In one of the least surprising announcements of the gravel year, Shimano today has announced an electric version of its popular GRX groupset. If the b …

By chipps

Get the full story here:

GRX RX825 Di2 Wireless Groupset Launches today!

Hmm… new hoods bulkier and less racey looking than old ones.  And no big mountainbike 51t cassettes yet.

I’ve been keeping an eye out for 12 sp di2 for ages but this isn’t doing it for me on either count.

The Cylons were from Battlestar Galactica. If you’re going to do crappy sci-fi references get em right Shimano.

Probably the most useful implementation of Di2 for me, I’m otherwise very happy with my GRX 2×11 but the ratios mean I am constantly shifting front mech and have never got trim positions *just* right, so there’s always a lot of tinkering to avoid chain rub at extremes.

Using sequential gearing (is that what the function is called?) to always find the perfect next ratio, and auto-trim to get rid of chain rub, would be ideal.

@13thfloormonk

you’re absolutely correct there, auto trim is excellent and sequential shifting works brilliantly.

@cookeaa

I think the sci-fi reference is down to STW not Shimano, they’d have mentioned a Gundam. 😁

https://playevolution.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/dsc01442-copy.jpg

@cookeaa – re; Cylons – my fault. Fixed now… 🙂

In other news, there’s another correction, from Shimano this time, that the RX610 chainset ISN’T compatible with new RX825 gearing. So the 46/30T chainset is off the table and you’ll have to run the slightly taller 48/30T 820-series chainset. Quite why Shimano has only just noticed this, I’m not sure, but I suspect it’s because of the aforementioned European office full of ex-pro road racers who only want faster gears for flatter terrain, not the folks who want to bikepack, loaded up, over a few mountains.

In other news, there’s another correction, from Shimano this time, that the RX610 chainset ISN’T compatible with new RX825 gearing.

You know the thing that is most annoying about bikes now? The wild and seemingly random “compatibility” do’s and don’ts between literally everything. It’s worse in gravel for some reason, I guess because no-one has yet worked out if things should be 1x or 2x and because “gravel” spans such a huge range of biking but it’s insane that even within the same GRX family, there’s complete lack of compatibility.

Shimano made a step in the right direction with CUES and yet they’re going in exactly the opposite manner for GRX.

Slightly underwhelmed with the 2x GRX offering, looking forward to see what Shimano do with the 1x version IIRC think they confirmed would be next year. I have a spider sense that it might be full wireless a la SRAM as sticking a battery (however big) up a seatpost then only powering the rear mech wouldn’t make sense. And might be a good test for the Dura Ace wireless road version that must come along at some point too.