The all-new Campagnolo Super Record Wireless is a shift in product architecture that will inform future groups. It doesn’t just build on their EPS electronic group, it completely reinvents it as an ultra-premium, ultra-expensive road group.
In typical Italian fashion, there’s a heavy focus on style, but more so on function, performance, and user-friendliness.
There are four main differentiations from their other group sets, and from anything else on the market:
Shifting
The Super Record Wireless shifters have new ergonomics with two distinct paddles on both levers.
Their signature thumb lever (or button, for EPS) is gone, which was a love-it-or-hate-it feature that polarized users. And they say riders with bigger hands found it harder to use, so replacing buttons with paddles on the brake lever makes it more of a universal fit.
The system transmits via Bluetooth. A small LED on the inside of the lever body indicates system status.
Gear Ratios
The revised gear ratios is the feature they talked most about during their presentation. They create “the ideal cadence” across the cassette, with the majority of the shifts being 1-tooth jumps.
The biggest tooth jump on any cassette is just 3 teeth, and the smallest has just 1- and 2-tooth jumps.
The cogs’ teeth have a new profile that matches their top mechanical groups, and a new chain that’s optimized for them, yielding silky smooth shifting.
Despite the cadence-preserving tooth counts, the three new cassettes can be paired with new chainring combos in ways that deliver a slightly larger total gear range than before… without creating big tooth jumps.
And that’s the real talking point from Campy, that the new system gives you “that feeling” of always having the right gear.
It remains a 2×12 group. They say 13 speeds works well for their Ekar gravel group (which is amazing, BTW), but with these new gear combos, it already has a bit more range than before. That, and their pros were happy with 12 speeds.
The Ultra-Torque crankset keeps Campy’s two-piece spindle (titanium on Super Record) with a full carbon one-piece arm and spider construction. They’re available in 165/170/172.5/175mm lengths.
It comes with 45/29, 48/32, and 50/34 chainring combos, a 16-tooth jump for all three.
Brakes
Campagnolo speaks very highly of their hydraulic disc brakes, claiming advanced temperature regulation and responsive modulation. While these look very similar to before, there are two functional updates.
The rotor spider is the same, but they slight improvements to the rotor for improved heat management. It has a floating rotor that lets the braking surface expand and dissipate heat better without warping, and the heavily vented braking surface helps it cool faster.
The caliper is all new and a few grams lighter. They say its easy to modulate with a progressive feel.
User-Centric Technology
Campy’s new user-centric technology philosophy is there to enhance the ride, not just be wireless for wireless’ sake.
Magnetic charging ports are very similar to Apple’s MacBook, just get the cable close to either derailleur’s contact and it snaps into place.
Use the same port and cable on both derailleurs, so you can charge them on the bike, or remove the batteries and charge them at your desk, no special cradle needed.
Four battery indicator lights on each derailleur make it clearly visible how much charge is left.
It charges fast, too – 90% charged in 45 minutes, 100% charged in 60 minutes, with more than 20% charge from just 10 minutes, more than enough for a few rides.
They estimate a minimum 750km per charge with heavy use, most riders will get a lot more. The shifters’ coin cell batteries should last two years.
All parts are IP69K waterproof, which means you *could* pressure wash it, but they still don’t recommend doing that to your bike.
New App compatibility lets you customize any shift button to do anything and turn Multishift on or off. It’s very visual with a good GUI, showing battery level, firmware status, shift counts for each derailleur, and allows OTA updates.
Backward compatibility?
If you’re wondering whether any of it’s compatible with existing groups, the answer is yes, but it’s not recommended. The cassettes, chain, and chainring could all be mixed and matched, or you could add just the new shifters and derailleurs to an existing drivetrain. However you won’t take advantage of the new gear ratios, and they don’t recommend mixing new and old parts together because they’re not optimized to work together.
Pricing & Specs
Campagnolo’s Super Record Wireless claimed weight is 2,520g for the complete groupset in the smallest, lightest combination (meaning, smallest cassette and chainring combo).
They are not releasing individual component weights at launch because they say it’s designed to work as a system and is sold as a system, so part weights don’t matter. Since there’s no secondary (Record, Chorus) wireless group from them yet, the logic’s sound.
MSRP is a wallet-breaking €5,200 (£4,499 / $5,399), which is about $2,000-$2,300 more than SRAM Red AXS or Shimano Dura-Ace Di2 R9200.
But they say EPS is being phased out, that this replaces it, so I expect the tech will trickle down to replace the lower priced groups soon enough.
The Mechanical Super Record group is not updated, and they say it will be phased out by the end of the year. It’s likely that Super Record will be electronic-only after that.
The new Campagnolo Super Record Wireless is available now on complete bikes from Pinarello, Specialized, Canyon, and Colnago, among others.
Aftermarket sales will follow in a couple months…OEMs had priority. A powermeter option is in the works and will come later.