For many world cup downhill racers the Shimano Saint M810 disc brake is standard equipment, proven on multiple occasions it’s worthy of a medal or two.

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Review by Charlie Collins

For us here, it make just as much sense on one of our enduro or e-bikes so we can have as much stopping power as we want.

Throughout the Shimano brake range you’ll see similarities in their designs, this is because year on year, technology is passed further down the line. Most now feature their stubby lever, dedicated to one finger braking. Couple the Servo Wave lever mechanism with the heavy hitting Saint caliper and the result is crazy power for seemingly minimal effort.

In the same way as the Shimano XT M8000 disc brake, it takes advantage of Shimano’s Ice-Tech cooling features to help keep temperature issues to a minimum, and we certainly didn’t have any concerns in that department. But similarly again, it also seems to suffer with an inconsistent bite point – not quite as often as the XT but definitely there.

You can adapt to these strange characteristics, and at that point you can take full advantage of the massive amounts of stopping force at hand.

In similar fashion to the SRAM Code, there’s an immense amount of power on tap. With the metal pads fitted it can be a little grabby in slower technical sections of track, but once up to speed it all makes sense, as you’re able to come to a controlled halt before you know it.