WELCOME TO THE POWER DOME. This should be hanging around Flava Flav's neck.

Antoine de Saint Exupéry said; “Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.” And the SRAM Red 10 speed Cassette, one of the most impressive pieces of equipment in the RED component group, is perfect. A complete redesign of the cassette resulted in the lightest cogset available.

The manufacturing process starts with a solid block of steel which is machined into a dome, and then refined further as teeth appear and the "dome" now looks like a normal cassette, except you won't spill the cogs everywhere when you lift it off your freehub body, it's one-piece. The back of the dome is sealed with an aluminum backing plate cut with the freehub spline profile. The top two cogs are separate and are slid onto the freehub and secured with a lockring just like you're used to.

There are several very important features to note about the Sram RED cassette. First, the cogs are made of heat-treated steel. This means strength and stiffness for fast accurate shifts, and durability. Steel cogs last at least twice as long as titanium cogs, as found on Campy's and Shimano's high-end offerings. Second, is weight. The 11-23 tooth cassette is 155 grams (SRAM gives a weight of 160 grams, but doesn't specify which tooth combo it's for). Third, ease of use, which is not to be scoffed at. Never again will you lose a cog, or waste time figuring out the order and orientation while stacking cogs onto your freehub. Just slide the 3-piece cassette on and crank it down.

SRAM's open glide technology refers to the shift gates created by removing teeth at key spots on the cogs to facilitate fast, effortless shifting going up or down or under power.

Light, stiff, accurate, and easy to use. Perfect.