SHIMANOClaris Left 2-Speed Road Bicycle Shift Lever- ST-R2000-L - ESTR2000LIA

Good shifter for the money. You honestly can’t beat the Claris. Especially if you’re just getting started with Road Biking. I bought this for the bike that sits on the trainer. I have Ultegra on my main road bike and I’ll tell you that the Claris offers about 95% of the performance of the Ultegra. It’s quite amazing the performance you get now from Shimano’s “entry level” equipment. Ultegra is obviously WAY lighter (which is far less important for beginners), and it’s faster at shifting, but only by a quarter of a second or so. You really do get good performance from this group set. It’s often mocked because it’s Shimanos bottom end, but it’s such a great value. A full Ultegra group set would cost $1,500. A full Claris group set would cost $200 (or less). Bravo Shimano, this makes road cycling so much more accessible to the average person.The one critique is that the front derailleur on Claris kind of sucks. You’ll feel it when using this shifter and it’s not the shifter’s fault, as much as the actual derailler that’s to blame. If you’re having trouble shifting after installing this brifter, just google “index front derailleur Claris” or something like that. You’re problem is almost certainty that you need to index your front derailleur. The Claris FD is super finicky and needs to be indexed “just right”. Honestly if you just take it to your local bike shop, most of them will index your FD on the spot for free. That’s probably what I’d recommend doing.This Brifter is the newer Claris style that includes the extra half shift on the top gear. This is a HUGE benefit. This let’s you shift up an extra “half gear” if you start to cross chain on your large gear. Since Claris is only an 8 speed group set, you end up doing quite a bit of light cross chaining. So this feature benefits the Claris even more than the higher end group sets because with so few gears, it’s real easy to get in an unavoidable cross chain situation (you only have like 4 gears before you start to rub against the FD, so the half shift gives you an extra 2 gears that you can use if it’s indexed correctly). You still need to be aware of the cross chaining on the last 2 gears and shift down your front gear if you start to use the two biggest gears in the back while on the large gear up front. It’s not great for the chain, your sprocket, your crankset, or your derailleurs if you’re riding in these gears. This is probably the most important thing for beginner road cyclists to learn. As you get more experienced and upgrade your bike, you’ll be using higher end group sets with more gears and your experience with cross chain avoidance will be put to good use.So make sure you get this ur shopping elsewhere but the model on this page includes it.

Excellent, smooth shifting gears. I exchanged my entire drivetrain for the latest Claris groupset and converted flats to drops. My bike came with a very strange combo in the OEM drivetrain. I chose these brifters for the newer design and better cable management over Microshift R8s. They are of the usual Shimano quality. This is my training bike and it is a better bike due to these great components. I'm no longer in a hurry to replace it. Shift cable is pre-installed and tongued ferrules are included. Install and adjustment was hassle free.

Upgraded from Shimano 2200 thumb shifter style shifters.Excellent upgrade, premium shimano.