Why wouldn’t you want a more seemless transition between gears? How much weight do you think an extra cog will add and bear in mind weight for a race bike is irrelevant since it has to be a minimum of 7.5kg and weights already need to be added to get to this.
12 speed chain is now the top end standard in the Shimano range for road and MTB aligning development & manufacturing.
This is an irritative improvement in all aspects as you would expect from the latest offering of a tech company & I don’t understand the negativity.
For me, it’s cost, availability and the analysis paralysis that comes from having a few bikes. Which ones to change, can I get it, even if I can afford it, that type of thing.
I’m probably just grumpy, I’m old enough to remember when ‘Daytona’ came out on Campag and the gnashing of teeth that created. 
It’s like razor blades and megapixles. A bigger number is always better!
Maybe not the case for Dura-Ace, but how many bikes get drivetrain upgrades over their lives? The main market has to be new bikes, so backwards compatibility less of an issue.
All of mine so far have, some of them more than once but I’m a dying breed, do all my own wrenching etc.
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Yeah, this forum is not going to be the typical bike owner, but then the typical bike owner doesn’t need Dura-Ace, so maybe it’s a big proportion.
I have replaced the drivetrain on my bikes, but done it like-for-like or at least kept it in the (10-speed) family. Can’t be bothered to upgrade the whole drivetrain to 11/12 speed.
But that’s like comparing the first STI groups to now; I mean what real world advantage is there between a sorted hatchback at 350bhp and an RS6 for example, on a B Road?
I know many reviewers prefer the previous gen RS6.
They most certainly do.
Or have you not been keeping up?
For me, I’m not joking about six gears.
I only use the little ring when going uphill, I won’t use the top four sprockets and the front ring due to chain crossing, same for the bottom four and little ring.
There may be the odd occasion where I find myself using eight gears on a ride, but that’ll be rare.
For my last ride I might have used four gears.
I can think of at least three 100km rides where I’d only need one gear (48 x 17 is ideal) and would be able to keep up with the group and also not struggle up the 2% hills 
Benefits of a fixed gear is that you don’t need brakes either, so in winter your rims stay much cleaner.
Just wrap a spare tyre around your shoulders and doff a cap, newspaper down your front and off you go 
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well, 13 speed cassettes are already here… 
OK - it’s a 1x but even so
https://rotorbike.com/catalog/default/1x13-groupset/rotor-1x13-kit.html
As with most group set upgrades there are 3 questions and 3 answers:
Will it make me go faster?
Can I afford it?
Do i feel like I need it anyway?
Normally answered, no, no, yes.
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It’s often “cheaper” to buy a new bike than just the group set,
Too 
(As in, sell your old bike, buy a new one, with the new gruppo and you’re on a “profit”)
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It depends… friend of mine got rid of his RS6 because he said it was the most boring car he’d ever driven. His argument was that to be having fun you had to be going so fast that if anything went wrong you were dead, and you’d probably take a few people with you.
Downgraded to a Golf GTI and loved it.
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The old ‘driving slow cars fast is more fun than driving fast cars slow’
I feel that a bit with my 340 touring; it’s pretty quick, but I somewhat miss the feel of whipping around in my P-Reg Fiesta. It wasn’t fast by any measure, but had a lot more feel about it.
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In the bike world, that’s what’s made the likes of the Street Twin and RE Interceptor, mt07 so very popular. You can wring the neck out of them and still keep your licence.
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I’d tend to agree. The 530d I drive is as quick as I’ll ever need (although definitely not on the real ‘fast car’ index) but it’s not as fun or involving (or as blatantly unsafe and dangerous) as the shitbox 17 year old Ford Ranger that it replaced. That thing was a snake and tried to kill me a number of times. Fun though.
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11 speed chain is fine on a 10 speed groupset, probably a little smoother than a 10 speed chain.
I tried 1x about 5 years ago. It was good, but lacked range. With modern gravel groupsets, like Shimano GRX, with a wide range cassette such as 11-50 (with wolftooth Goatlink), 1x becomes more attractive. Personally I don’t find the steps between gears too much, but feel that 12 or 13 speed cassettes would be nice to have.
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It’s interesting that Shimano has taken a different approach to SRAM. Shimano is keeping backwards compatibility in the hub, which I think is great. SRAM went down the route of using the 12th speed to add a 10 tooth, and then use a smaller chainring, while shimano is fitting a 34 tooth (to DA, its been available on Ultegra for past 3 years) and offering a bigger chainset. SRAM approach is lighter, but 10 tooth is less efficient, Shimano has a weight penalty but is marginally more efficient in the gears that you actually ride in most of the time.
Campag EKAR is even more extreme, with a 13 speed 9-42 cassette for a gravel groupset
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Yes I remember that being a concern for the small cogs; 9 must be really bad.
I was talking to a mechanic last week who is closely involved with Campag and a number of the pro teams that use Campag.
Apparently both Shimano and Campag are having a lot of problems with the chainsets for the new 12-speed groupsets and shifting at the front mech.
Some of the pro teams are trying to find bodges to allow them to use the 11-speed chainsets with the 12-speed set-up, but there are issues here because 12-speed requires a wider spacing between the 2 chainrings in order for the chainline to work properly.
Maybe worth holding off upgrading to 12-speed for a while unless you want to go SRAM (which apparently does work properly)
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Interesting that something that major gets passed all the QA and testing
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I guess to some extent they use the pro teams to test the new tech before they launch, but here it looks like they’ve launched to the public too early.
I guess SRAM got a big march on them when they launched their 12-speed in 2019 so they were all playing catch-up.
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