General question!
That is an incredibly broad question!
In the 25 or so years that Shimano MTB groupsets have been available, there have been lots of 'em
And those groupsets have evolved a lot! and there are some really poor low end sets
My favourite is XT the 'black face' stuff... Late eighties with flat black parallelograms on the mechs and nineties stuff with the triangular profile...
The four arm cranks.. from '96 do look pretty bad though (got an LX one on my Univega, have a five arm waiting to go on)
I'm not that interested in XTR but it makes sense, snagging some of the boutique market...
I'd say '80s early '90s: XT/DX/LX/X00LX are cool, lesser gruppos not cool too much steel
And mid '90s (ish) XTR/XT/LX cool STX borderline, beneath that not cool, too much steel
Modern stuff looks increasingly naff, the later nineties silver XT looks OK but it's gone all cyber looking now... Some sort of SRAM response?
- I voted cool for Campag
- I would not vote cool for SRAM
I always feel really pissed off when I get a bike with GripShift on it, 'cos it means I have to dig around sorting out proper shifters for it (Shimano shifters)
I mean, using the bars and grips as bearing surfaces? Jesus! and sooooo much plastic!
If it is something you want, then obviously it's cool
I shouldn't think anyone likes all of it