk brakes, which makes it a bit heavier and more expensive (price difference is 500 euros more for disk equipped bike and weight is 7.5 for disk bike and 7.1 for rim brakes equipped bike). Normally I am a disk brakes fan however from what I understand the Shimano ultegra rim brakes are meant to be very good, and if this is true 500 euros seems like a steep cost for an upgrade that may not be so significant. Moreover, I am not sure how seriously I should take the small difference in weight. Ultimately, I live in a large city (Paris) so braking is important I am just unsure if the extra 500 euro investment makes any sense.

I am posting the links here so you guys can see the bikes and specs for yourself.

https://www.canyon.com/en-fr/road/ultim ... l-8-0.html
https://www.canyon.com/en-fr/road/ultim ... c-8-0.html

PS: I was also considering the same bike with shimano ultegra DI2 drivetrain. It is more expensive than both and a little out of my price range but I'm not sure maybe this is also something worth thinking about? https://www.canyon.com/en-fr/road/ultim ... 0-di2.html

Thanks in advance for any help really need advice.

vegasfoster

Having recently had the same boggle and choosing rim brakes (6800), I would recommend going disc. Simply because braking from the hoods is much higher effort than I expected and if you are use to mtn disc brakes now, then pretty sure you aren't going to like it anymore than I do.

StillGoing

vegasfoster wrote:

Having recently had the same boggle and choosing rim brakes (6800), I would recommend going disc. Simply because braking from the hoods is much higher effort than I expected and if you are use to mtn disc brakes now, then pretty sure you aren't going to like it anymore than I do.

I don't know how you find braking from the hoods harder with rim brakes?

The only really difference with discs over rim brakes is in the modulation and efficiency. Rim brakes are perfectly fine unless you're on carbon rims and like to keep on the brakes on descents, and if there was a problem braking with them from the hoods, the design wouldn't have lasted as long as it has.

Matthewfalle

rim brakes and spend the 500 on Pastis.
absoloutely nothing wrong with them at all.

N0bodyOfTheGoat

Besides the extra effective modulation of disc brakes, especially in the wet, will the disc version have more tyre clearance?

Both bikes come with 700x25 Conti GP4000 S2, which often have a real world width of ~27mm on today's wider internal rim width wheels. You might find the disc version has clearance for the 700x28 version, which often measures ~31mm in the real world, but this might be too wide to negotiate inside the rim brake calipers.