Tech Review: Rotor Q-Rings

So... finally i got my Rotor Q rings fixed up by Emi today! Received it 2 weeks back but haven got a chance to get it on my bike. I was very excited to test it out and waiting till tomorrow's long ride is a little too much for my patience to handle. So i took it out for a short 1.5hr spin. Here are my thoughts...

The Q-Rings i am using is a 53/40 set. On the first few pedals, I felt the difference immediately. I have seen pros and friends using it, read reviews of it, but never had a chance to test it out myself. I was amazed by how it made me feel. Honestly, I never thought much about it initially and felt it was another high tech scam to cheat pro athlete-wannabes and rich weekend warrior's money. But I'll have to take back my words now!

The Rotor Q-Rings made pedaling so much more efficient. There are 5 positions to set your chainrings on your crank (1,2,3,4 & 5). I chose position 3 for a start, and after using it, I think I'll stick to it for awhile. My advice is, unless you have really weird pedaling styles, try not to go to the extremes (1 & 5). If you are going to fix it on your TT bike or if you are more TT focused, go one up to position 4. For me, I am an all-round road racer and position 3 suits me just fine. Soon, i hit Coastal Road, a long flat 7-10km stretch, and i was cruising at 36-38km/h without much effort. My cadence was very constant and smooth. With every new toy, I got to test it out on the climbs of course! And Selarang hills were up next! I thought i was going to try out the small ring as soon as i hit the climb, but to my surprise i went over the top without any gear change at all! I just focused on my pedaling and used the momentum before the climb to carry me through, without much drop in speed.

A few side notes, my chain dropped out on one occasion when i changed from small ring to the big one. I started to get worried as i wouldn't want anything like this to happen during a race. Not sure if it's due to the elliptical chainrings or my front dee. If it's due to the rings it might be a big problem. But after checking with some of my friends who use the Q-Rings too, they said they have no problems with that. So i guess it's my worn out Shimano 105 front dee. Something else i noticed about the Q-Rings, the big and small ring gave me slightly different feelings. The smaller ring felt slightly jerky. Im not sure if they are in the correct position set up. Got to check it again. But otherwise, this set of Q-Rings is flawless!

Aesthetic wise, the black rings probably look better than the silver ones i got. And fitting these on an Ultegra crank doesn't make it look any nicer (worse in fact!). But when you're on your bike, you can't really see whats on your bike other than the handlebars. What you want is something that can make you go faster! And I think these Rotor Q-Rings does this job perfectly. :)