Shimano SPD pedals have been around forever and various models always feature in our best SPD pedal guide. The top-of-the-range Shimano XTR pedal was part of Tom Pidcock's XC gold-winning setup and they also appeared in my hottest Olympic XCO MTB kit feature.
Having used the budget Shimano M520 pedal regularly I wanted to know how much they differed from the race-ready XTR pedals, so I decided to do a direct comparison to find out.
