IMO new road bikes are all about the frame these days, If I were you I’d get a tiagra/105 equipped bike and put some ultegra or better wheels and nice finishing parts on it. (what I do is buy a bike, sell everything bar the frame and build it with my 9s set up!)
I’d also avoid Di2 cabling and the stupid seals on 4mm cable ends, along with better cable pull of less gears, it saves your indexing requiring constant work.
Onzadog – Member
The most obvious reason for me, is that it’s current and therefore will have the longest life span before it becomes obsolete. Plus, I’m not sure I could buy a higher end 9 speed road bike even if I wanted to.
I’m still running 9 speed mountain bikes at at xt/xtr lever, some stuff is already proving difficult to get hold of. If I can just hold out a while, I might skip 10 altogether and just go 11 speed on those as well.
If you want/need high end stuff then fair enough. I prefer to keep going on a budget, having light parts that aren’t consumables – what do you save on a HG20/40/50 to dura ace/xtr cassette, 50-100gm? the industry is one of the best at sucking people into having the latest thing.
More fun per £…and you can still buy 5 speed…