“Carbon/metal goodness”
The Good: Light, flawless shifting, looks amazing
The Bad: Price but you get what you pay for
After years of riding Shimano derailleurs I had the opportunity to finally ride a SRAM unit as it came on my slope bike. Simply looking at this derailleur you can see the quality and beautiful craftsmanship; this is almost more a piece of art than a bicycle component. There is something about that metal open cage and the carbon together that come together to create an amazing looking and performing derailleur.
I ran a 1x9 configuration and have no issues once it was setup, the shifting was flawless in all types of conditions, it didn’t matter if the derailleur was covered in dust or full of mud and even snow, it shifted without any issues. I wasn’t sure if the open design of the unit would cause more mud and grime to get stuck inside of it but it never seemed to become a problem and by having such an open unit it made cleaning and lubing the derailleur a breeze.
I only rode the derailleur for a couple of months so I can’t speak to a real longer term durability test but seeing how well it performed in the first couple of month I assume it would have worked and lasted just as well as any other higher end derailleur.
