VAT can't be excluded on Aliexpress for France. So lame.
Well... Death and taxes... Fairness / level playing field... It's not lame. I can't say I like it, but it's something you can order from the toilet to your door in one click. It's competing against bike shops and legit online retailers, subject to VAT, taxes, customer friendly return terms, warranty and so on. I'm all in favour of cutting out middlemen that add little to no value. However, if you start cheating taxes, it's not fair anymore.
The concept of tariffs isn't crazy either. Unfortunately we know that public money is mostly spent poorly, but in spirit, i support the idea of being taxed a little bit on such purchases so that the money goes towards something useful. Idk if it's creating a bit of industry, bike paths, bike events, bike handling / maintenance classes, but in the spirit of fairness, we shouldn't be able to buy shit abroad and pay no VAT / taxes when businesses around us are subject to both taxes and VAT.
Now obviously if there was the option not to pay VAT, i'd pick it, but the idea remains
Do you think that the new version can compete with a Shimano 105 or Ultegra Di2 groupset ?
Which crankset / cassette do you use ?
We've broken 4 or 5 ER9 RDs, i stopped counting honestly. But we got early versions. I think the consensus is that when it's working (ie not broken) and well calibrated, it's great.
Caveats: price and relative value. The new ERX on panda podium is 650$, for eg. At this price point, compared to 105 di2, for eg, well... The idea is that i recommend ltwoo if and only if the relative value is a no brainer. And that's a function of jurisdiction, time and so on.
Racing performance: i don't race, and i avoid shifting in shitty situations. So I'm not changing 3 cogs, switching to the big ring, out of the saddle, uphill, suddenly, and panicked. aka, the sort of thing that you do when you race. It's important to flag, because i heard very recent horror stories of pros racing ltwoo er9/erx groups and getting dropped chains, mechanical failures and the likes. I am not saying that ltwoo can't be used for racing, but dropping chains under peak torque is scary and dangerous, and it's not like my previous bikes (shimano 105 mech & sram red mech) would necessarily perform flawlessly under such conditions either (in fact my sram red FD was always a POS). So, i'm not testing that, and the reality is very few people will really have good intel on that.
Bottom line: if there's a signficant price gap vs shimano / sram, and if you're going to be kind to the kit (it's absolutely a SKILL to know how to shift for best shifting performance, whether you're on LTWOO or shimano/sram), ltwoo probably makes sense.
If not, then you have to think a bit harder as the answer becomes less clear.
And i guess, let's mention weather proofing and niche uses like ultra distance racing, bike packing, and that sort of things. If you're going to do exotic stuff like commute in the rain every day or spend 3 weeks in the Atlas mountains with a sleeping bag, then you're probably risk adverse enough to consider bomb proof setups, and not this.
cassette / chainring: you can use anything. from experience, 11s seems to shift better than 12s, which makes sense: same width, narrower cogs, more accuracy needed on 12 than 11 to shift well. I recommend 11s on these groups. If you're on 2x, 12s is a bit of a gimmick to sell new bikes. 11s has cheaper parts and is more dependable, easier to calibrate.
Do expect to spend a significant amount of time over several rides to really dial in the shifting. And if you knock the derailleurs, or drop a chain or something like that, expect to re-calibrate stuff. It's not plug and play.
To be fair, a friend bought an sworks SL7 with ultegra di2 (might be DA, even), i think he fixed a puncture, knocked the derailleur, and hasn't re-calibrated his gears properly either, so his bike makes clicking noises. So his experience is that di2 is not plug and play either.
Last piece of rant: in europe, the battery for di2, which is a plastic sleeve with 2 batteries in it, just that, on sale, is over 150 eur. Shimano, from the bottom of my heart, go fuck yourself.
