Gravel bike gears - what the manufacturers offer
What Campagnolo offers
The Italians offer the Ekar: an off-road ensemble with one chainring and 13 sprockets. The groupset is high-quality, lightweight and comparatively expensive. It is a classic mechanical system without electronics, but the groupset is enhanced by a carbon crank and an advanced gear ratio concept. The wide-ranging sprocket set minimises the losses of the single chainring.
To prevent the sprockets from becoming absurdly large, the package starts with a sprocket with just nine teeth and requires a special freewheel on the rear wheel. The available gear ratio variants are clearly organised: There are four chainring sizes and three sprocket packages; the smallest (9-36) is also graded finely enough for road riding, while the largest (10-44) is also suitable for bikepacking tours in difficult terrain.
The good ergonomics of the gravel bike gear levers are much praised; several gears can be shifted at once with the characteristic thumb button. The wearing parts are very durable, but the sprockets and chainrings in particular are expensive.
Gravel bike gears - what Shimano offers
The Japanese company offers a variety of special gravel components under the GRX label. The quality ranges from affordable to high-end; as many parts can be easily combined, they are not always fitted to complete bikes. They can be roughly categorised into mechanical ten- and eleven-speed systems and the electronic Di2 shifting system.
The latter still offers the technical standard of the recently discontinued road bike groupsets with eleven sprockets without radio technology. Otherwise, the differences between the GRX 400, 600 and 800 lie mainly in the weight and surface finish. The eleven-speed versions can be ridden with one or two chainrings, the 1x11 combination is not recommended due to the limited number of gears. Extremely light gears can be realised in conjunction with the double chainring.
Gravel bike gearing - What SRAM offers
SRAM also offers transmission options for gravel bikes for all road bike groupsets. The range is correspondingly wide and extends from the favourable mechanical ensemble to the avant-garde wireless shifting system, whereby only the latter is competitive today. This is why mechanical systems are hardly ever installed any more. For the AXS groupsets, there are cranks with single drives suitable for off-road use, which run under the suffix "XPLR", and there are cassettes to match the respective quality level. A special feature is that components from the mountain bike and road bike groupsets can be mixed, which means that 1x12 drivetrains with huge gear ranges are also possible. The wear parts are relatively expensive.
Jens Klötzer
Editor
