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I am looking at buying a new road bike and most I have tried have a compact set up with the traditional 50/34 at the front and 11-27 or similar at the rear. I am considering the Focus Cayo Evo with full Ultegra and it has 52/36 at the front and 11-28 at the rear.
Is the lowest gear 36/18 equivalent to 34/27 on a traditional compact? I ride a lot of hills and don't want to be lacking a gear or two at the steepest part.
Google "sheldon brown gear calculator", it will tell you everything you need to know...
36/28 and 34/27 will be fairly close, but you can expect to lose one of your lowest gears and gain one or two high gears. It's up to you to decide, but you could probably get away with losing your lowest, depending on how often you do/don't drag yourself uphill in 1st gear.
It's not going to be far off - if you just imagine that the very marginally larger 36/28 will be more than offset by your new bling lightweight bike then it'll all be gravy 😉
They're pretty close. But if you want lower look at a 50/34 chainset with a 11/28 cassette. That's as close as you'll get to one size fits all gearing.
36/28 is 33.9"
34/27 is 33.2"