Shimano CUES

As my reviews get longer, rambling further into tangents and asides, I’ve made it a practice to incorporate a simple conclusion within the first few sentences.

This CUES drivetrain is one of the better drivetrains that I’ve ever used.

There’s not even a “for the money” qualifier in there. This stuff is good, very satisfying and easy to use, to the point where you probably don’t need to spend more if you’re building up an all road/gravel type of bike. As I say this, I do have a bunch of GRX Di2 stuff sitting in a shopping cart somewhere, but I can’t really give you a reasonable explanation as to why.

The problem with reviews like this is that when something just works 98% well, you really hone in on the 2% of the nitpicks. There’s only so much “it shifts really smoothly, and I never missed a shift” that you can talk about. The flaws stand out and dominate.

So, if you’re wondering if this CUES stuff is any good, or if that CUES-clad gravel bike is going to be good enough, if it has the right CUES parts, the answer is definitely “yes.” If you’re looking for more details than that and some philosophical discussions about nitpicks, please read on. I’ve spent (by my calculations) a few thousand km on this stuff, and I feel like I have some things to say about it.

A Reminder

Many of you likely missed the first look at these parts, so head on over to have a look at the details of what is being reviewed here. There are many, many different parts with CUES branding, so I think it’s important to be clear on what is being tested. We’ve got the U6030 brifters and calipers, clamping a set of SM-RT64 rotors. The rear derailleur is the U6000 model, which moves up and down the LG700 cassette. That’s all turned by the LG500 chain, the U6040-1 crankset, which spins around the RS501 bottom bracket. All of this stuff represents the higher end of the CUES spectrum, and that’s the major caveat of my recommendation above and the limitations of this review. There are a whole pile of CUES labeled parts that are cheaper than these, and I can’t promise your experience will be the same.

Shifting

I’m going to break shifting into two parts: what happens at your hands and what happens at the back of the bike. Both are great with CUES. We’ll start at the rear.

One of the defining features of Cues is that it is built on Linkglide architecture. This link here is a good start to understanding what that’s about. Shimano suggests Linkglide is for those that “prioritize durability, shifting smoothness and overall drivetrain toughness above all else.” What’s a bit less clear is how that is accomplished. Discussed are taller cog teeth with a thicker base, which suggests “additional surface area to better distribute pedaling forces.” They also mention revamped shifting gates used to “carefully guide the chain up and down the cassette.”

What’s interesting is that when I spoke with Shimano a few months ago about Hyperglide+, they promised several of the same things there as are promised here, with an emphasis placed on holding on to the chain through shifts and minimizing any bouncing or skipping. The big difference with Linkglide (or one of them, at least) is that where Hyperglide+ relies on a specific chain and accompanying tooth profiles, Linkglide is made to work with any and all 11-speed chains. This hints at an important thing. If all of the Linkglide benefits are available with any old chain, it points at just how important those cassette geometry changes are (and how a heavier cassette is a given with Linkglide).

While I would love to understand a bit more of the “why” and the “how”, that usually proves harder to get at. What I can speak to is the “what”, and I’ve learned that all these parts do work as described. Shifts are very smooth, and happy enough under load. It does all feel quite a bit different than Hyperglide+, which tends to be very immediate, with shifts being more forceful, almost as if tension is being released when the shift is completed. Linkglide is a bit more leisurely. Especially moving down the cassette into a harder gear, you sometimes need to wait a beat for the shift to start. Once the shift does start, it’s over fairly quickly and takes place with muted efficiency. It’s less of the whip crack of Hyperglide+ and more of a gentle pillow fight. Honestly, this seems well-suited to a gravel bike, where you’re less likely to need to quickly grab a handful of easier gears and where quiet efficiency is a welcome characteristic. You see a hill coming, and then it’s just thunk thunk, and you’re ready to go. Where it doesn’t excel is if you’re racing to beat a stoplight, standing on your pedals and trying to grab shifts as quickly as you can.

Moving to the front of the bike, I’ll admit that I was skeptical of the dual control levers before I spent a lot of time on them. I really didn’t like the idea of my brake lever serving two functions, and I thought that would feel a bit weird as I tried to slow down my bike. I’m now a firm believer in this system and would take it in an instant over SRAM’s double tap. I like it so much I’ve actually come to understand why they thought it would be a good idea to try to create something similar for mountain bikes, which is really saying something.

Part of the magic of this system (I think) is the nice, long levers that it gives you to execute your shifts. If you wish to grab an easier gear, just use a couple of fingers to bump your brake lever to the left. If you want a harder gear, gently nudge the smaller lever in the same direction with whatever finger is handy. It’s all very light and precise, and a totally different experience than what we’re used to with trigger-style shifters.

I have two gripes with the brifters. First, while that smaller lever that gives you a harder gear works very, very well, it does feel a bit cheap and plasticky when you are just standing around and holding it. Lucky for us, we don’t spend a lot of time standing around, holding onto our shift levers. I would love something just a bit more premium-feeling here, and I think these parts are expensive enough to justify that.

Next, I don’t love that parts of the dual control mechanism hang out the bottom of the lever. This isn’t just a CUES thing, and seems to be present on most (all?) mechanical dual control levers. You don’t really notice it on the day-to-day, but if I were consistently riding in muddy conditions, I would be a bit nervous about this. I’d push Shimano to clean this up, but they’d probably just talk me into buying Di2 instead of worrying about such things.

This is small stuff, though and doesn’t have an impact on how well these parts work. Between the light lever feeling and the smooth, quiet shifts, I can’t imagine why you would need to spend more money on shifty bits.

Braking

I find the world of Shimano brakes to be confusing. It’s great that Shimano supports a little bit of off-menu selection with their brakes, but it requires interpretation of multiple charts filled with alphanumeric codes in order to figure it all out. This one here lets you know about caliper/rotor compatibility. This one lets you know which style of hose you should use. Here’s one for lever/caliper compatibility, and one to help you figure out which pad to use. While I appreciate that they’ve gone to the effort to give us all of this information, why does it need to be so complicated? It doesn’t help that some of these combinations will give you absolutely atrocious braking performance.

And that’s the confusing thing with Shimano brakes. An “XT disc brake” can be anything from excellent down to not so much, depending on rotor and pad type. I’d prefer it if Shimano wasn’t so happy to indulge the poor decisions of penny-pinching product managers.

For me, the CUES braking system had good bones but needed some renovations. Stock brake performance was adequate, but not great. Absence didn’t make the heart grow fonder, and after riding mountain bikes with superior brakes, a move back to the gravel bike made the need for improvements obvious and necessary. To the charts! What I discovered is that I actually now own 3 bikes that use the same B-type pad. Where I had easily upgraded those other two bikes years ago with metallic pads, Shimano now only makes the B03S/B05S resin option in that particular pad size. Looking to 3rd party manufacturers seemed promising, but proved challenging. None of the local shops that I checked with stocked a compatible metallic pad, and I even struggled a bit to find something reasonable online. I eventually took a flier on a set of Galfer semi-metallic pads (with the standard G1053 performance material), and they totally transformed the braking. What once required a heavy hand now could be done with a couple of fingers.

I’m confused as to why Shimano does this. This is not the first review bike that I’ve had that required some parts swaps to bring out the best from Shimano brakes. They all had a high underlying ceiling, but in stock form, don’t cut the mustard. I fear this will be the case with most CUES builds as delivered. They’re going to come with bad rotors, mediocre pads (held in place with cotter pins), and many purchasers aren’t going to have the knowledge to figure this stuff out on their own. Best case, all you need is a pad swap, but looking at many of the real-world CUES specs well (like this Trek and this Canyon) you’re also going to have to swap out some “Resin only pad” rotor abominations. Clearly, these brakes are capable enough, so why handicap them with sub-par performance from day one? I transformed my brakes by spending $40 on brake pads, but why don’t they come that way in the first place?

Pedaling

Generally speaking, CUES offers few surprises in the pedaling department. The cranks and bottom bracket are solid, if a bit boring. They spin round and round and round, haven’t had any issues, and likely never will.

One of the things that I notice the most about gravel bikes is the narrower q-factor, and I’ve learned that I prefer the wider q-factor we have on our mountain bikes. These CUES cranks lean more towards the gravel spectrum, with a 151mm q-factor and a 50mm chainline. There is a set available with a healthier 180mm q-factor and the same 50mm chainline, so pay attention to the part numbers if you’re concerned about such things.

While we’re talking about pedaling, I’m starting to understand why people complain about the jumps in gearing on a 1x road/gravel system. Would I trade it for 2x/smaller gear jumps? Oh god no. But I get it, and I definitely found myself in situations where the gear was just off of what I wanted. 12 speeds would improve this marginally, but I also think there’s an argument to be made for using the 11-45T cassette instead of the 11-50. I very seldom used the 50T. A 38-tooth chainring with the 11-45 would be just the ticket.

My final observation has nothing to do with Shimano, but about the Easton hubs that the cassette is bolted to. I’ve been quite happy with the EA70 AX wheels. They’ve proven to be good value, spin smoothly and are durable enough for what I’m doing. However, I feel like the freewheel can’t really keep up with the bike. If I backpedal quickly, the chain slackens and then finally snaps into place once the freewheel finally catches up. Perhaps the road-derived hubs aren’t designed around heavier cassettes? This hasn’t proven to be more than a mild annoyance, but it’s a bit weird to have your chain flop around when you backpedal.

The CUES Ecosystem

Lastly, it feels impossible to talk about CUES parts without talking about the CUES philosophy. Honestly, I’m really, really confused about how Shimano is starting to name things. For some reason more parts sold under different names seems to be the strategy moving forward. SLX was killed and replaced with Deore, which now spans both of the previous component levels. GRX is available at multiple price points and two different gear counts. CUES looked at that, cackled maniacally and went all in on price points, gear counts and shifting styles. A CUES bike could be anything from this $1000 Specialized Sirrus X, all the way up to this $4500 Salsa Confluence. Granted, there are numerous reasons for the vast difference in prices between these two bikes, but I can imagine that the existence of that Specialized makes the value proposition of the Salsa a whole lot more complicated.

I visited a number of shops on my CUES-clad gravel bike when I was searching for brake pads, and I always received one of two responses. The first was a sort of knowing respect for my frumpy, value-packed drivetrain. The second was more of a “well of course your cheap brakes don’t work very well” sneer. Even bike shops don’t seem to know what to make of this stuff!

CUES loses me on two fronts. First, I don’t think it’s a good idea to call things at different price points the same thing. Even just in the limited world of GRX, this makes things complicated, where if you don’t pay close attention, you might not be getting the part that you expected. I think this leads to a world where customers might think they’re getting something that they actually aren’t. They might go to their favourite website, read up on how amazing those new CUES parts performed and then end up buying a bike with much, much cheaper CUES parts.

Where I get more lost is on the whole CUES premise, where they’re selling us a world of parts that plays nice with themselves, implying that this is going to make things so much easier for the consumer. While admirable, this strategy breaks down when you consider the 13 different CUES flat bar shifters that exist across 3 different series and 9/10 and 11-speed gearing. Just this past week, they announced another hydraulic brifter, this one for 9 speeds. It’s laughable to think that this is going to make things easy for anybody.

What’s stranger to me is that this universal system already existed with Linkglide. What would have made way more sense is if Shimano did their walled garden world building under the Linkglide umbrella (everything Linkglide uses an 11-speed chain and has the same gear spacing and cable pull), and just kept appropriate naming conventions for each level of parts. To me, that would have made some sort of sense. But what is CUES? Who is it for? What kind of bike does it belong on? It’s kind of great that there isn’t an easy answer to that question, and with a few reasonably cheap swaps, I can move all this stuff from my drop bar gravel bike to my flat bar city bike, or even my mountain bike if we decide to push the beds together. But at the same time, I’m left scratching my head as to where this stuff fits in the world of Tiagra, 105 and 400/600 level GRX. Honestly, if they’d introduced all these parts on my bike as the new 600-level GRX Linkglide this would be a totally different story.

In Conclusion

So, again, we’ve concluded a positive review under a cloud of complaints and confusion. Nothing is perfect, though, and I hope I can leave you here with an idea of how these parts might work. If you’re dipping your toe into gravel, a $2500 CUES equipped bike is going to be more than enough. Double-check those part numbers, budget some money to swap out the pads (for sure) and the rotors (most likely), and the worst thing you’re going to have to complain about is that some cheaper bikes seemingly have the same parts as yours.