Campy vs Shimano vs SRAM – FIGHT!

I’ve had the chance to ride all three major groupset on the market for a reasonable amount of time now and I love and hate things about each of them.  Since we spend many intimate hours with our groupset we have a very close relationship with it.  I’m hoping that we can settle the groupset debate once and for all here.

I can say that I like Campy’s crisp, solid, chunky feel. Campy has created a passionate fanbase equivalent to Apple geeks.  I’ve even seen people with Campagnolo tattoos.   They say that Campy wears-in while other groupsets wear-out.

Shimano has excellent reliability, great engineering and innovation and has electrified the groupset.   They hold nearly 90% of the entire world’s cycling component market and 97%+ the worlds OEM market (not sure how current that it).  They turn over US$1billion in bike components.  How could they not be good with numbers like that?  They also make a kick-ass fishing reel.

SRAM is the new kid on the block and is making unbelievable ground.  It has great ergonomics and a shifting mechanism that works great.   They also bought Zipp last year.  They’re aggressively and successfully taking away market share from Campy and Shimano and have even switched over a guy named Lance.  And Lance has been known to be fairly pedantic about his equipment.

So fellow riders, how do you define groupset perfection?