Campagnolo has today announced a long-awaited update to its top-tier Super Record groupset, with the launch of a wireless, disc-brake-only groupset that it’s calling Super Record Wireless. Most surprisingly of all, it has done away with the thumb shifter.
When the brand announced the prior iteration, Super Record EPS in 2018, it was ahead of the curve as the first of the ‘big three’ to jump to 12-speed cassettes. Fast forward five years, however, and both of its closest competitors SRAM and Shimano have caught up, overtaken, and far surpassed the Italian brand in the technological arms race.
Plenty of rumour and hearsay – as well as a leaked patent document – had already told us that Campagnolo was about to fight back, and had even given some clues as to what the new product might look like, but today we finally have the details.
Super Record Wireless represents the first wireless groupset for the soon-to-be-90-year-old company. However, we’re told that the newfound wireless know-how will almost certainly trickle down to Record, and perhaps Chorus too.
Davide Campagnolo, grandson of founder Tullio, says the product marks a commitment from the brand to a category he calls ‘sports luxury,’ and the price is certainly reflective of that. At £4,499.00 ($5,399.00 / €5,200.00) without a power meter, it’s clear that Campagnolo isn’t interested in trying to win a war on price.
The groupset is made entirely in Italy at the brand’s Vicenza headquarters, and it’s set to be the start — or at least the continuation, after Hyperon — of an avalanche of launches, an avalaunch if you will, from the brand over the next 12 months.
Full wireless
When Shimano launched Dura-Ace in summer 2021, much was said of the brand’s ‘semi-wireless’ approach that saw two derailleurs connected via a centralised battery. Campagnolo has gone the other way, following in SRAM’s footsteps, albeit carefully, on a road that Valentino Campagnolo – Tullio’s son; Davide’s father – describes as “paved with patents”.
This means Super Record Wireless sees separate batteries mounted onto both derailleurs, each of which removable and chargeable via a magnetic cable not dissimilar to the one you’ll use for an Apple MacBook. Notably, the batteries cannot be switched between the front and rear derailleur – SRAM owns that patent -…
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