Common shifters and new cranksets give Shimano a path to retire Tiagra, Sora and Claris
(Image credit: Shimano)
Shimano CUES components have been available for flat bar bikes, electric bikes and mountain bikes for a couple of years now, but Shimano’s announcement of a new set of components finally extends CUES equipment to drop bar road and gravel bikes.
CUES provides one common component set that will work with 11, 10 and 9-speed drivetrains and across the different disciplines, offering bike makers and riders a much simpler range of products to choose from. It also allows riders to swap a few components to add extra speeds to their drivetrain, rather than needing to replace their groupset in its entirety.
It does this via common sprocket spacing in cassettes, regardless of their speed, and the same pull ratios for mechanical gear cables for all speeds and disciplines, something that Shimano components lacked in the past.
CUES is based on Shimano’s Linkglide tech, rather than its fancier 12-speed Hyperglide+ tech which is used in Dura-Ace, Ultegra and 12-speed GRX gravel components and Hyperglide used in 12-speed 105, 105 Di2, and 10/11-speed GRX gravel bike components.
Linkglide teeth have a wider profile than Hyperglide teeth, which Shimano claims can increase component longevity up to threefold. It says that it found that less experienced cyclists often stay in one gear, putting a lot of torque through the sprocket, particularly when riding electric bikes. In addition, they tend to shift under load. Both behaviours can lead to excessive sprocket wear, which Linkglide is designed to address.
1x and 2x options with hydraulic or mechanical disc brakes
CUES includes hydraulic disc brakes for 11-speed and 10-speed bikes (Image credit: Shimano)
The new drop bar CUES products include U6000 series 11/10-speed shifters which pair with a new flat mount hydraulic disc brake calliper. They have a similar shape to Shimano’s 12-speed road bike shifters and can be used with a CUES 10 or 11-speed cassette, a new CUES 50/34t or 46/32t crankset and a new CUES front derailleur to provide a wide range road or gravel drivetrain.
In addition, there are single chainring 40t and 42t cranksets, offering an alternative for gravel bikes. There’s also a brake-only drop bar lever to match.
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9-speed and 10-speed bikes also get a mechanical disc brake option (Image credit: Shimano)
Below the U6000 series components, sit the new drop bar U3000 series 9 and 10-speed components, which are designed for mechanical disc brakes (there’s no CUES rim brake option, by the way).
There’s a pair of dual control levers for this configuration, again with the option of new 50/34t or 46/32t cranksets. There are also 40t and 42t 1x cranksets to choose from as well.
Childrens bike specific components
A new short cage derailleur is designed for smaller wheeled bikes (Image credit: Shimano)
In addition to the mainstream CUES products, there are two specialist products for smaller wheeled commuter bikes and kids’ bikes. The new short cage 9/10-speed CUES derailleur is claimed to increase ground clearance by 30 percent over a standard cage and will handle an 11-36t 9-speed or 11-39t 10-speed cassette.
While CUES is standardised on 160mm brake rotors, there’s a new 140mm 6-bolt rotor launched for kids’ bikes.
8-speed isn’t dead
ESSA brings 1x8-speed shifting to drop bar bikes (Image credit: Shimano)
CUES covers 11, 10 and 9 speeds, so there’s no direct replacement for 8-speed Claris. This has been a stalwart of budget road bikes and has steadily trickled upwards towards the £1,000/$1,000 mark as bike price inflation has taken hold.
But below CUES, Shimano introduced the 8-speed ESSA component range in 2024 for budget flat bar bikes and MTBs. It’s now extended ESSA to drop bar bikes, although only in 1x configuration. New ESSA drop bar components include a dual control lever and a matching brake-only left lever.
The ESSA groupset offers an 11-45t cassette. It continues to use Hyperglide shifting tech, to maintain compatibility with Shimano’s existing 8-speed components.
Pricing
There is a very long price list to accompany this new news, we won't include it all here, but here are some of the key GBP pricing points from across the new component ranges.
Refreshingly, the most expensive CUES component is the 11-speed hydraulic STI lever at £199.99 or £219 with a flat mount calliper included. (per side)
A CUES U6040 HollowTech 2x chainset will come in at £109.99, whilst the more affordable two-piece U6030 chainset will be £69.99.
The U6000 rear derailleur will retail at £59.99 and the 10-speed CUES Link Glide cassette will cost £59.99 in a 11-48 size.
Paul has been on two wheels since he was in his teens and he's spent much of the time since writing about bikes and the associated tech. He's a road cyclist at heart but his adventurous curiosity means Paul has been riding gravel since well before it was cool, adapting his cyclo-cross bike to ride all-day off-road epics and putting road kit to the ultimate test along the way. Paul has contributed to Cyclingnews' tech coverage for a few years, helping to maintain the freshness of our buying guides and deals content, as well as writing a number of our voucher code pages.
