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I'm looking at a CX bike, one has Rival CX1 (11 spd) and the other Apex CX1 (11 spd) both have the same 11-36 cassettes so no big ass 11-42 hunk of steel on the Apex equipped bike.
The only physical difference I can see is the Apex crankset isn't a separate spider allowing for direct mount rings, and it's also some funky asymmetric 4 bolt arrangement.
Is there an appreciable difference between Apex and Rival?
There's a £200 saving for the Apex and everything else on the bikes is the same, from bars to wheels, what would you do?
The Apex rear mech is wobbly and a bit rubbish (source: i snapped one last year, and have another one now because it was cheap) compared to the Rival one - which in contrast is basically the same as Force, only 8 grams heavier in fact.
Unsure about shifters.
My current bike has the Apex chainset you're prob looking at with the stupid bolt pattern. I want to try a smaller ring, and it's honestly looking like I'll have to just change the chainset. The brakes are also crap and will be replaced soon, but not sure how much better Rival is.
So as an Apex owner, I'd just pay the extra now.
This is about 10 years out of date, but I had both road groupsets in the past and Rival was waaaaay lighter and more refined.
Sram's entry level groupsets generally seem to be a bit agricultural and cack.
Isn't the Apex rear mech the same as the SX on, as it it's missing a part that makes it very noodley compared to the better Sram stuff?
Anyway, my mate had Apex on his gravel bike and was never happy with it where as the Rival on my old bike was fine. Both not a patch on GRX though.
I’d not touch anything below Force/GX in SRAM. It’s all seemingly compromised in some way to hit a price point.
2 1/2 years on Apex 1 on my gravel bike and zero issues so far. 40t x 10-42t set up.
In my experience the rival mech is much less noodly from the get go and more robust in the long run. I have apex shifters/brakes with rival mech on my CX setup.
MrPottatoHead
Full Member
My current bike has the Apex chainset you’re prob looking at with the stupid bolt pattern. I want to try a smaller ring, and it’s honestly looking like I’ll have to just change the chainset. The brakes are also crap and will be replaced soon, but not sure how much better Rival is.So as an Apex owner, I’d just pay the extra now.
Yeah this is a right pain the arse, had to upgrade my cranks after finding this out the hard way. If you do manage to find an Apex chainring they're around £75 (although that was a couple of years ago) and smallest is a 40t anyway.
Mine has been fairly abused by making it race CX in Scotland. It's never been great, shifts ok but doesn't seem to have a single gear that its particularly happy in. Ok offroad, but the constant noise is really annoying on any tarmac sections
Quick question since I just bought an Apex1 bike, I believe that most road/gravel 1x derailleurs are interchangeable, does this carry through to MTB mechs? Or a meringue?
