SRAM GX Eagle 12 Speed Groupset: Customer Review

Thinking about upgrading to Eagle but not quite sure if its worth it? Well, our customer Stephen recently went through this exact dilemma. Luckily, he made the right move and went with a full GX Eagle groupset. Check out his review and see if he is happy with the decision!

Overview

Changes in mountain bike tech are sometimes so useful that I don’t know how I got by without them (dropper posts!) but more often than not, they seem completely unnecessary.

I was certain SRAM's Eagle drivetrain fell into the latter category. Going 1x11 or even 1x10 offered the nice advantage of cleaning up the cockpit and reducing weight. Eagle would give a bit more range on the cassette, but at a definite weight penalty. I wasn’t sure I should be paying money for a one-step-forward-three-steps-back type of “upgrade” I wasn’t convinced I needed.

The often talked about advantages of Eagle didn’t seem to apply to me. Sure, it would allow me to slap a bigger chainring up front, but my 30x10 combo could get me close to 30mph, and I rarely try to get any pedal strokes in while blasting down a trail at that speed (let’s be honest, I don’t even hit that speed on the trail). So putting a 34t ring up front could get me closer to 33mph, but that speed only seems useful when bombing fire roads, or when having to ride tarmac to a trailhead. Both scenarios are sparse enough that my lack of top speed had never occurred to me.

The second (and most obvious) advantage is the 50-tooth pie plate in the rear. Adding this cog to the current 30x42 high gear, the ratio would change from 0.71:1 to 0.6:1, a whopping 11% difference in the granny gear. This is huge, but would it even be useful? If I’m moving at 3mph, wouldn’t it just make more sense to hop off and hike-a-bike? And how many of those extra cog teeth are going to be negated by the extra weight of GX Eagle?

The Numbers

Weight is where I really expected Eagle to lose out. Pay money to gain grams? In an alternate timeline somewhere I’m still a roadie crying over the mere suggestion. And so far the touted benefits of Eagle aren’t adding up; surely it weighed more than the XO1 11-speed drivetrain on my current set-up:

GX Eagle
Rear Derailleur - 290
Cassette - 448
Shifter - 122
Chain - 262
Total = 1122 grams

XO1 
Rear Derailleur - 250
XX1 Cassette - 268
Shifter - 125
XX1 Chain - 252
Total = 895 grams

GX Eagle was unsurprisingly heavier, but leaving the XO1 crankset on my bike kept the weight in check. Yet, adding half a pound for the latest tech with possibly no tangible return sounds ridiculous.

But patience is always virtuous. XX1 or XO1 Eagle would not have even crossed my mind as an option, but now that those groupsets have been tweaked and the trickle-down to GX had made the price affordable, I figured it was worth a look. And the price for the mini-group was even better than I could’ve expected! After Craigslisting a few things from the parts bin, the cost of upgrading was next to nothing. I stripped the XO1 parts and put on Eagle the day it came in, with about 15 minutes to spare before meeting some friends to give it a test.

Performance and Final Thoughts

After putting some miles on the groupset, I found that all my concerns about the gains being less than marginal were WRONG. It’s great to jump into the 50t on long climbs, which lets me save a ton of energy for the rowdy parts of the ride. It has also been the difference between hitting a few extra loops versus heading home early. The tough climbs seem, well, about 11% less tough. There are still times I’m sure that walking would be faster than spinning my granny gear, but I’ll take the feeling of accomplishment at the top of a mountain over the 30 seconds saved any day (that isn’t a race day).

At the price, GX Eagle is a no-brainer. I can’t image riding a bike without it now.