What's the point of gear indicators.

I must admit... The SRAM indicators I tried on a Hardrock Disc and Comp were awful... But I did take an instant dislike to the whole shifter in that case.

Having got used to Shimano STI shifters, I couldn't get on with the SRAM version with the funny little thumb button. I have to say though, I wish you could get a friction only front shifter thay matched current STI shifters. I mutch prefer the ability to "trim" the from mech with the old thumb shifters.
 
Although they are arguably completely useless I do quite like some of them.

I must admit that the little orange tic-tac in XT M740 rapid-fires does make me smile sometimes. It just looks like it kept a few people at Shimano busy and happy for a while designing a nice little solution to a non existent problem.

Also the top caps on thumbies would look very plain without the index marks, and I do like the way SRAM integrate their indicators into the clamp band.

I'm clearly a sucker for bright colours that move.

They can however be useful though when setting up the indexing on your rear mech.
 
thats the one reason i got the M970 shifters for mine, i detest them, they look so cheap and IMHO mark you out to be a bellend who can't work out what gear you are in.
 
I actually rode my old bike for about 3 months before i noticed i had them!!!

Just got a new bike and before i'd even gone for a ride i took the damn thing off, thats the good thing with all the new shimano stuff you have the option of 'on or off', and the good thing is when you take it off, underneath the indicator unit is a normal cap, nice one!
 
I have to admit that I do watch the little shifter indicator thingys ... but they don't seem to relate to any kind of bike gear reality!! Lol!! ;-)
 
I remember getting them on my XT shifter back in 94 and thing what a load of stupid..Its like, if you need another gear, you push the button and you get another gear, unless you push it and you don't then your our of gears. Simple, if you really need to know, then take a peak at your cluster...

then years later I got a new shifter, and didn't realize how much I actually used it without knowing!

But now I have another new shifter, and its back... but my old ones were numbered 1-8 (ok so I never actually remembered if 1 was low and 8 high, or the other way around, but now all there is is the orange maker, butt it doesn't actually tell you what gear your in, just vague where on the cluster you may be... except still I never know, is right high? or Low? or what? so i just peak at the cluster... (not so easy now I am old and flexible as a fat alu tube)...

overall silly idea... or an average idea that could be done much better...

but you can take tyhem off can't you? (my old XT ones you couldn't, but nowdays you can?)
 

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