Honestly fella, I’ve had the bike about 16 months now and I feel like I’m forever having to adjust things.
Just saying the sound when I shift with my di2 is pure joy. No matter how hard the session was I get a smile on my face 
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Have you got especially complicated internal cable routing or some odd FD adapter going on? The only person I know who’s had something similar had an aero bike, and the long and short of it was complicated routing causing friction so nothing ever stayed quite right.
Mate, I have been tearing my hair out to get the FD perfect with Etap. I am obviously missing something, because despite having spent several hours on it, I absolutely cannot get it perfect. I have gone back to the video on YouTube and the manual on several occasions, and even to the point of removing everything but the crankset from the bike and starting again. Whatever I do, I either get very slight chain rub in certain combinations or intermittent chain drop when shifting down under pressure but no rubbing at all. I seem unable to get both spot on. I do recall someone saying that Etap FDs are fussy, so any hints would be good!
Nah, it’s a 2019 Tcr with some integral routing but nothing major like a top end bike.
The front derailleur actually causes me more problems than the rear.
Odd. Might be worth a check that the braze-on is actually in the right spot. I have heard of the odd one being on the wonk. Other than that, I’m baffled! But then I absolutely hate front mechs and my next bike (2022 or 23) will almost certainly be 1x, as I expect there to be some decent 13 or even 14 speed options by that point. It really should be possible to have something like a 44T chainring and a 10-38 13sp cassette without big gaps.
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You can buy that today from Rotor, they have a 10-39 and a 10-36 cassette.
Does it make you faster? Probably not.
Is it “better” and has more features. Absolutely.
Are the features worth $1000? Only you can answer that.
Personally, I do not think so as there are upgrades that certainly will make me faster, such as wheels where I put the money on. Furthermore, changing a cable or setting a shifter is easy for me.
Finally however, ever more modern bikes only work with electronic. So at some point I will upgrade.
I recently bought a new bike with Ultegra di2 after riding a bike outfitted with 105 (from 2014) for a little over a year. I’m really enjoying electronic shifting, and after about a month (and 550 miles) I don’t expect to want to go back to mechanical shifting. I’m just really impressed with how fast and smooth each shift is, and also really like the hood buttons for paging through my wahoo screens. Just generally the hoods feel much more well-designed for my hands too, much easier to wrap my fingers around the underside than my prior shifters which felt much bulkier. I’m also somewhat anal about charging my devices so don’t expect dead battery to be an issue, but I could always be wrong there.
In short, I agree it’s a luxury and not necessary, but I like it A LOT.
Front shifting is an area where I’d argue Di2 has a significant advantage. As you move between small and big cogs in the rear, the di2 FD will trim slightly to make sure there is no rubbing and that everything stays aligned. SRAM is fixed, much like a mechanical FD. My understanding is that Shimano has a patent on the incremental trim feature and it works really well and allows a tighter front cage to better control the chain without rub. The front cage on SRAM AXS 12 speed is at least a couple MM wider than di2 11 speed, to allow for the lack of auto-trim.
I find that AXS still shifts up front really well, but not as well as di2 and I’ll drop a chain periodically with axs and never with di2 with the tighter cage. I can get my AXS not to rub, but I’m sure it’s a function of chainring size, gearing, and chainstay length.
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Doesn’t SRAM advertise that at least its last-gen mechanical FDs have auto trim (I think they use “yaw” rather than trim).
I can’t compare it to AXS front shifting, but indeed, front shifting is much better than Shimano’s mechanical FD shifting, you push a button and you know the thing will shift, period. With my mechanical groupset, I have to hold until the upshift is complete. The only aspect that Ultegra mechanical seemingly deals better with is cross chaining. I didn’t check this, but it seems that Ultegra Di2 has a tighter FD cage and/or smaller tolerances, so it doesn’t like to cross chain as much. This is a bit annoying since the demo bike has a semicompact crank rather than a compact crank and 2 teeth less in the back. So rollers that I’d ride with 50:28 (i. e. with one cog to spare on my mechanical setup) it is better to shift front chain rings.
However, my demo bike drops the chain in the rear, I have had to fish the chain from between the spokes and the rear cassette about three times per ride. Of course, I reckon this can be dealt with by adjusting the RD, but since the bike isn’t mine I don’t want to tinker with it too much. I don’t hold it against Di2, though.
Di2 has made me faster by allowing me to learn more about myself and be more efficient.
Every “significant” solo or Outdoor Workout ride (thanks TR), I download and analyze the gear-ratio data to understand how I’m shifting, when I’m shifting, and how I’m producing power in the different gear ratios. It’s another dimension to the typical Power/HR/Cadence post-ride Strava analysis.
Am I actually better producing the same target power in the 14T or 15T? How does that change based on fatigue? What about when climbing out of saddle? Now I have historical data to lean on. I don’t have to keep mental notes or be left wondering. That’s huge.
Once you have this newfound understanding, Di2 then lets you shift effortlessly to apply those learnings. Sprint-shifters and hood buttons let you hold your aero position steady. That’s a double-whammy.
I’m a die-hard Campy mech fan. Love the simplicity, feel, and timelessness of cables.
But Di2 has changed the way I ride and I’m milking it for all it’s worth.
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Although I’m in eTap now, but I can’t go back to mechanical, too!
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Out of curiosity, how do you do that?
Yaw control was a pretty clever way to alter the angle of the cage as it moved in and out (more closely following the chainline). It was a game changer for SRAM mechanical front shifting, which was really crappy until they came out with yaw.
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Someone screwed the pooch on that di2 install. Cross chaining is exactly where di2 shines compared to mechanical and SRAM axs. As you shift the rear across the entire range, the di2 FD adjusts slightly as you progress through the gears to ensure there is zero chain rub without having to resort to a wide cage (ie SRAM). The narrower cage does a better job of preventing chain drops, but without rubbing. It’s such a simple and obvious solution, really works well.
That’s exactly what I understand it to be. So its electronic groupsets don’t have that? Or is it that they retain only this mechanical auto trim feature, but are — for dumb patent-related reasons — not allowed to implement electronic trimming?
I figured, and I don’t hold it against it (even though it kills some of the enjoyment of having electronic shifting).
Although I have to say, I was expecting that feature works a little better in practice. As I wrote in my initial impressions post, at least on my demo bike there is a significant delay between the gear change in the back and compensating for it by trimming. That is especially noticeable when I upshift in the front and have to shift down to a larger cog in the back.
Perhaps that works better in full auto and semi auto front shift modes. I’ll try those on my next ride.
Except that the new Di2 doesn’t really allow cross chaining. 6800 would let you do it (ie big cog big ring or small cog small ring). 8000 stopped allowing the rider to do that (while I had it at least).
11 speed eTap FD was time consuming to set up right but it hasn’t been impossible on my last 2 bikes.
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2 different things going on there.
When you shift the FD, the cage over shifts initially to ensure a reliable shift. It’s intentionally at an extreme position for a second or so, so you might get some chain rub until it trims back to the “non-shifting” position. I agree that the pause in this extreme position is probably longer than it needs to be, but the system really has no way to know how fast your are pedaling or when the shift is complete. It works really well, but probably annoys some people with the pause and brief chain rub. I don’t think there is a setting specific for the pause timing. It would be a nice feature. You can change the shift speed overall, but I’ve never noticed that setting significantly adjusting the length of the pause.
The other thing going on is the auto-trim on the FD when you changes gears in the rear. I’ve never detected any delay on that, it’s instantaneous as far as I’ve seen and actually easy to miss since it’s such a small subtle movement. I never hear it like I hear the big adjustment after the pause described above.
You also need the Wireless adapter to capture the data.