SRAM trickles 12-speed down to £365 entry price with NX Eagle

The wide-ranging benefits of 12-speed have now trickled down to an entry-level pricepoint with the launch of SRAM’s NX Eagle groupset.

Set to retail for around £365 for the complete drivetrain, NX Eagle adopts many of the technical features of its superiors at around a third of the price.

With a 11-50 range customers aren’t losing much range over the top end, which instead carries a 10t cog. This does however mean that you can opt for a conventional freehub driver body as opposed to an XD. With this in mind, you may expect to see this on a wider range of manufacturer’s bikes over the MY19 model year.

So where have the costs been saved?

For starters the cassette is made up of pinned cogs as opposed to a single piece of steel, as seen on X01/XX1. NX Eagle utilises an alloy carrier for the four largest cogs.

Despite this, SRAM aren’t shy of suggesting this is electric mountain bike friendly, they actually say it’s a more preferential offering than the higher spec gear for this application. That might have something to do with the 615 gram weight, which comes in a fair bit more portly than the 360 gram XX1.

Similarly the chain, shifters and derailleurs all add a bit of weight, though pleasingly it is said that all are cross compatible with other Eagle components.

When it comes to the alloy chainset, stockists have the choice of three lengths spanning 165mm to 175mm.

At £130 lighter than the GX Eagle, this cheaper option pips Shimano to the post on cheaper 12-speed.