The application is for my tri bike. I don’t need good brakes during training in Florida. I hopefully don’t need them during IM Lake Placid, but one never knows. Being a Florida boy, I don’t know how to brake hard and live to talk about it anyway. I would like to lighten the bike, but I don’t want to get stupid either.
If you want really light brakes there is a company in Germany that makes carbon fiber calipers for about $800 up front with an 8 month wait. Be my guest and let us know how you like them.
For tri use where none of the courses are very demanding on braking any of the brew/cane creek/dia compe would be fine. Basically they’re all the same brakes with different amounts of tweaking to cut weight. If you wanted something that will work in the mountains I like Mavic SSC dual pivots (around 298 g).
The Cat brakes are CNC’d which is much more subject to the sort of failure you don’t want on brakes, so I would let someone else be the unpaid product tester with those.
i might just make a pitch for the brew’s over the cane creek/dia compes. as another poster noted they are the same brake. actually they start life as a dia compe, and then get stuff thrown at them to make them lighter - the thing is, brew had the idea first, and is a small independant frame / part maker and cane creek stole his idea and threw their muscle behind it. just a sorta shout out to help the smaller original thinker, is all - and brew has a strong tri background as well.
one thing on any of them - it is a single pivot design dating back to the eighties. if you are a newer rider their stopping power ( or lack of same) will startle you. never fear, they work and all, but take longer to more SLOW you down as opposed to outright, ya know - stopping. also - all diacompes were designed to feel soft, and flex. they do not and will not ever feel “crisp” and hard. the flex is part of the engineering and braking feel of the brake - even back in the day guys would be trying to make them crisper - not gonna happen. finally - i have some and dig them - but i only need them to keep from hitting my garage door at the end of a ride. could be florida is good that way ( no hills ), but if you ride in traffic and need to stop super fast and stuff could be the extra gms would be not a bad idea for the dual pivots.
I have raced and trained on Brews for years (bike racing, not tri). Coupled with Ultegra STI levers, they were good enough stoppers for me, even good on technical descents.
Now for the disclaimers: The above was at a weight of 150 lbs. Over the last few years, I haven’t been riding much, and my weight has climbed to 200 (I’m not a big dough boy, I’ve applied myself to weight training mostly). On those same technical descents, they are now a bit nerve-wracking. Could be hardening of the brake pads (generic Shimano), but I have no problems with equally old Ultegras (with equally old pads).
If you’re in the mid- to light-weight range, and you’re not doing extreme descents, you would do fine with the Brews.