Shimano SLX HG81 MTB Cassette Reviews

Review score: 9.3/10 – Updated November, 2024

Latest Price: £43.99 – Save 17% (RRP: £52.99)

Take a look now to discover what makes Shimano SLX HG81 MTB Cassette worthy of a review score of 9.3 out of 10.

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Skip to content:

• Features
• Quality
• Price
• Reviews
• Brand – Shimano
• Videos
• Summary
• Alternatives

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View reviews at Chain Reaction Cycles

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Shimano SLX HG81 MTB Cassette features

Quality

Quality is without doubt one of the most important factors that we consider when buying bikes, parts, accessories or clothing. As you’d imagine it’s especially important when buying Cassettes. Let’s take at a look at the sort of things you can look at when trying to ascertain the quality of Shimano SLX HG81 MTB Cassette.

The first thing is material. Looking at what Shimano SLX HG81 MTB Cassette is made of will give you a really good idea of the quality overall. Take a look at the specs above and you should be able to see the material. It’s then up to you to decide if it meets your expectation.

Similarly you’ll also want to spend some time looking at the features too. Again the table above, listing the features will give you a really good overview. However you should think about the sort of features that you’d expect when buying new Cassettes. It’s worth writing a list of the “must-have” features so that you don’t end up compromising and missing some important features, or alternatively end up buying an unnecessarily high specced product.

There’s also a lot of merit in checking out the brand of the product and looking at the various brands that are selling Cassettes. Brands like Shimano are of courses extremely well respected in the cycling community so you know you’re getting a fantastic product with them. But if you’re undecided on your product you should write up a list of brands that you’d be happy to buy. It’s a great way of filtering and narrowing down the number of products when you’re searching.

Next up you’ll want to think about the price and use that as a guide to set your expectations of the quality. If you’re buying the cheapest of the options in the Cassettes category you should probably expect it to not be of as good quality as the most expensive. It sounds obvious of course. But this is where you can get a bit clever and use your combination of features, specs, materials and other factors to work together to get a really good quality product at the best price. We often draw up a list of “must-haves” and use these as filters when shopping online so that you’re only seeing products that meet your criteria. You can then sort by Price>Low to get the best deals.

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Comparing Prices

Price, as you would imagine, is the most popular reason for someone buying one product over another. It is the single most important factor in choosing the majority of products we buy. The same goes for Cassettes.

It’s at this stage of the buying process, when you’re looking at different options, that you should set a budget. Do some research to understand how much roughly you can expect to pay for the sort of level of product that you’re looking for. Then match that to your own personal circumstance and how much you can afford to spend. This will really help you in narrowing down the right product for you.

Price of Shimano SLX HG81 MTB Cassette

So the first aspect of price that we’re going to look at is the price of Shimano SLX HG81 MTB Cassette.

We run regular scans across the web to find the best prices for the products that we review, from a range of cycling retailers. The best price we managed to find Shimano SLX HG81 MTB Cassette was over at Chain Reaction Cycles where the price was £43.99 in our latest search.

Based on this price we’ve scored it 8.2 out of 10 for price.

Average price of Cassettes

Next we wanted to look at how much you can expect to pay, on average, for Cassettes.

We found 140 in the Cassettes category over at Chain Reaction Cycles. We looked at the average price of the products within this category and found the average is £86.17, making it below average at £43.99.

It’s sometimes helpful to look at how much the prices can vary. Especially when setting yourself a budget, or when trying to understand just how much you could spend on Cassettes. We found that the most expensive product currently available was £353.00, whilst the cheapest we managed to find was £2.99.

With 140 products available we worked out that 88 cost more than Shimano SLX HG81 MTB Cassette and 51 were cheaper.

Cost of Shimano products

At Chain Reaction Cycles we found 854 products from Shimano, of which 37 were in the Cassettes category.

For now though we’re looking at Shimano branded products in all categories. The average price of these products was £94.29 making this product below average.

You’ll also be interested to know that the cheapest Shimano product we found was £1.00 and the highest price we could find from them was £1999.99.

Of the 854 from Shimano, 413 were more expensive than Shimano SLX HG81 MTB Cassette and 439 were cheaper.

How much are Shimano Cassettes?

We then wanted to get a bit more specific and only look at Shimano products that are listed in the Cassettes category.

The average price of the 37 products that match this search was £59.32, with the cheapest coming in at £3.49 and highest price was £199.00. With the average being £59.32, Shimano SLX HG81 MTB Cassette comes in below average.

21 products that meet this search were more expensive than Shimano SLX HG81 MTB Cassette and 15 were cheaper.

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Shimano SLX HG81 MTB Cassette Reviews

Reading reviews is an amazing way of getting a good feel for a product without actually being able to try it or see it first.

There are two different types of reviews, and we also recommend reading both.

1. Expert reviews – In the cycle industry there are loads of really reliable trusted resources for expert reviews. For example if you’re looking to buy a new bike, BikeRadar Bike Reviews are great.

2. Customer reviews – these are probably your best resource for information. There’s no finances or influence involved, they’re purely just honest reviews from customers that have bought and used the product. The reason we love customer reviews so much is because no matter if their view is good or bad, there’s a very good chance that it will be honest and unbiased.

Our best advice is to head over to Chain Reaction Cycles and read the Shimano SLX HG81 MTB Cassette reviews there.

Based on what we’ve seen in terms of reviews for Shimano SLX HG81 MTB Cassette, it really does look like a great buy. So for the review score, we’ve scored it 9.9 out of 10. The average review score for all products in the Cassettes category at Chain Reaction Cycles is 4.3 out of 5.

Owner reviews, as we say, are one of the most important pieces of research that we can do before we buy. So, with that in mind, if you do go on to buy Shimano SLX HG81 MTB Cassette or another similar product, like Shimano Acera HG41 8 Speed MTB Cassette reviews or Shimano Deore BB52 Hollowtech II Bottom Bracket reviews we’d love you to leave a review in the comments below. It will really help future buyers just like you, when they’re looking to buy Cassettes.

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Brand

As we said in the pricing part of the review, brand is a really important consideration, but especially so when looking to buy Cassettes. But as you’re probably already aware, you’re on to a great choice if you do go with Shimano, as they’re a fantastic brand, making amazing products.

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YouTube Video of Shimano SLX HG81 MTB Cassette

Below we’ve embedded a video from YouTube where we’ve searched for Shimano SLX HG81 MTB Cassette reviews.

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Summary

Overall, we’ve been hugely impressed by the quality, price, reviews and features of Shimano SLX HG81 MTB Cassette. We’d say that as long as it fits your budget and meets your expectations in terms of features/spec…it’s a really strong contender. That’s why we’ve scored it a massive 9.3/10 overall.

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Further product details

• Product ID 1: 25010951007
• Product ID 2: 187837UK
• Brand: Shimano
• Model number: CSHG81134
• RRP: £52.99
• EAN: 4524667428602
• Description: Shimano SLX HG81 MTB Cassette (10 Speed)This Shimano SLX HG81 10-Speed MTB Cassette features a lightweight, minimal design with close gear ratios for maximum efficiency. This Shimano 10-speed MTB cassette comes with hyperglide sprockets to provide a crisp and smooth shifting experience.Features:The 3 largest sprockets are mounted on a lightweight alloy carrier to reduce weight and increase rigidityHyperglide sprockets have a computer designed tooth configuration with contoured shift gates, resulting in a crisp smooth shift even under loadClose ratio gearing allows a more efficient use of energy through finer cadence controlSprockets are cut away and drilled to reduce weight without reducing rigidityFor 10-speed HG-X MTB chainsWeight:¬†351g (11-34T)A 2-year warranty is offered with all Shimano products from Chain Reaction Cycles (3 years on Dura-Ace and XTR products).Buy¬†Shimano Components from Chain Reaction Cycles, the World’s Largest Online Bike Store.
• Full Category: Components > Cassettes
• Savings percentage from RRP: 17%
• Size: 11-34t
• Unisex
• 9
• Adult

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Other options for Cassettes

As you’d imagine there are so many options out there when buying Cassettes. 140 in fact.

A few of our other favourites that we spotted when researching Shimano SLX HG81 MTB Cassette included,
Shimano ES300 Octalink Bottom Bracket reviews, Shimano XT MT800 MTB Bottom Bracket reviews, or we really liked the look of Shimano XT MT800 MTB Press Fit Bottom Bracket reviews as another alternative.