For the road I have been very happy with my mechanical TRP spyres on my TT and road bike.

For hybrids the new Yokozuna offerings look less cludgy to me than the TRP option.

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"When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro."
Hunter S. Thompson

I would suggest fully hydraulic brakes.

@Jim from your experience?

No personal experience, but I have looked into the Hy/Rd when considering it for my commuter.

The main review comment/complaint is that it has a long free-throw before engaging the pads, so the lever ends up close the bars when braking.
There are mods you can do to the lever arm on the caliper:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8aBa3sGUUhs

or alternative lever arms that you can get:
https://www.amazon.com/...-Brake/dp/B073CCKD85

Spyre would be less hassle. But the Yokozuna brakes also look very nice.

I have the hy/Rd on my surly straggler combined with sram red 10sp levers.
They are fine but tbh I don't think there's much improvement over regular cable discs.
I did have regular hydro disc brakes on a flat bar so I can compare. Real hydro brakes are better

Are we talking road bike or TT bike?

For TT bikes getting electronic+hydro brake levers is still a challenge. Choices are very limited, expensive and in my opinion ugly as sin. Increasingly you can hack/bodge remote shifters onto hydro levers but it takes a lot of time and effort to get it all right. Personally I would go cable discs the cable actuated hydraulic discs. Cable discs have gotten a bad name because the very cheap ones that often come OEM are very poorly designed. As long as you go with a design whereby both sides of the calipers move you have everything you need for TT bike. AVOID any design where braking requires a bending of the disc.

For a road bikes its more tempting to go full hydraulic. You should have more brifter options and the expense of changing the brifters will be less than needing to re-jigg a TT bike. Given the cost of cable actuated hyros I just struggle to thing they are a better option than going full cable or full hyro.


Personally I run 160mm rotors but remain completely unconvinced I would ever notice the difference between 140mm and 160mm rotors. If you are 100kg downhill dude who just wants to descend on a 20 kg downhill bike then you probably do abuse brakes hard enough to need bigger rotors. The relationship between braking performance and rotor size is mostly a function of weight. The bigger you go the more metal mass you have and this means you can dump more energy into the rotor before it heats up outside its optimal range. Shimano list their 160mm rotor at 128g and their 140mm rotor at 108g so in theory the bigger rotor can take 18% more brake energy before it suffers from fade. For most riders this 18% addition is a overkill on the road which I believe is why no one has been tempted to go bigger on the road.

@scott - talking road bike and I prefer 140mm rotors. I am looking at those hy/rd callipers, seems like quite an aero penalty they are huge.

If you are looking at cable/hydraulic hybrid brakes, there is another set out there that is smaller and lighter than the TRP hybrids and it seems to be getting pretty good reviews: the Juin Tech R1 and F1 and GT-F.

But, fyi, I have not used or tested them, just considering them for a gravel build ...

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Advanced Aero TopTube Storage for Road, Gravel, & Tri...ZeroSlip & Direct-mount, made in the USA.
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I’m going suck it up and go the full hydro route. Anyone selling di2 hydraulic shifters? I posted in the classifieds so hopefully someone responds.

Thanks for all the input gang.

I have an extra set of Di2 Hydro shifters I can sell you cheap if you want to go that route

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"If you want to experience all of the successes and pleasure in life, you have to be willing to accept all the pain and failure that comes with it"

moving this to classifieds.

Good call, based on my limited experience. I spent a day on a Giant gravel bike with the mechanical / hydraulic disc brakes. They were fine but nothing like the smooth and easy modulation of a full hydraulic brake.

I installed a set of JuinTech R1s on my Synapse, replacing the stock Render mechanicals. Great upgrade for the price, I'm super happy with them, and I'm still running the stock cable housing. Apparently compressionless housing improves the feel that much more, but you still get a pretty solid "hydraulic" feel with JuinTechs, and they are quite small/low-profile, moreso than any other hybrid brakes I've seen.

Is that the one with the cable/hydraulic junction at the stem?

Good to know, another plus for JuinTechs.

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Advanced Aero TopTube Storage for Road, Gravel, & Tri...ZeroSlip & Direct-mount, made in the USA.
DarkSpeedWorks.com.....Reviews.....Insta.....Facebook
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I have the HY/RD on my road bike. Very good performance. I've had full hydro on a flat bar bike, not a noticeable difference IMO.

Depend what you need to do

Here is the order of braking power: integrated rim brake (ie:shit) < Rim brake < Cable Disc < Hydraulic Disc (ie:overkill for most road application)

On my TT i went from "integrated rim" to "cable disc", by choice because i need to travel with the bike... not as good as hydraulic, good enough for a TT on a hilly course.

Yes Here I am.

Iused trp spyre (cable actuated mechanical brake) and shimano ult hydraulic sytem. Now I am using Juintech's F1 (cable actuated, semi hydlauric brake). I am totally satisfied. That is all.

It is smoother and stronger than spyre and little bit lighter.
I got linked cable (for I am an weightweenie) and it provides compression-less routing so there's almost no cushy feeling when squeezing levers.

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