Workman-like middle of the road brakes. They work great with no fade if you're doing extended braking. Not so easy to adjust. If you have brakes below these and you're going to upgrade, you might want to go farther up the price scale than these.

Although simple, reliable, and light, the pads are hard to adjust and I haven't yet been able to get the squeal out; I'm using Kool Stop Eagle Claw pads. I like the independant spring tension adjustment. They have a lot of fore and aft play. You can hear the back brake click because of this play when you get on and off the brake. Careful filing down the lenght of the bushing can eliminate this play, but still doesn't eliminate pad squeal. I have another bike with Shimano LX's, and I would say they are better than the LX's.

These brakes suck more than anything else has ever sucked. Pad height, depth, and contact angle all adjust with the same bolt - yuk! Look at the photo above - like on all other 986's, the pads are misaligned. Require a death-grip to even slow down. Forget about stopping after shredding your favorite mud hole. Blech!

I never had a big problem adjusting these brakes and with the proper pulling angle of the cable, I was able to stop quite abruptly. I found them cheap, light, and simple.

These are simple, light, and very practical. Not too bad to adjust if you know what you are doing. Just as effective as V brakes if they are set up properly- and have more room for adjustments. Good over all product.

A bitch to adjust. Can never seem to get the adjustments just right without rubbing or having too much play in the levers.
It stops the bike, but can't handle any moisture or mud very well.
I'd upgrade these if I had the choice.

Cheap, simple, light. They work. They don't brake. No funky, overly complex mechanisms to screw around with. Of course since they aren't anodized and don't cost a ton of money your typical yuppie poser crowd will hate them.

These brakes are the same design as the Ritchey Logic brakes. These brakes stop quite well. However, I think that pad adjustment is the most important feature of brakes - if a brake is easy too adjust, it will work great, but if it is hard to adjust, then even the most swank brakes won't stop anything. These brakes are not easy to adjust, about as hard as Shimanos, maybe even harder. The high profile also lets the rear brake hit my foot on as it pedals up the back. Sometimes annoying, but one time my foot got caught underneath the brake, and I couldn't move my foot past it as I was pedaling up, so I ended up falling.