Every time I take my wheels out, I must hit the brake levers slightly (I know I should put spacers in between the calipers), and when I come to refit the wheels it takes me literally hours of fettling to get everything to run free again. I reckon I know what I’m doing, and happy with with the brakes acting as brakes, but if I had some better brakes would fettling be easier and quicker?

[i]literally [/i]hours?? Move the pads back, insert wheel, ride bike. It’ll make no difference what brakes you’re using, unless you go to cable-operated.

Literally. I even take my piston press with me everywhere now, but a lot of the time pushing the pistons back doesn’t work on its own.

I watched 8 episodes of the office last night trying to do it before I gave up and went to sleep.

Did it straight away this morning though.

😕

I would suggest that you don’t know what you’re doing….

I’ve watched pretty much every single YouTube video on hydraulic brake fettling, and I’m not doing anything different to them 😕

The brakes are fine, I have a basic set of Shimano hydraulics like yours on my HT.
Just take more care, use spacers/blocks to put in the callipers if you know you’re going to knock the levers, are you then centring the disc in the calliper afterwards with elastic bands on the levers and slightly lose calliper mountings?
Is the disc squarely/flatly secured to the hub by evenly tightening the bolts in a star pattern?

Do you have too much fluid in the system? An enthusiastic bleed with worn pads could cause issues when new pads are fitted.