SRAM

Red eTap Road Shift Kit

Like the cunning, calculating villain in an action flick biding his time in the shadows before making an entrance, SRAM Red eTap stayed in the realm of rumors and hearsay for the past few years, waiting until it had every ounce of its tech dialed before grandly striding into the limelight. Of course, for all but the most staunch mechanical drivetrain supporters there's nothing villainous about the progress that electronic shifting represents, and the SRAM Red eTap Road Shift Kit delivers everything you'll need to experience the futuristic technology for yourself on your road bike.

SRAM achieved its full wireless setup by developing its own language to facilitate communication, permitting the entire eTap drivetrain to send and receive commands without the use of cords. It paid careful attention to fully encrypting the system to protect it against its own errors and improve its user-friendliness, as well as to guard against potential hacking. The rear derailleur initiates each shift as the chain migrates quietly along your cassette and allows for multiple shifts to add or dump resistance quickly in the heated moments of a race. Shift it and the front derailleur as hard or imperfectly as you would with a regular mechanical drivetrain and you'll experience the same smooth and precise response again and again.

Even though eTap will no doubt see updates and improvements over the years, this version doesn't come with the cumbersome design flaws that can often plague first-edition technology. You'll grip well-shaped shifter bodies with adjustable reach, and use comfortable shift paddles with space to add the limitless possibility of SRAM's separately-sold Blip shifters, maintaining a cockpit as clean and uncluttered as the rest of your frame.

Some of eTap's early critics noted the lack of predictability a battery-powered system could have in terms of ride length, but you won't be spending hours tethered to a recharging cord with eTap. The 60-hour rechargeable batteries that power the front and rear derailleur function for a claimed 620 miles of ride time each and come with reliable indicators to advise you when they need to be recharged. The shifters themselves run on batteries with a predicted run time of about 2 years for a cyclist logging about 15 hours of ride time per week, and they received their own set of indicators to help you keep tabs on battery juice there too. For you to run out of power mid-ride, you'll need to make a concerted effort to ignore all warning signs for a few months. Plus, since you use your front derailleur so much less than your rear, if the rear derailleur battery runs out you'd most likely be able to swap it with the front to get you home with a full cassette range.