I’m tentatively looking around for a new road bike at the Ultegra-equipped level and I can obviously get a better deal if I forego discs for rim brakes. I’ve never found rim brakes under-powered on the road (just the opposite really) and actually prefer their look over discs. Am I missing a key benefit to road discs?

Am I missing a key benefit to road discs?

They stop you better in all weathers with less effort, you don’t wear your rims out and you get better tyre clearance.

Personally I’d want clearance for 32c & hydraulic discs if buying a new road bike.

I was thinking of it a while back and the Giant Defy Advanced was the one I had my eye on.

Lots of people would say increased wheel life with discs over rims, no chance of overheating rims if alpine descents are your thing.
I have them and wouldn’t go back to rim brakes after doing ride London in the pouring rain for 8hrs!

Personally, I find the braking way better in the wet with discs. And I like not having brake dust all over the rim when fixing a puncture.

That said, if the price saving is important enough, I’d be happy Ultegra rim brakes on a summer/best bike.

They stop you better in all weathers with less effort, you don’t wear your rims out and you get better tyre clearance.

They’re massively heavy, make wheel changes really slow and ruin the sweet, sweet lines of a bike. There should be no progress, nothing new, nothing better!

Oh, apart from carbon. Gears, I suppose. Aero, obviously. I mean, brakes are OK but discs are an evil abomination of new technology and will slice your leg off if you look at them funny.

The braking performance is just better. Side benefits include wet weather performance and not wearing out nice carbon rims so you can use them all the time.

Negatives are weight, different skills required for maintenance and they can make noise (usually a sign something is wrong though)

Tbh it’s swings and round abouts but if u wanna run carbon wheels and if u ride in the rain I’d have them.

Last year descending alp d’huez on duraace discs was supremely confidence inspiring. Brake later, harder, enjoy the descent more. Guy behind me in the group blew up his carbon rims on rim brakes 🤷‍♂️

Edit: Oh yeah and tyre clearance 😁

I’m answer to your question

No. But they are better unless you believe weight is everything .

The big advantage of road discs for me is that I can run carbon wheels all the time without worrying about rim wear or braking in the wet.

Am I missing a key benefit to road discs?

All weather braking performance is the normally cited major benefit, but I actually think the major benefit longer term will be rims and tyres. It’s already become accepted by many that wider tyres mounted on wider rims run at proportionately lower pressures roll and grip better and should improve rider comfort particularly for longer distances.

It’s much easier to fit bigger wheels and tyres if you don’t have to squeeze them through a caliper brake.

But do you ‘need’ them?
Probably not you’ll probably be able to squeeze a 25mm (maybe 28?)on a 19/20mm int’ rim in most rim braked frames/forks for at least another decade and should save you £500-800ish quid…

Depends where you ride as well. Most of my riding is in the flat Midlands. I’ve never felt like I needed rim brakes on any of my rides in any weather. I do have rim and disc brakes. I also ride a lot in North Wales, Snowdonia. Its either raining or snowing, and I enjoy the confidence disc brakes and 32mm tyres gives me.
The downside is that they are heavy. Weights are coming down but prices are going up.

If I was to just have one bike with my varied riding I do I would go disc brake. If I was just riding local then rim brake would be more than sufficient.

(I have cheap rim brake wheels that came with the bike for wet weather rides – but that said in all my years of riding I’ve normally moved a bike/wheels on before I’ve gone through a rim)

Key benefit is tyre clearance I’d say, there’s very little choice in lightweight rim brake frames with good tyre clearance these days.

If you don’t think you need discs then I’d say you don’t need them, but I guess if you’ve worn out multiple sets of rims, or had multiple near death experiences etc. etc. then you should already know!

The thing I often keep thinking as well is when will the “gravel/all-road/adventure” niche and disc braked road bikes (with clearance for ~35mm tyres with guards/~40mm without) simply just converge?

I’m sure people will work out that those marginaly different bikes are pretty much just a change of wheels apart and stop buying two bikes?

My own collection of drop-barred nonsense has a rim braked carbon summer bike, a rim braked steel winter/commuter bike (guards and bag mount) and an aluminium “Gravel” bike with discs and more tyre clearance… I reckon if I really wanted to I could consolidate the three bikes down to one with two wheelsets and I’d be content enough…

I’m sure someone will tell me the geometry and ride character of those bikes are very different… But I don’t reckon they really are TBH.

Need, no..want, like, would prefer, yes.

i once went discs, then in some moment of insane madness bought a rim brake bike, it was beautiful, but it couldn’t stop for shit, so got chopped out for a disc model

The big ones for me are the tyre versatility (assuming the frame doesn’t constrain it) and the lack of brake pad gunge. The outright effectiveness thing wasn’t something that bothered me until I went back to trying to slow a rim-braked road bike whilst on the hoods: the difference is much more apparent there than in the drops.

That said, if you know you’ll continue to be happy with using narrow tyres and it’s a fair-weather-only bike, it’s not as if rim brakes work any worse than they used to.

You do not need discs on a road bike. Riders have survived for many years racing across the Alps in the rain without them. You may want them though!

Genuine question: Have any of the pro peloton won a race which finished with a wet descent due to having discs over their rivals on rim brakes?

You do not need discs gears on a road bike. Riders have survived for many years racing across the Alps in the rain without them. You may want them though!

😀

My carbon rim brakes stop just fine in the dry. In extremely wet conditions they take a second of doing nothing and then work fine.

I live in Cambridgeshire, and in the old days the bike frequently went to California (steep and hilly but usually dry, or insanely wet), so braking is never a problem.

If I was commuting on it in the rain regularly, or I lived in Scotland, I think I would get bored of sketchy braking and want discs.

Rim brakes look nicer. That’s just an objective fact.

Rim brakes look nicer. That’s just an objective fact.

No it’s your opinion. That’s not what an objective fact is.

The clincher for me is to turn it round. Imagine if discs were the old fashioned ‘norm’ and someone said they could lop a few grams off the weight of a bike.
To do this they’d have to move the brakes to the rims, in the wet and filth, and operate them with an archaic system of levers and cables. They also wouldn’t work as well as the normal brakes and you’d have to run really skinny rubber and your rims would wear out which means you need to rebuild your wheels.
But you’d have saved those grams.
You’d be laughed off kickstarter!

Genuine question: Have any of the pro peloton won a race which finished with a wet descent due to having discs over their rivals on rim brakes?

Genuine question: How many people on this thread will at some point in their life be part of “the pro peloton”?

Course we don’t need. Need isn’t the question, want is the question.

I went with discs, even though it’s a dry weather bike, because I hate adjusting calipers and I’m a good enough wheelbuilder to make disc wheels but not really good enough to reliably make rim brake wheels. Good enough reasons for me!

Thanks for all the feedback everyone. I’m a very average road rider in Devon and I use the same bike all year round so I’m starting to edge towards discs now. I really like Lister’s analogy; I’d never consider putting rim brakes on the MTB. Guess I’ll just have to save up a few more pennies.

Genuine question: How many people on this thread will at some point in their life be part of “the pro peloton”?

Genuine answer: he wasn’t asking about us.

I’d have four more teeth and countless ones without chips/cracks, a titanium plate-less upper jaw, plus two metacarpals without screws in them… If I’d been on a hydraulic disc brake bike on 23/12/2013.

This was discovered in May 2017 when I bought my first hydraulic disc brake road bike. I will never go back in terms of a purchase.

Basically if rim braking was an issue for you then disk brakes will solve those issues.

For me, commuting type riding with aluminium rims isnot much of an issue – sometimes just takes the brakes a bit longer to reapond in the wet.

But racing in a large peloton with carbon rims in the wet is an issue, braking is one more thing to stress about.

I’m sure people will work out that those marginaly different bikes are pretty much just a change of wheels apart and stop buying two bikes?

“Don’t know what you mean”, said the man who just rode home from work on a PX Tempest with 32mm tubeless GP5000s.

In my defence 20 miles each way with panniers – it’s a good compromise.

Oh yes – OP no, you don’t need discs, yes, you will like them.

Genuine answer: he wasn’t asking about us.

Yeah, I realise that, but it’s a bit like someone asking whether they should buy a car with ABS and someone pointing out that Lewis Hamilton gets by without.

Well of course he does, he uses the other pedal for getting by people.

Yeah, I realise that, but it’s a bit like someone asking whether they should buy a car with ABS and someone pointing out that Lewis Hamilton gets by without.

To me it’s an interesting question that’s an aside to the thread.

Having had 3 road bikes with rim brakes and commutes in all sorts of weathers and then moving to a disc brake road bike it was a revelation.

Even in the dry it’s got more power than any of my rim brakes had – and reliably – with no adjustment really ever required.

In the wet it’s on another level – yes sometimes it might squeal a bit – but I hated the noise you got from rim brakes when they were covered in manky road crap – you could literally hear it wearing the blocks / rims away.

And then coming into punctures (although which touch wood I don’t think I’ve had more than 1 in the last 2.5 years – running tubed on 25c GP4000’s) you don’t get covered in manky brake stuff as you fight to get your tyres off – especially in the dark / wet winter commute.

I don’t think I’ve ever thought (to a point made above) that it takes me longer to insert a disc wheel than a road wheel. Apart from having to be marginally more accurate putting the wheel in so the disc goes between the pads it’s actually easier as you don’t have to open the lever to widen the calipers apart then squeeze your tyre through the gap between the pads.

I wouldn’t even slightly consider a rim brakes road bike now.

Genuine answer: he wasn’t asking about us.

Genuine answer: that ^^ plus that’s not how a pro peloton works. It’s not like everyone has an equal chance of winning and he who dares descend fastest wins.

I wouldn’t consider a rim brake bike now. Another few years and the range of wheels for them will be tiny. Most of the mid to high end frames/bikes now are disc specific.

For where I live and ride brakes are not used a great deal and if I only rode in good weather I would not be looking out for disc brakes as I don’t like the look of them on a road bike (objective fact!)

However, if you live in an area where you brake regularly and ride in all weather they are an obvious choice.

I wouldn’t consider buying a new bike without disc brakes. Note I did not say specifically ‘road’ bike. Disc brakes are just more efficient, more consistent and will very quickly become the standard. Plus the well noted advantages of rim wear, tyre clearance and maintenance (no cable stretch, pad replacement is less messy).

We are in a transition period, just as we were many years ago from v-brakes to discs off road. Within 1 model year rim brakes will be obsolete. Think about future availability of parts, and don’t forget that the new they axle standard and wider spacing will probably be the minimum requirement for next gen groupsets.

A few £’a saving now will lead to less resale value further down the line, lower performance now and not taking advantage of the best form of braking.

The old bike buying advice still stands – frame first, wheels second, groupset third and non consumables last. Brake choice is only in the mix right now during the transition phase. Do you ever consider brake choice when buying any other form of transport (including a mountain bike)? Nope, you just buy the default disc braked bike.

Don’t even think about the rim brake bike.

For dry weather, summer bikes I would say that it makes bugger all difference. If you ride all year round then discs will be head and shoulders above rim brakes in everything from maintenance to performance to mechanical wear.

They are not, it must be said, without their problems though…

Like many here, I’ve been running disc brakes on MTBs for 20+ years and in all that time, I’ve never had so many problems with brake squeal as I’ve had with a handful of road bikes. It seems to all be down to contamination from road muck (especially in poor conditions) and at the first sign of them starting to get noisy, I’ll whip the pads off and cook em with the blow torch which seems to do the trick.

They’re also fussier to setup, especially bleeding and caliper alignment. I’ve got a few sets of wheels and all will need minor caliper tweaks when swapping onto a bike. To be fair, this is often the case on rim brakes as well.

Oh,and OEM pads cost a bloody fortune too, at least for Shimano!

But for all this, the power, reliability and consistency, plus not needing to worry about turning my zipps into carbon paste on a wet ride easily outweigh any of this.

For a summer bike I wouldn’t bother, extra cost, slightly more potential for faff (lost count of the number of threads on this and other forums about Shimano calipers with slow oil leaks). Even previous generation ultegra brakes are fantastic in the dry. Only a deal breaker on a summer bike if you want large volume tyres. Guess you should be able to pick up a rim brake bike with clearance for 28mn.

For year round then I’d pay the extra.

Oh, and you can run one set of nice wheels all year round without worrying about grinding expensive rims to paste.

Am I missing a key benefit to road discs?

Only if you ride in the wet a lot, or do enough miles to get through rims in a couple of years. But in the wet on ~28-30mm tyres I’m not going as quick downhill anyway. And for the number of folk who insist on discs because of wet-weather braking I see very few of those bikes with guards on so I do wonder how far and often they ride in the wet. Anyway, whatever you prefer – some of it’s aesthetic rather than logic just like my liking of skinny steel forks and rim brakes on old bikes. These day, for road bikes, I go for guards as a priority and discs as take-it-leave-it secondary to that.
If you’re going for 35-50mm tyres on a gravel bike then yes get discs to go with the off-road ability.

Do you actually need Ultegra? Personally I’d choose 105 and discs over Ultegra and rim brakes.

Having snapped spokes in the past rim brakes are a bastard. Much easier to roadside true a wheel to miss the frame than pads.

The ease of braking on the drops for discs versus yarking on the rim brakes I can see being less strain on the back/neck on the likes of, say, alpe d’huez where you have to scrub speed for the hairpins…

However if you want to be traditional about things, save some money to supplement your PED programme… 😜