Intended Use: Trail / Enduro
MSRP: $330 per brake ($660 for front & rear set)
Stated Weight: 307 g front / 327 g rear
Blister’s Measured Weight: 294 g front / 318 g rear (cut hoses)
Bolted to: Transition Sentinel & We Are One Arrival
Reviewer: 6’, 160 lbs / 183 cm, 72.6 kg
Test Locations: Washington & Arizona
Test Duration: 4 months
Intended Use: XC
MSRP: $295 per brake ($590 for front & rear set)
Stated Weight: 192 g (front) / 212 g (rear)
Intro
Today is a big day for Shimano’s mountain bike division. For starters, they launched their long-awaited XTR Di2 electronic drivetrain. But they also updated some of their other longest-standing products, the XTR series of brakes.
The updates to the four-piston Trail / Enduro XTR brakes (M9220) are more dramatic than the changes to the two-piston XC ones (M9200), but there’s a lot to dig into on both — including Shimano’s claim that they’ve solvd the issues with bite-point inconsistency that a lot of their brakes have displayed over the years.
We’ve been testing the new four-piston stoppers for the past several months, so we’ll start with an overview of the on-paper updates, and then we’ll discuss how all of those changes translate on trail.
Design & Features
Shimano continues to offer their XTR brakes in two- and four-piston versions, the former for XC use and the latter for Trail / Enduro.
Improving the consistency of the brakes was Shimano’s top goal for the new versions. Shimano’s higher-end brakes have long suffered from wandering bite points (which we’ve covered quite extensively), and Shimano says that those problems are resolved with the new brakes.
They’ve taken several steps to get there. The prior-generation XTR brakes (and many others in Shimano’s lineup) use ceramic pistons because their low thermal conductivity minimizes heat transfer from the brake pads to the fluid. The new-generation brakes have switched to resin pistons, which Shimano admits aren’t as thermally insulating as the ceramic ones of old. However, Shimano says that they’re able to achieve a much smoother, more consistent surface finish on the resin pistons, which makes for more robust sealing at the pistons.
The new brakes still use mineral oil, but Shimano has come up with a new, lower-viscosity formulation for them. The combination of the new oil formulation and new piston material also allowed Shimano to change the material they use for all the internal seals in the brakes, again to improve sealing and with it, the consistency of the brakes. The new piston seal material is also said to rebound more consistently across a wider temperature range.
Shimano is exceedingly clear that the new low-viscosity oil should not be used in any of their prior-generation brakes (i.e., anything but the new XTR brakes, at least for now). They say that ignoring this instruction will lead to full brake failure — you need the new pistons and seals for the low-viscosity oil to work properly.
Thankfully, the new brakes use the same bleed kit as the outgoing ones, and Shimano says that you don’t need to worry about slight cross-contamination of the two oil types in the bleed tools, but you should not mix and match any further than that.
Now, let’s get to the specific models:
XTR M9220 Four-Piston Brakes
- MSRP: $330 per brake
- Stated Weight: 307 g (front) / 327 g (rear)
- Blister’s Measured Weight: 294 g (front) / 320 g (rear)
As we noted up top, these four-piston brakes see the most dramatic change in this recent update, so we’ll start with them.
Shimano has overhauled the lever and caliper of the new M9220 four-piston brakes, in addition to the previously mentioned updated pistons / seals / fluid. Let’s start at the lever end:
The new lever still gets a tool-free reach adjuster and a tooled contact point adjuster, though the reach adjuster is now packaged more cleanly into the lever blade, rather than protruding forward of it.
The lever clamp design is unchanged, with a hinged clamp secured by a single bolt, and a push-button release to open the clamp as a failsafe if the bolt comes loose. Shimano has also left their I-Spec EV integrated clamp design unchanged — a welcome decision, since they’ve gone through a number of iterations of I-Spec clamps over the years.
The M9220 brake lever still uses a ServoWave cam to vary the brake’s leverage throughout the stroke, but the cam profile has been tweaked to smooth out the power delivery.
The most visually obvious change is that the hose now exits the BL-M9220 lever parallel to the bar, and much closer to it than the outgoing BL-M9120 lever. Shimano says this decision was driven by improving aesthetics for external hose routing first, though it’s also tidier with headset routing as a byproduct.
The new lever also uses a pull-style master cylinder arrangement, instead of the push-style version on the prior-generation brakes (and most others). That change was made for packaging reasons, allowing Shimano to position the lever pivot closer to the handlebar. This lets the tip of the lever blade move outward through the entire lever stroke, rather than starting to arc back inward by the bite point. The new lever blade is now swept upward by five degrees, which Shimano says helps it follow the arc your finger naturally takes as you squeeze the lever.
Down at the caliper end of things, the M9220 still uses four pistons. However, unlike the prior-generation four-piston XTR brake, the new version is a one-piece caliper (rather than using two-piece bolted construction). The M9220 caliper also gets the updated bleed-port design that Shimano has been using on their drop-bar brakes for a while now. The new design still uses a push-on hose fitting at the caliper end, but the fitting is opened and closed by a separate 4 mm Allen key on the back of the caliper; this is meant to help avoid accidentally disconnecting the hose when opening and closing the fitting.
Shimano has also attempted to mitigate the issues with rattling brake pads that a lot of folks have noticed with their current brakes. The pad shape hasn’t changed from a compatibility standpoint, but Shimano has made the new pads fractionally longer front to back so that there’s less room for them to move around inside the caliper.
They’ve also made the hole for the pad-fixing pin oblong so that the sides of the pads will contact the caliper before the inside of that hole contacts the pin. Shimano’s internal testing revealed that contact between the pin and the pads was a bigger source of noise than pad / caliper contact, and the new pads are designed to address that. They’re also backward compatible with prior-generation XTR brakes and Shimano’s other Mx120 brakes.
XTR M9200 Two-Piston Brakes
- MSRP: $295 per brake
- Stated Weight: 192 g (front) / 212 g (rear)
The two-piston XC brakes get the same lever body and caliper as the prior-generation versions; the new pistons, seals, and low-viscosity fluid are the only parts that have changed.
So, same as before, the new M9200 brakes still forgo the Servo Wave cam in the lever for a pared-down, lighter option with more direct lever feel but less outright power.
What is new, though, is that Shimano now officially condones running the two-piston M9200 caliper with the M9220 Servo Wave lever from the four-piston brakes. In fact, they even sell that combination directly for folks who want a more powerful XC brake at the expense of a little weight.
Shimano says that adding power via the lever assembly adds less weight than getting the same power bump from bigger rotors and/or larger caliper pistons. The BL-M9220 (lever) / BR-M9200 (caliper) combo costs $10 more per wheel than the standard BL-M9200 / BR-M9200 pairing, and adds a claimed 47 grams per end (239 vs 192 g for a front brake).
On-Trail Performance
I’ve been riding the same pair of M9220 four-piston brakes for about four months now, and I’ll just get right to what is the biggest part of their story in my book:
Shimano really does seem to have fixed the issues with bite-point inconsistency that we’ve experienced (and complained about) on a ton of pairs of their brakes over the years.
Granted, as of writing this, I’m working with a sample size of two brakes. It’ll be interesting to see if the trend holds up across a bigger sample as we start getting review bikes with the new XTR group rolling through. But so far, I haven’t had any issues with bite-point consistency whatsoever, and that’s a big step forward from Shimano’s prior-generation brakes (by which I mean both the now-prior-gen XTR and the still-current XT & SLX versions).
The new XTR’s lever feel and power delivery are still identifiably Shimano — their signature firm, direct bite point is still here — but the free stroke on the new XTR brakes is lighter than the outgoing ones, and the power delivery isn’t quite as abrupt once you hit the bite point.
It’s still on the sharp side — again, the new XTR brakes still feel more like the outgoing version than they do like any competitor I’ve tried — but the differences are noticeable when A/B-ing the different generations of Shimano brakes.
The shape of the lever blade feels mostly similar, too, and I can’t say that I’ve really thought about or noticed the upswept lever blade design out on the trail. The shape of the lever blade still feels quite similar to that of the outgoing version, though the hook at the end of the blade feels a little more secure. I think this is mostly because the relocated lever pivot keeps the tip of the blade moving outward throughout the lever’s stroke, rather than the hook itself being more pronounced.
I like the ergonomics a lot, especially since I run my brakes with the bite point set relatively close to the bar — the new XTR brakes facilitate that especially well, while still having ample adjustability to move the reach out if you’d prefer.
Big picture: I’d describe the feel and ergonomics of the new XTR brakes as readily identifiable as Shimano, just with some tweaks and refinements that I find to be for the better (mostly the lighter free stroke and new lever pivot point).
I imagine that the vast majority of folks who like the feel of Shimano’s prior-generation brakes will also get along with these new ones quite well. If you find Shimano’s brakes to be too on/off in their power delivery, that’s been smoothed out a bit, but there are still more linear options out there (e.g., TRP Evo Pros — Full Review coming very soon). And, if like me, you’ve thought that Shimano’s past brakes would be quite good if they could sort out the issues with bite-point inconsistency, it seems like they’ve done it.
Shimano doesn’t make any big claims about the outright power of the new brakes, but I’d rate them as being a touch more powerful than the outgoing version. The initial hit at the bite point isn’t quite as strong on the new ones, but there’s a little more power on tap when you really haul on them.
All that said, it’s the consistency of the new brakes that’s the really big deal in my book.
Most pairs of Shimano’s prior-generation brakes I’ve been on have displayed at least minor inconsistencies in the bite point, and a whole lot of them have had it vary wildly, with a re-bleed only serving as a very temporary remedy (and, again, I’m counting the still-current XT and SLX ones as being of the prior generation).
I’m reluctant to declare the problem definitively, 100% solved — I’ve only used one pair of the new brakes so far — but these ones have been truly dead consistent, and that’s over a test period that has been more than long enough to trip up most pairs of the older brakes.
All indications so far are great, and if that trend holds, it’ll put the new XTR brakes back on my short list of preferred options. They’re quite powerful and have a reasonably short free stroke, especially crisp bite point, very good ergonomics, and excellent heat management (particularly when paired with Shimano’s top-tier RT-CL900 rotors).
Who’s It For?
The easy answer here is that the new XTR brakes are for folks who like the feel of Shimano’s prior-generation brakes, but have been put off by their longstanding issues with bite-point inconsistency.
In our experience so far, that longstanding issue seems to be solved (we’ll report back if any issues crop up down the line as we get time on more pairs of the new brakes). Beyond that, the combination of very good power + a firm bite point that the M9220 four-piston brakes offer stands out in the current market.
Bottom Line
The new XTR M9220 four-piston brakes still feel a lot like Shimano’s now-prior-generation brakes, with which many are familiar, but the new versions offer vastly improved consistency, a lighter free stroke, smoother power delivery, and a little more outright power. I’m also a fan of the ergonomic tweaks that they’ve made, though they’re much more refinements of the existing recipe than a whole new direction for Shimano’s brakes.
Still, it’s the consistency that I’m most excited about — by far. I’ve long liked Shimano’s brakes when they’re working as intended, but I’ve had way too many issues with bite-point variation to trust them long term, and have long since moved on to other options on my personal bikes. For the first time in a long time, Shimano is making a brake that I fully trust.
Can someone explain to me what the concave/convex washers are doing when they are mounted on top of the caliper as shown above?
That style of brake adapter requires them because the part that the forward bolt passes through is thicker than the bit at the rear. That means that the mounting tabs on the caliper aren’t parallel to the tabs on the frame. The spherical washers are there so the bolts clamp on the caliper more evenly, rather than only contacting at the edge of the bolt head.
Thank you!
For what it’s worth, I personally prefer adapters that use four bolts (two through the adapter into the frame and two through the caliper into the adapter) since the spherical washers on the two bolt ones make it a little harder to dial in the caliper alignment, but both work.
Yes, thank you. I have been wondering that since they stopped using the spherical washers on both sides of the brakes like SRAM/avid used to do.
Thanks for the PTSD flashbacks, that system sucked. Having to align the caliper in two axes rather than just one was miserable.
My biggest gripe with Shimano brakes (apart from the wondering bite point) is that they’re not rebuildable. these days that is not clever. Are these?
No change there, unfortunately. Shimano still isn’t planning to offer caliper or lever rebuild kits.