Hey everyone how's it going?
It was the end of last year when I built this Commencal and if you remember
this was the first time when I used the Shimano 4-piston brakes.
These are the Deore but for my new Yeti ARC I decided to go with the 4-piston XT.
Are these so much better? Are these any different than the Deore? Let's check them out!
These brakes were introduced with their 12 speed drivetrains
and Shimano now has 4- piston calipers for all their brakes from Deore all the way to XTR.
However the Deore caliper, the 4-piston caliper is one of the cheaper ones.
I noticed that this is the same caliper used by their MT520 brakes.
In comparison to that, the SLX, XT and XTR caliper it's a bit slimmer and a bit different in shape as you're gonna see later.
In the last couple of years Shimano streamlined the way they deliver the brakes to us
and if you look here at the box that's gonna become apparent.
That's because whether you get the two piston or the four piston caliper, they will be delivered with the same lever.
Now the lever is Servo Wave enabled, it uses the same mineral oil, ISPEC-EV because that's the new standard,
and here you're gonna see whether you got the front or the rear.
On the right side though you're gonna notice the 2-piston and the 4-piston calipers,
you're gonna see the various brake pads available for each of them, two piston and four piston,
whether they're are metallic, resin, with or without fins.
And what I have here is this M8120 caliper with the N03A, that's resin with finned pads.
And to finish with the nomenclature this is the M8100 lever that's common for all these XT brakes.
These are all made in Japan as you see here in the corner of the box
and also on the other corner of the box you're gonna see that these come disconnected from the factory.
If you wanna know how to install these brake sets I have a full video on my channel giving you the A-B-C on how-to get it done.
I bought these XTs OEM from my friends at bikecomponents.ca and they do come with the lever connected to the caliper.
But disconnected means these - you see the Deores here the lever is one piece and then you
have the caliper and the hose disconnected.
Again follow that video for all the details on how to get this installed.
But why don't we look at the levers first.
And again the levers are common between 6100 or 2-piston calipers and 6120, the 4-piston.
But there's a couple of differences that are worth mentioning here between this lever and the XT lever.
And no, I'm not talking about the color even though the XT and Deore are pretty close, the XT being a lighter shade of gray versus a Deore
but if you look carefully here, here and there,
you're gonna see that Free Stroke adjustment screw that's completely missing from the Deore.
The lever shape is the same however the reach adjust on the XT is done with that little knob,
here you're gonna have to use a hex key to make that happen.
Like I mentioned, the lever shape is the same, these new levers are a bit wider than the previous generation
but Deore is the same but it's missing the dimples that you see over there.
The Servo Wave in these new brakes has been modified to give you better modulation.
I am not convinced that the Deores have that same Servo Wave curve, it might be the old one, but I cannot say that for sure.
All new generation brakes have this ISPEC-EV
which means the bar clamp pushed further in and an extra contact point here at the very end.
But other than that this is a two piece bar clamp that is common between Deore, XT, SLX and XTR.
You do have the black tightening bolt on the XT
but there is one more difference here on the bar clamp that is worth mentioning.
To attach accessories like this remote lever to the bar clamp,
Shimano provides this insert that goes right here on the inside of the lever,
right in there, and when sliding that insert in the slot you get this movement of your accessory lever.
You can see how it starts in this spot and then you can move it relative to the brake lever,
Deore is restricted here to about 10 degrees, SLX, XT, XTR give you 20 or 30 degrees I don't remember exactly what.
How do you think that's implemented here on the two bar clamps?
It's actually pretty silly or clever, whichever way we want to call it:
see this cutout here on the Deore?
The XT is about 2.5 millimeters longer that way, they both start in the same spot here next to the lever.
But the cutout on the XT goes out further.
So how do you modify the Deore to give it more adjustability?
Just take a file or a Dremel and just make that cutout bigger. And I guess you can call that a hack!
And before we move on to the calipers, you can see here on the back this is XT made in Japan,
on the Deore lever you're gonna see Malaysia.
Internally both calipers use the same type of brake pads,
that is pretty clear if you look at the bleeding block provided with both the Deore and the XTs.
And and that is definitely bigger than the bleed block provided with the 2-piston calipers.
Now even with the two different dimension of pads they can all use the same Shimano rotors.
This is an older XT RT76, the breaking surface all made out of steel, that's been replaced by this RT86.
This is very similar but uses Ice Technologies so the sandwiched steel and aluminum braking surface.
If you want to go cheaper for 6-bolt you always have this RT66, this is the SLX - Deore equivalent.
The older generation because with the new generation they only introduced Center Lock rotors.
You see the XT here MT800, you have the MT900 XTR
and they do have an SLX Center Lock, I believe it is RT64.
You want to get the better rotors because they accept both the resin and metallic pads
and overall give you better braking performance, better cooling in terms of the fancier ones.
Again this would work for both 4-piston and 2-piston caliper brakes from Shimano from Deore all the way to XTR.
These are post mount calipers and Deore and more expensive 4-piston use ceramic pistons,
you see the white over there on the Deore, even a better view here on the XT.
Two16 and two 18 millimeter pistons give you about 20 percent more area than the comparable XT caliper.
BH90 brake hose is connected here to the inside of the caliper on both,
however SLX, XT and XTR give you this banjo connection as opposed to a direct connection on the Deore.
And this banjo connector allows you to alter the angle at which the hose
enters the caliper, can be very useful for some frames.
Just like in the past, for SLX and up you have this threaded pin as a retainer for the pads,
in case of the Deore you have this split pin that some complaint that might be rattling inside.
I guess is one of the compromises when buying the cheaper product.
And I mentioned earlier that the XT profile is slimmer compared to Deore,
I hope you can notice that in this view.
And that actually affects the type of pads that you can use with these two types of calipers.
If you're just looking at this type of pads with no fins,
the thing is they use the same actually, the same pads that were used in the past by the Zee and Saint
and these are the D03s resin pads D02s would be metallic.
If you're interested in pads with fins, well the Deore doesn't offer them,
however if you look at my review of these brakes you're going to see that there are some options even though they're not that pretty.
The new XTs have the finned pad option, this is the N03A the resin pads.
They are slimmer than in the past and they are inserted from the top just like this.
These new finned pads take the shape of the slimmer caliper profile
and they are different than the previous generation Zee and Saint that are a lot taller.
They still fit but this is how they fit the new caliper, looks a bit silly.
But I assume they will work just fine if not vibrate like crazy.
For those of you interested in weight, 285g that's the weight of the front brake 4-piston XT.
The Deore equivalent 4-piston brake is 305 grams.
Well on this bike I do have the M6120s front and rear,
however for the new XTs I plan to install these only in the front of my Yeti ARC and I'm going to test them like that.
And I only had a chance to ride the new brakes on the trails a couple of times on this unfinished bike,
and I did have 2-piston in the back, 4- piston XT up front.
So what would be my early conclusions of this?
Well first of all these are massively powerful brakes, I love them, great feel and modulation.
Now if I am to compare the lever feel between my 4-piston front and the 2-piston rear,
it's hard to notice a huge difference between the two.
What's the difference between the 4- piston XT and the 4-piston Deore?
I think on a blind test you will be hard-pressed to say which one is which, I don't think there is any difference between the two.
The major difference is here in the redesigned caliper,
but this older caliper that's used with the Deore 520s is powerful enough
and the only downside to it is the fact that you cannot really use the finned pads available with M8120s.
If you want to cut cost even more and you don't mind the ISPEC-II bar mount,
the MT520 brakes from Shimano are probably as powerful as the Deores and the XTs with the lowest price tag of the three.
So as a conclusion the XT 4-piston brakes M8120s are really good brakes,
they're really powerful, really nice modulation, I like them a lot.
I also like to install them 4-piston front 2-piston rear like you see it here
and I would highly recommend them to anyone that wants a premium brake for their bikes.
If you want to cut cost I gave you a couple of options
and with that being said look at these if you want the best budget for piston brakes available in the market today.
And that's pretty much the end of my video folks,
if you found this useful don't forget to like, subscribe, keep an eye on social,
and until next time, hope to see you folks on the trails.
Cheers guys, cheers!