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Hi all. I just tried my mate’s brand new Canyon Grail with a GRX 2x groupset (GRX 600 shifters and GRX 800 derailleurs) and the shifting performance was miles ahead my Shimano 105 R5800 (edit: with RS-505 shifters – and front derailleur upgraded to R7000). The GRX was effortless, blazing fast… In comparison mine feels sluggish (although the indexing is spot on). So I’m wondering if it’s a matter of maintenance of if the new gen Shimano groupsets (edit: ie R7000, R8000, GRX) are so much better. If they are, is it down to the shifters because even in the front my R7000 with brand new cables is nothing like the GRX.

I bought my bike second hand with a couple thousand km and I rode another couple thousand since then. I’ll change the rear cable just in case, but I’m not sure it will help that much. Anything else I could do apart from upgrading in order to achieve a similar performance?

EDIT: thanks for the maintenance advice which might help. Otherwise after research it looks like R7020 (and up) shifters do perform much better than RS-505 https://road.cc/content/review/249356-shimano-105-r7020-hydraulic-disc-brakes. Not sure about the rear derailleur though.