Shimano XT Dyna-Sys cranks review

Shimano XT Dyna-Sys cranks review

Smooth shifting cranks

Our rating

2.5

333.45
210.00

Published: December 27, 2010 at 10:00 am

Our review
Not as stiff as Deore, and pricey too, but reliable, long lived and with great shifting performance

We jig tested this crank four times to confirm the rather disappointing stiffness figures. We were surprised that Deore is stiffer than XT – it didn’t feel appreciably less stiff on the trail than the Race Face Evolve or FSA Afterburner.

It’s worth underlining that none of the cranks on test are flexy; they’re all stiff enough, only some are more so. What XT loses in stiffness to Deore is balanced by the 122g weight loss. However, boil that down to price and the £125 difference equates to a costly premium of £1 per gram saving in weight.

Performance-wise, Shimano XT is still right up there. Its cold-forged Hollowtech II cranks use a separate swaged-on alloy spider and hard anodised 24/32/42 Dyna-Sys rings to deliver shifting that’s almost on a par with XTR.

Although in performance terms there’s little to distinguish XT from SLX, XT is a reliable workhorse and remains a go-to sub-900g crank with near-as-dammit XTR level performance for less than half the price.

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