When was the last time you saw a driveside photo of a bike where the brake-rotor was visible beyond the dinner-plate-sized cassette? With modern 46-51t climbing cogs, your answer is likely; “it was a downhill race bike.” The massive range of those low cogs and super sprinty high gears has allowed us to ditch finicky front derailleurs altogether while arriving at nearly the same gear range we had with a pair or triad of chainrings.
e*thirteen has taken that range a small step further by cutting the smallest cog to just nine teeth, allowing us to pedal faster when the throttle is fully open. My initial complaint with 1X drivetrains was that the 12-tooth highest cog was too large, and the then-36t lowest gear didn’t allow me to use a larger chainring to speed things up. While that may not matter to everyone, for folks who race XC or enduro it’s a vital drivetrain consideration. Just as narrow-wide chainrings gobbled up my chain guide woes, wider cassette ranges have handily taken care of the sprint vs. ascent capabilities for cassettes. With a whopping 556% gear range spanning 9-50t cogs with a minor 393g weight penalty, the e*thirteen TRS Plus Gen2 12-Speed Cassette adds a handful of nails to the front derailleur coffin.
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