HATE HATE my Shimano Hydraulic Shifters

Triathlon Forum
1

Not only they are ugly…

but my hands can never get comfortable with the shifters, especially how the hydraulic hose comes out where my thumb normally rests when in the hoods. They whole thing is just very bulky with a lot of hard stuff jutting out that no amount of good bar tape wrapping can smooth out the lumps and bumps. BTW, I am talking about mechanical Dura Ace/Ultegra hydraulic shifters. The Di2 gets a little better in terms of size, but the hose exit is still an issue.

SRAM’s are much better except I am not a fan of their fluids.

2

You are the first person I have ever heard say the SRAM shifter are more ergonomic than Shimano (excluding the non-series hydraulic levers) so I can only assume you hold the bars funny or have odd shaped hands.

I also can’t figure out how you are in the hoods and resting your hands on a wrapped portion of the bar. You either have massive hands or have the brifters rotated at an extreme angle so your wrist are on the tops but fingers can still shift. As a point of reference most people ride the drops like this https://www.cyclingweekly.com/news/racing/giro-ditalia/tom-dumoulin-says-hes-performing-worse-last-two-years-ahead-giro-ditalia-421737 which makes it impossible to rest your thumbs on a wrapped portion of the bar.

3

The hoods of these shifters are gigantic, so my hand is at the bottom of that ramp up to the hood, and my thumb is resting close to the hydraulic hose exit. My palm is mostly on the rubber part of the hood. The bar tape wraps around the hydraulic hose underneath the rubber hood.

4

I agree the mech version isnt great. I came off rim di2 and due to hydro shifters epic cost went to 9100 mech hydro. Not happy. I just did di2 1x on my gravel bike in ultegra and its sooo much better comfort wise…dang. First world problems.