Tested: 2024 Shimano Saint Brakes

Just a few months after the announcement of SRAM’s new Maven , Shimano has responded with the release of their all-new Saint brake. It’s the brand's biggest, most powerful, most aggressive brake yet, and it builds on decades of innovation, engineering, and experimentation.

That’s the opening paragraph I might have written if Shimano had released a new Saint brakeset this year. Or last year. But they didn’t. Instead, the current Saint brakes that I’ll be reviewing here have stayed the same for a shocking 12 years. Ryan LaBar reviewed the exact same brakes I’ll be writing about here back in 2012. At the time, he noted that Shimano had deviated from their usual three-year product cycle to give the Saint group an extra year to mature before they released the new line. Now, Shimano has tripled that four-year cycle.

Think back to 2012. I was riding a 2008 Giant Glory 0, lusting after these shiny new Saint brakes. Specialized had just killed the SX Trail (pour one out for a legendary bike) and replaced it with the Enduro Evo. Front derailleurs were commonplace, dropper posts weren’t. Boost spacing wasn’t really a thing yet, bike industry folks still talked about suspension travel in inches, and Aaron Gwin was dominating the World Cup.

How many components from that era would you still run on a modern bike with no hesitation? I did a fairly deep dive, and came back with one: Spurcycle bells were founded in 2012, and I still use one of those on my daily rider. It’s clamped to my handlebars next to a pair of Saint brakes of the same vintage.

Why review a 12 year old brake?

When SRAM dropped their new Mavens this spring, my initial impulse was to compare them to the Shimano Saints I’ve been running on my personal bikes for half a decade. Yes, there are a bunch of other (wonderful) brake options out there, but SRAM and Shimano absolutely dominate the world of aftermarket spec and, thus are the obvious choice for comparisons. There’s a reason, after all, that Ryan Palmer compared the two brands’ most powerful stoppers 6 years ago.

Those Mavens are by far the most asked about part on my personal bike, everybody wants to know if they live up to the hype. So I’m working on a three-way comparison between the Mavens, these Saints, and a wildcard entry, the Hayes Dominion . That piece is coming soon, but for now, here’s my standalone review of the Saints, twelve years later.

Longevity

Durability is usually the last section of most reviews, tacked on at the end, often noting that while the reviewer didn’t get that much time on the product, they didn’t have any issues, and if they do in the future, they’ll update the review. That’s not the case with these Saint Brakes.

I’ve defaulted to Shimano Saint brakes for a long time, swapping out the stock brakes on my personal bike for Saints whenever possible. My latest pair before this review came off of a 2008 Transition Bottlerocket that I bought as a wedding present to myself. I do not know how old those brakes are, but I pulled them off the Bottlerocket, and ran them on a few different bikes for four years, without any issues.

Barring catastrophic crashes, I’ve been really impressed by how well Saints hold up to years of use and abuse. Beyond the occasional haphazard lever bleed, I basically just ran those brakes into the ground, swapping pads and rotors as necessary and never worrying about the rest for years.

In the interest of fairness, I mounted up a brand new pair of Saints to my STEEZL for this review, to make sure that I wasn’t comparing the fresh Mavens to my aggressively neglected Saints. But I was surprised by how similar my "ridden hard and put away wet for five years" Saints felt to the brand new pair. The lever feel on both is tight and crisp, the bite point is predictable, and they just plain work.

Ergonomics

Ergonomics are a very personal question, but for my hands, Shimano nailed the lever shape on the Saint. It’s so natural, so smooth, with just the right amount of texture. This lever is wonderful.

My one ergonomic beef with the Saint is I-Spec. The Saint is I-Spec B, not I-Spec A, or I-Spec II, or I-Spec EV. Yes, you can probably get your hands on the right adaptor to mount just about any shifter or dropper lever to your Saint brake clamp, but those adaptors are rarely easy to find. I tend to default to discrete clamps for shifters and droppers whenever I’m running Shimano brakes just because those adaptors can be such a hassle. The Saint has adequate room around the clamp to run my preferred control configurations, but it might be more challenging for folks with differently shaped hands than mine.

Finally, unlike SRAM’s brake levers, Shimano uses side-specific levers - you can’t just flip them upside down and run them on the other side. This isn’t a big deal, but it does make it harder to swap out a broken lever assembly for a spare, or set up your brakes for someone who prefers to run them moto style.

Power, Noise, and Heat Management

“Brake power is determined by one thing, and one thing only, piston size!” the internet pedants will argue. And they’re not wrong. A brake’s absolute power is determined by the ratio of the area of its master cylinder to the pistons it drives. But, in the real world, there are way too many other variables in play. Pad compound, hose flex, efficiency of the hydraulic system, seal type and flex, and a bunch of other little things that add up to have big impacts on how much power a brake delivers. But what I can say is that I really like how much power the Saint delivers, and maybe more importantly, how it delivers that power.

I’ll dive deep into power comparisons with the Maven in another piece, but I think with 200/203 mm rotors, the Maven is noticeably, but maybe not drastically more powerful feeling.

Ryan Palmer compared Saints to SRAM’s Code a few years ago, and determined that the Saints were the clear winner in terms of power. I fully agree. The idea of modulation is all well and good, but in use, I’m consistently frustrated by how much force it takes at the lever to deliver the level of power I want to my wheels when riding with Codes. Saints, on the other hand, deliver reliable power from that first satisfyingly grabby bite point, to full “wheels locked, dear lord I need to stop right now” time. For me, a 200 lb human, riding human-powered bikes, the Saint delivers all the power I need, exactly when I want it.

I’ve also, anecdotally, had good experiences in terms of noise with Saints. Beyond the pad rattle which we’ll get into later, they tend to run fairly quietly. On wet days, they usually take one or two braking points to warm up and quiet down, and then run quiet the rest of the day. I've also found that they’re a little easier to keep free of rotor rub than brakes like the Dominions. The pads retract further, and give more space for wobbly rotors, or thicker aftermarket rotors, if you so desire.

Finally, SRAM talked a lot about thermal mass and heat management when they released the Maven. And I do think that brake sets the gold standard for me in terms of handling sustained, hard braking without feeling, or sounding bad. I’m running the Saints with Shimano’s finned pads and ICE rotors. They handle big, steep descents just fine, but I notice the feel degrading a touch more, and their tendency to get loud when I’m truly whaling on them. It ain’t much, and I only notice it in extreme situations.

Carry On My Wayward Bite Point

Would it be a Shimano brake review if we didn’t talk about bite point? I’ve never had wandering bite point issues with Saints or Zees. I’ve had them with plenty of SLX and XT brakes though, and am intimately familiar with that “oh lord where are my brakes!?” experience.

This is, honestly, why I still choose twelve year old Saints over Shimano’s newer brakes. They just do the dang thing. Sure, they weigh a little more, but again, I’m a large person on a heavy bike, there’s plenty of other places to shave grams if that’s the priority.

Beyond that, I also really like Shimano’s bleed system for quick lever bleeds. I don’t do them regularly, but even just moving brakes between bikes, it’s so easy to just screw that cup on to the lever, plunge out any bubbles, and get back to riding. I’ll go deep on bleeds in the Maven comparison piece, but Shimano’s is quite nice.

Quirks

The Saints have two primary quirks that tend to get mentioned by every user. The first is that the finned pads rattle against the caliper. It’s noticeable, and a little annoying. It’s also very easy to fix. I tend to prefer the mastic tape and overbend the retaining spring approach, since I haven’t had great experiences with aftermarket third party brake pads. You can also just run non-finned pads. Either way, it’s a quick fix. It looks like Shimano is working on a solution to this , that’s reminiscent of the system used to keep automotive brake pads still. Alternately, I think it would be cool to see rubber bumpers built into either the pad or the caliper to quiet things down. Sort an integrated mastic tape solution.

Second: I’ve never been able to get the contact point adjustment screw on Saints to do anything noticeable. I’ve tried a bunch of different tricks, bled the brakes with the screw set to specific places, the whole nine yards. It might do something imperceptible, but I don’t notice it. Luckily, I like where in the lever stroke the Saint’s bite point falls, but for all I know that screw could be a dummy head spinning for placebo value. Is this a big problem? No. I’m totally fine with brakes that skip this feature. But, if you’re going to advertise it, and go to the trouble of including it, you might as well make it actually do something.

For Now

In all honesty, I didn’t set out to review Shimano’s Saint brakes more than a decade after they were first announced. Instead, I just wanted to make sure I was making fair comparisons to SRAM’s new Mavens. But, after a few months on this fresh pair of Saints, I felt compelled to write them up. These brakes are still excellent. Shimano could release a “new” Saint that fixed the pad rattle and included a useful contact point screw, that otherwise performed the same, and it would compete well with current class leaders. That’s sort of absurd. What other part from 2012 does that hold true for?

I don’t know, but I’ll be holding on to this pair of Saint brakes and riding them hard, hoping that in 2036 they still do the job.