>>1825202it's such bullshit that companies will call framesets without last millennium-style cable holders "electronic only" when 99% of the time you can still just route the cables through the frame - you might not get a front derailleur but it's pretty much impossible to make one where you couldn't have rear shifting.
di2 is great - i use it on two of my bikes and it's phenomenal, even the super-dated 10 speed ultegra 6770. i piecemealed it together used over months though, and even then it wasn't cheap. 105 "can" be a racer's groupset, in the same way that ultegra and tiagra "can" be for higher and lower price points, but the non-DA road groupsets to me always represented a greater degree of flexibility in regards to their purpose.
example - 6800 and 8000-era ultegra had a whole slew of "non-series" but still ultegra-branded components to accommodate cyclocross racers and even pre-GRX gravel people (CX70 front derailleur, 46/36 ultegra chainrings, the funky ultegra derailleur with the clutch). 105 saw really, really late in-series support for cantilever brakes (5800), flat bar riding (5800), SPD pedals (7000), and tiagra has all sorts of weird, non-traditional road options.
my point in all of this, because i'm rambling like a fucking psycho on a message board - 99% of riders, even 99% of strong, fit, talented riders will have preferences or budgets or limitations that make a cookie-cutter, DA-style road groupset with minimal flexibility (because the new di2 is barely backwards compatible, too) completely ridiculous and limiting, even if it's pretty, shiny, light, and new. mech 105 really did have a long-standing reputation of offering a really wide variety of groupset and riding options to riders doing anything from pure road racing to allroad type shit. ultegra was the same way, but at this point rather than encourage variety within a series shimano's decided to make a trillion different groupset series, limit their compatibility between each other, and
