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Riding the first Tour de France. Read more about: Wheels. Read our review of the Prime BlackEdition 50 Carbon wheels. Handling well in crosswinds and with an industry-leading lifetime warranty, for the money these are a serious contender for Best Starter Bling Hoops Deal Going. When the wheels arrived at road. The full combo weighed in at 2,g. Malcolm Borg builds his wheels in Suffolk with great attention to detail.
Borg promises to replace anything that's failed — rim, spoke or hub — due to a manufacturing defect for the entire life of the wheelset. If you crash them, Borg will repair for the cost of parts only — the labour's free. Borg has gone for nice Miche Primato Syntesi hubs, with a micro-adjustment ring to take up any play. The rim measures We found it difficult to get some tubeless tyres onto the rim and you need to have a good compressor setup to hand.
My rim-braked test frame is a Velocity Selene, a fairly agile responder and therefore commensurately susceptible to external influences. The Parcours Grimpeur Disc wheels are light enough to excel on the tarmac while being so tough that you can smash them over rocks and tree roots with little concern for their wellbeing. They won't break the bank either. With a 40mm-deep U-shaped carbon rim they weigh in at just 1,g with the tubeless rim tape fitted, which ties in well with Parcours' claimed weight of 1,g bare.
Fitted to the Flanders Forte cyclo-cross frameset that we had in for testing, the wheels offered snappy acceleration, and their low weight helped the whole bike feel flickable at the front and rear for hopping over potholes, rocks and other obstacles. Obviously, being fitted to a cyclo-cross bike they spent most of their time off-road and they took the knocks and bumps from the gravel tracks and tree roots of the local singletrack without issue.
Parcours has gone for a build of 24 Sapim CX-Ray spokes front and rear in a two-cross lacing pattern which certainly feels stiff and gave no issues with trueness even after a fairish amount of abuse. Hard acceleration and heavy braking did little to upset them either, from a stress point of view.
They're very light and stiff, with a 40mm rim depth to help make them fast as well. All Mahi Mahi road bike wheels are handbuilt to order. The options include three different rim depths — 30mm, 40mm and 50mm — and hubs that can cater for all axle widths, cassette types and disc mounts imaginable. Sapim CX-Ray spokes are used as standard, but there is the option of brass or aluminium nipples, a choice of 11 colours and also many different decal options, with no extra lead time. The lead time is currently five days for all in-stock components, which is impressive for a full custom, handbuilt wheelset.
The 30 Carbon Aero Disc wheelset from UK brand Hunt is unbelievably light, which really benefits climbing and acceleration, especially because achieving that weight hasn't meant any loss in lateral stiffness. These are seriously good wheels at a very good price. With 30mm-deep rims, these wheels are versatile for all kinds of road riding — racing, sportives, audax or just getting out with mates on a group ride. At just 1,g they feel light and responsive whatever the terrain, but it's most notable when you are in the hills.
Attack a climb out of the saddle and they'll make the whole bike surge forward as if it weighs nothing, also helped by the instant engagement of the multi-point pawls in as little as 7.
It's the same when it comes to sprinting or hard acceleration: the response is like a switch has been flicked bunging another watts into your legs for free. All of this is a waste of time if you can't get that power out because of flex, but there are no such issues here. Even full-on sprinting efforts don't see the rims budge a millimetre from side to side. The 30 Carbon Gravel wheels use a disc brake-only rim design.
Using carbon helps, obviously, but Hunt has also saved weight thanks to the absence of a brake track and bead hooks. At A healthy spokes at the front and 28 spokes at the rear, laced 2-cross, makes for a really strong, stiff build.
Hunt gives a rider weight limit of kg for these wheels, and they've shrugged off everything we threw at them, including bridleways, towpath commuting, and touring with panniers on some pretty appalling roads. The 30 Carbon Gravel wheels are supplied taped and with tubeless valves included.
Unlike the majority of road tubeless rims, there are no pronounced bead hooks, just small ridges to keep the tyre beads locked in position. Getting the tyre over the bead hooks is normally the fiddly part of inflating a tubeless tyre, but it's easy here with no bead hooks to get in the way. Using just a track pump, they were sealed within three pump strokes, and needed only a few more strokes to get them fully seated. The hubs are based on those used in Hunt's 4season disc wheelset with uprated shielding and sealing on the EZO bearings to cope with off-road grot and the occasional jetwash.
It's really hard to find fault with these wheels. Light, wide, rugged and dependable, with genuinely easy tubeless setup, they're exactly what you want from a gravel wheelset.
Carbon rims and disc brakes is a great combination, too. If you're in the market for a posh set of wheels for your gravel bike, these are a great option. Hunt has set a benchmark with these superb wheels. The step up to 23mm internal rim width sets them up for the new breed of mega-wide-clearance allroad bikes — and the adaptable hubs mean your investment now is almost guaranteed to fit any future bike purchase. Out of the box the X-Wides look quite the business — jet black with subtle white branding.
With an outside width of 30mm and depth of 35mm hence the name they look huge — but at only 1. The main reason for getting the X-Wides is the super-wide 23mm rim bed, backed up by a few square acres of carbon chunkiness to keep things in one piece.
There's a great deal of comfort to be had from the rim profile when you're bombing about taking drop bars where no sane person would consider sensible or even possible. Everything about the X-Wides murmurs 'Find Your Limits', and it didn't take me long to trust that they were more than up to the job.
Setting up my nowmm Steilacooms for about 32psi, no byway or gravelly road was beyond them. I sought out increasingly-lumpy mountain bike trails and footpaths perfectly legit up here in the Bonnie Republic , the only limits to hand being my own skills and willingness to risk considerable personal pain should things go awry.
The pre- and post-gravel commutes on tarmac amply demonstrated the X-Wides' ability to hold a decent turn of speed, even in a nippy crosswind. Obviously the asymmetric profile is going to favour wind from one direction over another, but I couldn't work out which, even battling along a snaking road over a North Yorkshire moor. No doubt the aero butted spokes help out here, keeping things swishing along.
The build quality of the Prime Ventous Carbon Disc Road wheelset is excellent, they look great, perform really well and are pretty good value too. They picked up well and gained speed noticeably quicker that the Ultegra wheels he'd been running; the ride was much better. The wheels were stiff and did have a little give under pressure but weren't fazed at all by fast decents or hard climbs. They continued on at pace whatever the gradient, the acceleration when cracking on at the base giving a welcome extra bit of speed to carry up.
The Just Riding Along JRA Gecko Carbon wheelset is very impressive, designed to take on the constant knocks and vibrations the roughest gravel tracks can throw at them, while being so light 1,g that they won't hamper your performance on the road.
It's also pretty amazing that they come in at well under a grand. The Geckos are solid. We couldn't detect any feeling of flex on steep, short, sharp climbs, whether on the road or when scrabbling about on loose, large gravel. The wheels took some big knocks during testing, and while sometimes the noise could be pretty scary, on inspection they had come away completely unscathed, remaining as true as they were out of the box. The Geckos are built to order and the spoke tension is even throughout.
They are comfortable as well, even 25mm tyres pumped up hard never giving a harsh ride. The full carbon rims have an external width of 27mm and 21mm internal, meaning that tyres tend to size up a little bigger than their sidewall suggests. JRA has specced Bitex hubs on the Geckos and they are a lovely piece of kit, spinning smoothly and freely. Overall, the Geckos are excellent wheels for gravel use without being too overbuilt to stop them offering a great performance on the road.
Read our review of the Just Riding Along Gecko wheels. The Hunt Carbon Aero Disc is a great all-round performance wheelset. They deliver a bit of an aerodynamic boost, they're very low weight and durability seems very good, all for what is a very good price. Their width also makes them compatible with a wide range of tyres. The wheelset is based around a 40mm-deep front wheel and a 50mm rear. If your main goal is speed then going deeper gives you better aerodynamics, but the downside can be added weight and twitchy handling in blustery winds.
This wheelset provides more of a balance across a load of disciplines. When tyres are fitted, even the 40mm front does enough to cheat the air, but riding past a farm gateway won't see the handlebar snatched out of your hands on windy days.
The weight of just 1,g including the tubeless tape that they come fitted with straight out of the box means they are very sprightly when it comes to climbing and acceleration too. Scrubbing too many grams can cause issues, especially if you are a larger or stronger rider. I've ridden plenty of sub-1,g wheelsets that flex a noticeable amount when I get out of the saddle and really go for it, but the Hunts aren't one of them. Hammering up climbs or away from the lights these give away nothing whatsoever.
They offer a comfortable and smooth ride too. Read our review of the Hunt Carbon Aero Disc. In developing the Aero Wide 38 wheels, Scribe has shown that while the disc brake continues to grow in popularity there is still plenty to be done for those of us who prefer rim brakes to stop our bikes.
Weighing just 1,g without sacrificing stiffness, these wheels are fast, hugely versatile and they come in at an impressive price. Taking them out of the box, the first thing you notice is the weight — or lack of it — which can often give a little bit of trepidation before fitting them to the bike. I'm not your typical whippet-thin racer and I can put out a lot of power in quick bursts for short, sharp hills or sprinting for lights, that kind of thing, and if a wheel designer has focused on weight rather than lateral stiffness, I'm going to notice it.
When riding the Aera AR55 wheels I could get them touching the brake pads even when they were backed off by millimetres, but thankfully hitting the same climbs on the Scribes hasn't seen a single issue even with pads sitting a millimetre away from the rim. Acceleration is epic, and when you are riding in unfamiliar places and don't know what is around the corner, finding yourself at the foot of a hill isn't an issue as just a quick dig on the pedals or climb out of the saddle will see the wheels maintain pace much easier than a heavier set.
Read our review of the Scribe Aero Wide 38 wheels. The Scribe Aero Wide D carbon disc wheels are all about speed according to the manufacturer, and they don't disappoint. Matching a wind-cheating 50mm-deep rim to smooth-running hubs, an instantaneous freehub engagement and plenty of stiffness makes for a set of wheels that delivers for those who want to put the hammer down. The impressive weight and a sensible price finalise the deal.
A wheel weight of 1,g 1,g claimed is impressive full stop, but when you consider that's including a wide and deep carbon fibre rim, plus the extra spokes needed for a disc build, it is truly awesome and something you really notice when fitting them to your bike. I've got another test bike that's wearing a set of Campagnolo Bora 50 Disc wheels, which are pretty old school: a narrow rim and that V-shaped profile I mentioned earlier. Fast yes, but much more twitchy in a crosswind compared to these Scribes.
The Scribes do offer quite a firm ride, although I wouldn't say they are overly harsh, and if my focus was more on speed anyway then I'd be willing to sacrifice a bit of comfort.
Read our review of the Scribe Aero Wide D wheels. The fact that this has been achieved while keeping the weight and price down but the stiffness up, is great news. The Pacenti Forza-C 30mm Disc Clincher wheels are a new design from the ground up and they are absolutely lovely. You can feel the quality of the build as soon as you start riding, and their stiffness is impressive considering their very svelte 1,g weight. Pacenti hasn't even stung you on the price either.
Pacenti builds these wheels by hand in the UK and it shows — not necessarily the UK bit, but definitely the handbuilt part. The wheels feel tight and stiff, but the spoke tension allows enough comfort through to take out any harshness. Read our review of the Pacenti Forza-C.
Edco has veered off-road with its latest wheelset, the Gravel. It's an excellent choice if you want a lightweight wheelset that'll take a heap of abuse, and it achieves that while still coming in at a relatively budget price point.
The catchily named Gravel wheelset uses a 34mm deep carbon fibre rim which is 31mm wide externally and 25mm internally, which makes it ideal for using with the fat gravel tyres that are entering the market. Edco has gone for a hookless rim, which means it basically does away with the bead hook that the tyre would normally locate beneath to stop it blowing off the rim under pressure.
Tubeless-specific tyres have a stiffer bead, which means they don't require the bead hook of the rim, relying instead on the tight interface between tyre and wheel to remain in place. Obviously, tyre and wheel tolerances aren't always compatible, but I've ridden plenty of hookless rims both on and off the road and never had any issues.
Tubeless makes a lot of sense on a gravel bike where the need to run lower pressures for comfort and traction means that impact punctures would be commonplace if using clinchers and tubes. Out on the gravel tracks these wheels absolutely fly, and a lot of that is down to the fact that they weigh just 1,g including the pre-installed tubeless tape.
Getting your head around using a carbon rim on rough terrain is hard enough, even more so when it's a wheelset as svelte as this. Some sections of my favourite gravel routes have been overlaid recently with large aggregate they're military tank routes and the downhill sections can be brutal.
While I haven't gone out of my way to break the Edcos, I certainly haven't been easy on them and to be honest some of the sounds haven't been pretty as they've whacked rocks and potholes, but they've resisted everything I've thrown them at. Read our review of the Edco Gravel. Zipp was an early pioneer of the carbon cycling wheelset, and in launching the new S wheelset has shaken up the road and all-road wheel market with new technologies, high performance, a lifetime warranty and a price that you wouldn't expect.
It is quite refreshing to have a new wheelset released, and especially one from a major brand like Zipp, that doesn't just make claims about wind tunnel aerodynamic performance. The reality is that wind tunnel testing isn't the real world, and figures can be picked and chosen to suit the specific wheel.
Instead, Zipp has tried a different approach — one that aims to replicate real riding, looking at all major areas that affect riding speed: wind resistance aerodynamics , gravity, rolling resistance and vibrational losses. Zipp calls these four factors 'Total System Efficiency'.
The new S model wheelset uses some firsts for Zipp, including tubeless compatibility using straight-sided rim walls, also known as hookless. These might be a one-off, but are more likely a first step with more wheelsets within the Zipp range to follow with similar technology over the coming months. Under hard accelerations and sprints there is no noticeable flex laterally — something that's easy to verify, given that there is barely a millimetre of frame clearance on the test bike used.
Under the hardest accelerations or out-of-the-saddle hill efforts there was occasionally a tiny noise from the brake rotor, but as parts other than just the wheels themselves come into play, it's not possible to isolate it to just the wheelset. Another noticeable feature is how stable they feel in real-world, changeable winds.
Throughout testing and in a range of weather conditions, even with sudden gusts and those unexpected sidewinds from a gateway, the S remained easy to control with no sudden movements, even in stronger gusts. I would be quite happy to use these wheels all year round, however windy the conditions, such is the stability and confidence in how they ride. Read our review of the Zipp S wheels Find a Zipp dealer. They're stable in strong winds, quick to spin up to speed and also quick to stop.
What's more, you get great hubs and high-end pads. It's a great package. This full carbon wheelset comes in at a very respectable 1,g. Those hubs are pretty bombproof. While these wheels were used in mostly dry conditions, we've had these hubs on wheels that have seen some horrendous weather; they're solid and don't require much attention.
While we're on reliability, we had zero spoke tension issues even after a few big hits in races. At 45mm deep, these strike a great balance between speed, quick acceleration and handling. They don't pick up strong winds which is probably down to the blunt profile at the leading and trailing edges.
One of the attractions of this set of wheels is what you get for your money. They come in a well-padded double wheel bag with a zippered storage compartment containing brake pads and skewers. You also get a set of tubeless valves. That's as may be, but the Swiss Side Hadron s are stonkingly good road bike wheels, offering arguably the best performance in this price bracket on the market today. They use a hybrid aluminium-carbon rim to give aluminium-rim brake performance and class-leading aerodynamic performance, at a price way below the big players like Zipp and Enve.
And by god they sound good. Read our review of the Swiss Side Hadron wheels. Hadron wheels named after that big circular tunnel near Geneva, of course are available in rim depths of All share the same fundamental construction, with aluminium rims and carbon fairings. Swiss Side says it's done an enormous amount of work to perfect the aerodynamic design of these rims, focusing on aerodynamic drag and also minimising the sensitivity to side-winds.
They've performed well in a wide variety of riding. We won't pretend that we can accurately determine the difference compared with other quality aero wheels of a similar depth, but they certainly feel like they're in the same ball-park, holding speed really well and making a rather satisfying hum in the process.
Read our review of the Swiss Side Hadron The 35s come with DT Swiss hubs, which are brilliant. With cartridge bearings and easy servicing, they should last for ages. Spokes are Sapim's CX Rays. One thing that slightly annoyed our reviewer was the use of internal nipples. Yes, it looks clean but should you ping these out of true thanks to a pothole, it's more of a hassle to get them straight again.
Although the wheelset isn't superlight — ours came in at 1,g with rim tape and skewers installed — the weight is still pretty low, and translates to a nippy feel.
It's very easy to get these wheels up to speed and then increase that speed, especially when climbing. The 35s are the shallowest section wheels that Knight offers. The rim profile is somewhere between a 'V' shape and a 'U'. This gives the rim an external width of 25mm, sitting very nicely with wider tyres. The brake track is engineered with a 3mm brake surface for improved heat dissipation in an attempt by Knight to combat brake fade and even blow-outs on long descents.
The braking is smooth and consistent. While stopping still isn't as good as aluminium rims, there is room for improvement in the form of softer brake pads; those supplied are quite hard. That does mean they'll last quite a while, but we were quick to swap in a softer pad for better power.
Read our review of the Knight 35 Tubeless wheels. The Giant SLR 0 42mm wheels are an ideal all-round go-faster set of hoops. The rims are wide, feel fast and handle well. The hubs are simple to service, quiet and robust. They performed excellently during testing in my mix of hilly races, flat criteriums and general riding with good braking and stability in crosswinds. The 42mm-deep full-carbon rims are tubeless ready and the spokes are DT Aerolites — straight-pull with internal nipples.
This gives a very clean build, although one that isn't so easy for maintenance. Not that it will matter, for a while at least, as the wheels were perfectly straight out of the box and remained that way.
The hubs are Giant branded, with DT Swiss internals. This is a great balance between performance and reliability with easy maintenance. We didn't find these wheels hard to handle in windy conditions. In fact, they felt very stable. The wheels also feel zippy when climbing thanks to the respectable weight: g front and g rear, giving a total of 1,g. Weight isn't everything, though. We were also impressed with the lateral stiffness.
Overall, we were impressed with these Giant wheels because they're a great option if you want one wheelset for racing and general riding. The DT Swiss PRC Spline clincher wheels have deep section 65mm rims for aerodynamic efficiency, they're well made and come with excellent internals. The PRCs can be a little hard to handle on some gusty, blustery days, but this is rare — and not much different from any other wheels of a similar depth.
The freehub features a ratchet system rather than standard pawls. Springs push two tooth star ratchets together to engage when you pedal, all of the teeth engaging at the same time in just 10 degrees. This system works really well and durability is excellent. The wheels feel stiff in use, so you can set your brake pads very close to the rim without danger of rubbing when you corner hard or ride out of the saddle.
Braking in dry conditions is good — progressive without any grabbing — and braking in the wet, although not exceptional, is sure and confident. Setting them up tubeless is easy enough. You are getting some seriously good wheels for your money here. Granted, these don't offer quite the aero performance of DT Swiss's ARC Dicut wheels but the PRCs feature excellent components, they're stiff, braking is good and, for their depth, they feel pretty stable in most conditions.
This is a reliable high-performance wheelset that puts in a great performance in a variety of conditions. Swiss Side's Hadron Ultimate s take the fight to the bigger players in the industry with a compelling blend of aerodynamics, exemplary build quality and a competitive price. The trademark "whoosh" sound is no more, however. Today's range of Hadron wheels might look similar to those we tested previously, but in fact no components have been carried across — they are completely different.
Swiss Side offers two flavours of its Hadron aero wheelset — the Ultimate and the Classic. What's changed since we tested the Hadron s in is that both ranges now use full-carbon rims.
In fact, Swiss Side is quite open about the fact that the current-gen Hadron Ultimate and Hadron Classic use exactly the same rims in a range of depths and with rim- and disc-brake options. You might look at the pictures and assume that these are effectively the same wheels as the last lot of Hadron Ultimates we tested, but stay with me here — you couldn't be more wrong.
Will they work in your bike? Are they standard quick release or thru axle? Planning on upgrading your bike to discs in the future? These questions are all worth considering before making a costly upgrade. Regular riders will feel the benefit of a mid section aero rim as they feel the aerodynamic properties, noticeable over 30KPH.
Clinchers are fit-and-forget, punctures are a simple matter of an inner tube swap. Modern clincher tyres are great. Tubeless can be equally easy to live with once set up and offer the bonus of self-healing some types of puncture. Racers — Mid section wheels offer the best all-round option for a racer on a budget who races over varying terrain. Flat and fast courses time trial and road might be better tackled on deeper wheels.
In an ideal world two sets of race wheels would cover most events. If you race on rougher roads, stick to clincher or tubeless. If money is no object and you have skills to fit tubular tyres well or a great mechanic!
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