2021 Specialized S-Works Aethos

As we have established in this thread: It’s your money you can do with it whatever you want. :laughing:
Turn it into a fixie for all I care :stuck_out_tongue:

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Close enough:

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Will keep an eye out for that bike. A lot of people with a lot of disposable income here in Singapore. Great if you want to buy last year’s model ‘used’ second hand :slight_smile:.

The build itself - I don’t see a point it that setup besides building the most expensive city bike possible / trying out how much you can extend the stack by maxing out spacers and inverting a 17 degree stem. But hey, if that means one less car on the street and one more biker instead I’m happy.

P.S.: The only thing that triggers me with that build are the disc rotors. Why Ultegra? Dura Ace / XTR would have fitted way better in the color scheme and complemented the black carbon rims (that’s why I ride them… pathetic) plus would have saved 20g / 40g! :crazy_face:

It’s an interesting bike, but not for me. I’m still buying their “Aero is everything” marketing, even though my last couple of bikes are not Specialized. I can see the appeal of the Aethos for someone who is looking for something a bit unique, but doesn’t want to go the boutique route. Or someone looking for a lightweight bike for hill climb competitions, but just wants to buy something stock. I assume specialized has a market in mind and it will be interesting to see if it sells. You can hate Specialized for being a big company and doing the things that big companies do, but I’m a fan and I think they make good stuff and provide good support.

The high price and dentist discussion is silly. Cycling for most of us is a hobby and people like to spend money on their hobbies. Expensive guns and coolers for hunters, pricey equipment and country club memberships for golfers, etc. Cycling isn’t the cheapest hobby, but it’s far from the most expensive. I’ve known folks who are into auto racing. They spend over $10k every weekend they race, and that’s assuming they don’t wreck their $100k+ car. It’s an expensive hobby. You won’t find many dentists doing it at a high level unless they have a better paying job on the side. It’s all relative. A high earning lawyer might look at a successful hedge fund manager and fault him for “wasting” his money on a new yacht. Buying a $15k bike is like buying a new shirt for some people, zero impact on their disposable income.

You can do cycling on the cheap or you can spend a bit on a nice fleet of high end bikes. The great thing about cycling is that you really can’t buy much speed, you have to do the work if you want to be fast.

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This is fun…I too can to be condescending about how other people spend their money.

If you’ve got $65 spare to buy an expensive tire like Conti 5000’s, maybe you could pay it forward, maybe not buy the overpriced tire and spend the $65 helping someone starving, seed a GoFundMe for someone needing an operation, hell, almost anything would be preferable.

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You mean I can now afford a bike almost as good as my dentist? :stuck_out_tongue:

Still a bit spendy when looking at the wheels for the Expert, but solid for a Di2 Ultegra bike, really. The Pro corrects the wheel issue for one-stop shopping. Good to see the lower cost options for sure.

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image

:slight_smile:

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So basically new Aethos is a something like “poor man’s Leica” (if someone is interested in photography). It is still premium but you do not have to sell your house, selling your car is enough :slight_smile:

The costs are certainly „lower“, so the term is technically correct. It just is very far from „Low cost“.

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talking about prices: Spesh will hugely increase list-prices for 2021
Pricelist will be officially out on Nov 1st
I´ve only seen the SW SL7 frameset gone up from 4.199€ to 4.699€ and max Aethos complete bike will jump up to about 14K€

ouch

I wonder how they justify buying complete builds from here on out. You get a full SRAM Red AXS for €2800 with PM, disc rotors and BSA BB. Ad €4500 for the Frame, and you still have €6700 to spend on wheels, tires, a saddle, stem and handle bar, and bar tape.
You can get a Darimo Bar and Stem (€700), Berk Saddle (€300), Roval Alpinist Wheels (€2300), and all the high-end attachments, tires, tubes, Darimo Seatclamp etc. you want (€700) and still be thousands of Euros cheaper (call that „less expensive“).

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Recently I have done this excercise with BMC and buying the cheapest version on 105, buying new grupset and pretty decent wheels is cheaper than buying higher model with poor wheels (the frame is exactly the same).

ooh, interesting… do you mind expanding, as I like the look of the BMCs?

Imagine how slow it’d be though if it said “SLR02” or “SLR03” on the top tube!

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One is obviously the most aerodynamic number and 3 the least aero number…

Nothing spectacular - simply going for Teammachine slr with 105, stripping the groupset and selling it, replacing with ultegra + some aero wheels is way better than buying Di2 version. Buying Di2 and wheels is also a little over the price of Di2 version of a bike. The difference between models is only groupset and the wheels. BMC provides you fairly cheap and primitive set of wheels with every model. Groupset is usually a little bit cheaper with the bike but not in the case of BMC :slight_smile: And framesets from BMC are SLR01 so more expensive than whole SLR bike and the difference is not worth it in my opinion.

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Currently they are all faster because there is only 01 version;) And yes it is probably whole 1% less stiffer and 0,5% heavier and you loose 0.0001W when doing 100 km/h.

But BMCs are the best looking bikes in my opinion (when it comes to overal shiluette of the bike) :slight_smile: Unfortunatelly current paining only the cheapest and the most expensive models are nice. Middle paint schemes are horrible in my opinion. It is all more mental exercise as I am torn between a new bike and buying decent aero wheels for my emonda alr rim brake. If it would be a disc brake version I would probably buy wheels and not consider new bike but as the wheels are not transferable I am not sure if investing more money in this bike is good option for the future.

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I love racepoint videos. Damn this bike is :money_mouth_face:

Had my LBS tell me this today as well… and their training on why they were raising the prices was ridiculous…

Considering that you can get a Canyon Aeroad with aero wheels and Shimano 105 for like 4000$ - why would I buy a specialized for double the price if the only difference is Ultegra Di2?