Why do people say that a Rohloff is less efficient than Derailleur? It's not quite that simple.
The plots I have seen (
Human Power Institute) indicate that Rohloff is more efficient in it's direct drive (11th) than a derailleur, not much different in gears 1-8 but less efficient in it's "granny gears".
Gears 8-14 run at 96% - 99% efficiency.
Gears 1-7 run at 95% - 96% efficiency.
Each gear had it's own unique spike/trough
Derailleur ran at around 97% average.
The curve was pretty flat across the whole range.
What it failed to take into account was the cacked-up state of my rear derailleur at the moment. I suspect that a typical winter derailleur would lose some efficiency.
For a touring or commuting bike I wouldn't let it worry you.
Noise? It's not noisy. It's silent in 8-14 and whirrs in 1-7. Nobody can convince me that derailleurs are quiet and as for Campag and Hope freewheel hubs, let's just say that you don't need a bell if you ride on Hope hubs. Noise is not an issue. 7th gear is very low, you'll be groaning and wheezing too much to notice.
Removing the wheel. It's a non-issue. unclipping the cable connectors takes 10 seconds but there's no derailleur in the way so that cancels it out.
My Thorn Raven is slower due to the nature of the frame and tyres than the hub I feel. It's a heavy frame and I use 1.5" tyres. It's a very long frame with huge clearances. It's never going to be sprightly but I've done my SR (200km, 300km, 400km & 600km) on it.
In 3 years and 10,000 miles it hasn't missed a shift. By that I mean that 100% of the time, I turn the shifter, there is a click and it's perfectly in gear. No slippage, no crunching, no chain suck, it's just in gear.
Myth, you can't change gear when pedalling. Yes you can, you back off a bit (just like I do with derailleur).
Position of the shifter with drops. It's worse than using STI levers. It's better than downtube levers. (I have all 3 so I know).
I use an accessory bar but you need space under the bars (not usually a problem with Thorn's short headsets and huge stack of spacers)
You can just make out the shifter (amongst a mess of lights on same accessory bar). It;s on the right and it's only about 10cm from where my hand sits on the bar tops. Much closer than downtube shifters (which I had for 20 years) and about the same as bar-end shifters.
Yes, it's dirty and the chain is slack but it really doesn't matter with a hub gear. They tend to shrug off the worst of winter.
Sometimes (rarely) it looks like this
But mostly it gets used when it's just too fugly out there to use my other bikes and hence gets cacked-up to the gunnels in slurry.