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Anyone have experience of both?
I have the old Sora kit on one of my bikes (the one with the thumb shifters), and it's decent enough. Functional and reliable. I guess that's all you can say about it really. It works.
On my other bike I have the new 105 stuff, which is utterly sublime. The two are worlds apart. Where on the Sora it's quite a stretch to change gear, and then sometimes you need to figure out that knack where you have to push it that little bit extra, just for it to pop into gear.
In comparison the light 105 levers only require a gentle touch, a fraction of the travel of the Sora levers, and the gears snap into place confidently and with no margin of error. They really are a joy to use.
I appreciate tuning will have an impact, but it's not just that. I've ridden both bikes from new, tuned the Sora gears several times, fitted new cables. They're not the same thing.
Anyway, I'm just wondering how the new Sora stuff compares to old. Obviously it has the down shifter on the levers now (I don't actually mind the thumb levers for general riding), and they look nicer in black. But is there any difference in their shifting performance?
I guess one of the advantages of the 105 is the 11 speed, allowing closer shifting? I don't really know. Would this make the new Sora the same in that they require the same amount of travel on the lever as the old one? Or do they have different mechanisms which allow them to shift more like Tiagra and 105 kit?
Old sora was frankly awful, clunky, mis-shifting, flappy, too much travel, no feedback and just rubbish compared to Tiagra and above.
New 3500 Sora is actually a blooming good groupset, feels like the older 10 speed Tiagra (4600) and 105 (5600) kit, nice shift, reliable and decent price, the two (old/new) are worlds apart and if you don't care about a little extra weight or the extra cogs it's hard to recommend anything else.
The new sora feels very similar too tiagra and is quite nice to use. Claris is now what sora used to be like.
I'd gladly use sora on a winter/touring bike as it works perfectly where I'd have never used the old stuff as it was a pain
'Old' sora was alright, if you got on with the thumb shifter.
'New' sora is bloody great.
New Sora is really good, even Claris is good also.
Claris is actually quite good.
The newer sora is on my wife's bike, I've given it a quick shot. It's nice, very similar to my older bike with 9sp tiagra. Only obvious downsides are weight and the non hidden cabling if the aesthetics matter.
Anyone used the new 105 stuff too? I'm trying to work out roughly where on the spectrum new Sora would sit between old Sora and new 105, as they're really the only road groupsets I have experience of. Is new Sora stuff a massive improvement, or just a bit better than it was?
A massive improvement. Obviously it's not as good as current 105, it never will be but it is much much better than the old Sora, it honestly does feel very similar to 5600 105 in use just with one less click
If you were local I could offer you a ride on current Sora, 4600 10sp tiagra, 6600 10speed ultegra (feels very similar to the Tiagra but lighter), and current 6800 ultegra (which is basically the same feel as your 105) to compare, any of your riding buddies locally that could help?
As others have said, current Sora is a massive improvement. I've got Claris on my CX and even that's fine