Is Modern Shimano Sora Better Than Retro Dura-Ace? | Cycling Weekly
How long does it really take for trickle down technology to reach the lower echelons? Tech Editor Simon Smythe has put the current era Shimano Sora 3300 up against his faithful Dura-Ace 7700 to answer that very question. Both are 9 speed groupsets, both use rim brakes and both are mechanically operated. So the questions stands, how much difference really is there? Well it seems there's a quite a lot; Dura-Ace is lighter, shifts more smoothly and looks better but Sora does still have it's benefits like fully integrated routing and better ergonomics. Which one would you have?
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00:00 Is the latest 9-speed Shimano Sora better than the old 9-speed Shimano Dura-Ace?
00:05 Or how many years of trickle-down does it take before a new entry-level groupset is
00:09 better than the old flagship one?
00:11 That's what we're going to find out.
00:12 Now I think you can probably guess where I stand on this one.
00:22 This is my Colnago Master Olympic, the same one that beat the new Colnago C68 in a not-very-scientific
00:28 aero test last year, and it has a full Dura-Ace 7700 groupset, including the seatpost and
00:33 the hubs.
00:34 And this is my favourite groupset ever.
00:37 I think it has the looks and the performance, and if there's any doubt, Lance Armstrong
00:41 won the Tour de France on it four times between 1999 and 2002.
00:45 You could justifiably say it wasn't the groupset that won him the Tour de France, but it was
00:49 the one to beat.
00:50 But can it beat the latest iteration of Sora, which is also 9-speed, which has a more modern
00:55 chainset and bottom bracket design, broader spread of ratios, and has benefited from 23
01:00 years of trickle-down technology since it was launched in 2000.
01:04 Now, did you know that Sora means 'sky' in Japanese?
01:07 So this is 10 years before Rupert Murdoch got involved in cycling, so obviously Shimano
01:12 were ahead of the curve.
01:13 I'll just point out that the Specialized Alley actually is not fitted with the original Sora
01:17 chainset.
01:18 It has a Praxis one, which is what comes with a standard bike.
01:20 We tried to get a Sora one, but we couldn't get hold of one, but the Praxis one is actually
01:24 the same ratios, it's the same design, it pretty much does exactly the same job.
01:29 So for the testing, we took the Colnago and this Specialized Alley, which is fitted with
01:33 Shimano's Sora, over to Leaf Hill in Surrey, which is a mile at about 8% of gradient, pretty
01:38 steep hill, and we fitted them with a set of Wahoo Powerlink Zero pedals, just to find
01:43 out whether the power numbers matched the ride feel.
01:45 Then we did a braking distance test.
01:47 Now I risked life and limb, slammed on the brakes, risked going over the bars, just to
01:51 find out which bike stopped in the shortest distance, and measured the distance between
01:55 them.
01:56 Alongside the power numbers, throughout the riding, I was checking out what they felt
01:59 like shifting, especially shifting under load going up the hill, smoothness of shifting,
02:03 reliability, the precision, basically what both of them felt like changing gear.
02:08 And finally, of course, there's that totally subjective and totally unquantifiable thing,
02:12 the looks.
02:18 So what are the differences between 2023 Sora and 1998 Dura-Ace?
02:23 Well first of all, there's the weight.
02:25 Now Dura-Ace 7700 weighs 2,070 grams, compared to Shimano's Sora, which weighs 2,867 grams.
02:33 Now that is nearly a kilo difference right there.
02:36 In fact, every Dura-Ace component is lighter than the equivalent Sora.
02:39 The Dura-Ace chainset weighs 690 grams compared to Sora's 979 grams, and that's nearly
02:45 300 grams right there.
02:46 Sora's STIs are over 100 grams heavier.
02:49 And I just have to point out that Dura-Ace's beautiful titanium cassette, which weighs
02:53 169 grams, is almost half as light as Sora's.
02:56 Now that's not quite a fair comparison because obviously the Sora cassette has bigger sprockets,
03:01 bigger ratios, but we're going to come to that a bit later on.
03:04 But a pro-level groupset was always going to be light, and of course it was very expensive
03:07 too.
03:08 Now Sora is an entry-level groupset, and if it was going to be cheap and it was going
03:13 to be light, then it obviously wasn't going to be strong, as the saying goes.
03:17 So there's a big difference in weight between the two groupsets.
03:20 Now the next most obvious difference is the ratios.
03:23 Now as an entry-level groupset, Sora comes with a 50/34 compact chainset, whereas Dura-Ace
03:28 was only available with 50/39.
03:31 As for the cassettes, well this cassette here is a 12/25, so a relatively close ratio.
03:36 Whereas what we have here on the Sora is 11/32, which obviously has a small bottom gear and
03:43 a pretty big top gear as well.
03:45 Obviously the penalty with a wide ratio cassette is that there are going to be bigger jumps
03:48 between the sprockets, bigger jumps between the gears, so your cadence is going to be
03:52 more all over the place than it would be with a close ratio cassette like the 12/25.
03:57 So let's do a quick comparison of top and bottom gears.
04:00 Now Sora's bottom gear of 34/32 gives a gear size in inches of 28.6, whereas Dura-Ace's
04:06 39/25 gives a bottom gear of 42.1, so quite a bit bigger.
04:11 As for the top gears, Sora actually has a bigger top gear.
04:14 The 50/11 measures out to 122.7 inches, which is actually bigger than Dura-Ace's 53/12,
04:20 which is 119.2.
04:23 Now the chainset is often the focal point of a groupset, and Dura-Ace used the Octolink
04:27 system, which was basically an improvement over the old Square Taper system, but basically
04:33 did the same job, except the spindle was hollow and oversized and spline, rather than the
04:38 old Square Taper which was solid.
04:40 So Octolink was a bit stiffer than the old Square Taper system, but it wasn't really
04:43 radically different.
04:44 The next big jump came with Dura-Ace 7800, which introduced the outboard bearing system.
04:49 This is the system that Sora uses, and pedalling stiffness actually was considerably improved
04:54 for that system.
04:55 Now obviously this isn't the original Sora chainset, but the Praxis one on this bike
04:59 works in exactly the same way with the outboard bearings.
05:06 Now hood shape is the next one.
05:08 Dura-Hoods have changed a lot since Dura-Ace 7700.
05:11 Now compared to the bigger, more modern ones, which have more options for hand positions,
05:15 a bulbous bit on the end for the aero hoods position, the Dura-Ace ones are really pretty
05:19 small.
05:20 And if I had to pick one thing that really wasn't my favourite thing ever about this
05:23 groupset, it would be the hood shape.
05:30 Now as the flagship groupset, Dura-Ace has to look the best, as well as perform the best,
05:34 and this has always been the case, and was the case back with 7700.
05:38 It just looks incredible, flowing, beautiful, polished, sculpted.
05:43 It's lovely engineering, as well as lovely looks.
05:45 Whereas I don't think anybody would ever claim that Sora is beautiful.
05:49 I mean it's not ugly or cheap looking, but it's there to do a job.
05:52 It has inherited technology from the older Dura-Ace groupsets, benefited from trickle
05:57 down, so it's there to do a job basically, and it does the job well, as we're about to
06:01 see.
06:02 Now the last thing to think about is durability.
06:04 Now how long are these groupsets going to last?
06:06 Well this one is 25 years old and still going, and it works as well as the day it rolled
06:11 off the production line.
06:12 It's beautiful.
06:13 Dura, Dura-Ace, it has durability.
06:15 The clue's in the name.
06:16 Sora is brand new, so we don't know how long it's going to last, but will it be here in
06:20 25 years time?
06:21 I mean it's hard to imagine it, but you know, who knows?
06:30 Okay so let's talk about the testing.
06:32 So as we know, when you're crawling along at 10 miles an hour, which is the speed I
06:35 was doing up Leith Hill, it's not aerodynamics that's the most important thing.
06:39 It comes down to weight.
06:40 So in theory, the lightest bike should be the fastest for the same power number.
06:44 Now the Colnago actually is a bit lighter than the Specialized, but not by much.
06:48 It's about 300 grams, so we kind of expected it to be a bit faster.
06:52 Now what I did was, I decided to ride up the hill pretty much as hard as I could without
06:56 being sick, and then I kept the power number hidden, and then we just decided to have a
07:00 look at the end to see how they compared, just to see if the power number really matched
07:04 the ride feel.
07:05 I rode the Colnago first.
07:07 Now I've ridden up Leith Hill a lot of times on this Colnago, and it never gets any easier,
07:11 and somehow I never get any faster either.
07:13 But the thing to say about it is that the bottom gear of 39-25 means that you're out
07:18 of the saddle almost immediately.
07:20 Honking as they used to say, it's really a hell of a slog, and it's not really my favourite
07:24 day out to do that.
07:25 And I think it's compounded by the fact that the levers, as I mentioned, the hoods are
07:28 so small that you really don't get much leverage, your hands are kind of cramped up.
07:32 It's hard work, basically.
07:34 The Specialized Alley with the Sora, the Sora has those bigger hoods that you can really
07:38 grip quite nicely, but in fact I found that I wasn't really gripping them.
07:42 I was climbing seated.
07:43 Now, I did give myself enough time to recover in between efforts, so it wasn't that I was
07:47 seated just because I was tired.
07:49 I kind of surprised myself by using the gears, by using the bottom gear of 34-32.
07:53 I didn't think I would, but I was in it fairly soon, spinning along quite comfortably, and
07:57 I actually was able to pace it well, and I arrived at the car park in the top in much
08:00 better condition than with the Dura-Ace.
08:02 But as the sprinters in the Gripetto used to say, if you have very low gears, you're
08:06 bound to use them, and you'll go slower.
08:09 And that's what I found with these two bikes.
08:11 I was surprised that the Colnago actually went faster for a little bit less power than
08:15 the Specialized.
08:16 On the longest of the Strava segments that I covered, I did 285 watts on the Colnago
08:21 and 290 on the Specialized, and I did 509 on the Colnago and 524 on the Specialized,
08:27 which is a difference of 15 seconds.
08:30 On the second half, which is another segment, I did 298 watts on both bikes, and this time
08:35 I did 320 on the Colnago and 331 on the Specialized, which is a difference of 11 seconds.
08:40 Now, I have to say that I was quite surprised that the difference between Dura-Ace and Sora
08:44 was so big.
08:45 The difference in weight between the bikes was only 300 grams, so you'd think that they
08:49 would be a lot closer together in time.
08:51 And I'm not sure that the technique seated versus climbing would have made that much
08:55 difference.
08:56 People have tested that before and found that it's almost identical.
08:59 So we had to conclude that there were other factors in play.
09:02 I mean, I calibrated the power meter properly before each one, so was it down to the smoother
09:07 Dura-Ace hubs compared to what's in the Specialized wheels?
09:10 Maybe it was down to the bigger and heavier Specialized tyres that are on this bike.
09:14 Whatever it was, it must have been a combination of small factors which added up to make the
09:18 Dura-Ace bike go that much faster.
09:20 Dura-Ace 7700 and Sora have the same type of caliper brakes, dual pivot calipers, so
09:30 the braking should have been quite similar.
09:32 There's only really a small difference between them and that is that Sora has moulded brake
09:36 blocks, whereas Dura-Ace has the cartridge type where a pad goes into a metal shoe.
09:42 But there's a big difference in lever feel.
09:44 Now, Dura-Ace brakes feel cushioned, luxury, sort of heavy.
09:48 You hardly need to squeeze them, you just move them and there's no friction, it's just
09:52 super smooth.
09:53 Whereas Sora, you can sort of feel the cable, you can feel the caliper moving, they feel
09:57 a bit sort of sticky.
09:59 There is friction there.
10:00 There's no cushioning, there's no damping at all.
10:02 Was that going to make a difference in the actual braking test?
10:04 Well, I rolled down the hill towards the stopping section at 15 miles an hour, jammed on the
10:09 brakes with each, and I have to say, both brakes were surprisingly powerful.
10:14 People say that rim brakes are not as good as disc brakes, but, you know, if you have
10:18 a look at this video, you might disagree.
10:21 There was enough power that I could have gone over the bars with both bikes, and in fact,
10:24 I very nearly did with the Specialized, and I fell off when I was doing the Colnago.
10:28 As you can see, I was putting everything into it.
10:30 Total commitment, you could call it.
10:31 I did three runs on each bike, and then we measured the distance between the best runs
10:36 for each of them, and the Specialized with the Sora was 53 centimetres better than Dura-Ace.
10:42 So in terms of the test, it's one all, but what about the shifting feel?
10:45 I said I was going to be checking out the smoothness, you know, the sort of quality
10:49 of everything as I was going along, and I have to say that Dura-Ace feels premium, luxury,
10:54 smooth.
10:55 It's just lovely to ride, and I wouldn't say that Sora feels agricultural, but clearly
10:59 not as much has gone into the user experience as with Dura-Ace.
11:03 Sora's ultimately designed to stop you, to change gear, to get you from A to B for a
11:07 fraction of the cost, and as we've seen, it absolutely does that.
11:11 Now this video isn't about buying decisions, it's basically to satisfy my curiosity, and
11:20 hopefully yours too, to find out at what point a new entry-level groupset overtakes an old
11:25 flagship one, and I think I might conclude that it hasn't quite happened yet, although
11:30 there are certain aspects of Sora which have shown that it is on a par with Dura-Ace, the
11:35 braking for example.
11:36 Now there's still that question, could Lance Armstrong have won the Tour de France?
11:40 Won the Tour de France I should say, on Sora R3000?
11:44 Well maybe that's not quite the right question to ask, because as he himself said, it's not
11:49 about the bike.
11:50 But if you consider that this Sora equipped Specialized costs just over £1000, and the
11:54 sort of bikes that the current Tour de France winners are riding cost 15 times that, then
11:59 this bike with Sora is definitely fit for purpose.
12:02 As for me, well I'm an old man who likes old things, and Dura-Ace 7700 is a really special
12:08 groupset for me, it was the one that was the ultimate groupset when I started racing, so
12:13 for me it's tied up with all sorts of memories, and I admit I fetishise it, I'm always going
12:18 to, and it's going to have to be a really special groupset that overtakes it in my eyes.
12:22 Now it might be a silly question, but which groupset do you prefer?
12:26 Let us know in the comments underneath, and if you enjoyed this video, don't forget to
12:30 like and subscribe, and I'll see you next time.
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