We’ve previously taken you through the wheel ranges from Mavic and Fulcrum, now it’s time to turn our attention to Shimano’s rather large offering of wheels. Shimano wheels are frequently specced by bike manufacturers and they’re popular aftermarket upgrades, no doubt helped by being a common sight in the professional peloton - it supplies wheels to more teams than any other brand.

Your complete guide to Shimano groupsets

Dura-Ace R9100 and R9170 wheelsets

Shimano unveiled new Dura-Ace wheels with the launch of its latest groupset last summer. The new C40 and C60 wheels have a fashionably wide rim designed for improved aerodynamics.

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The rims have a wider profile than the previous generation Dura-Ace wheels, following the current trend for bulbous profiles that are more stable in crosswinds than the older V-shape rims. Each is available in a clincher or tubular version, so you can emulate the pros if you want or be sensible and fit some inner tubes.

Alternatively, the R9170 versions of the C40 and C60 wheels are designed solely for disc brakes and use a 12mm thru-axle hub and a rim that is tubeless compatible. There’s also a tubular option as well.

If you want the lightest option, the R9100-C24 has a very shallow 24mm rim that keeps the weight low, making it an ideal wheelset for climbers. It's virtually unchanged from the previous R9000-C24 in case you're wondering.

Clincher

R9100 C24 — £698.99
R9100 C40 — £999
R9170 C40 Disc — £1,549
R9100 C60 — £994.99
R9170 C60 Disc — £1, 034.99

Tubular

R9100 C40 Carbon — £1,599.98
R9170 C40 Disc — £1,763.98
R9100 C60 Carbon — £1,774.98
R9170 C60 Disc — £1,499.98

Shimano’s previous Dura-Ace R9000 generation wheels are still available if you shop around. There’s the C24 (£1,999.98) and C75 (£1,699.98), the classic C50 (£1,599.98) and finally the C35 (£1,499.98).

Review: Shimano Dura-Ace C24 Carbon Clincher wheelset

Ultegra RS700 and RS770 wheelsets

Shimano-WH-RS770-C30-Tubeless-Ready-Disc-Clincher-Road-Wheel_107971_1_Supersize.jpg

Along with the latest version of Ultegra 8000 launched this year, which follows closely in the wake of new Dura-Ace, Shimano released updated wheels. It’s offering two wheelsets under the Ultegra label, the carbon-laminate RS700 for rim brakes (£369.99) and the RS770 (£674.99) for disc brakes.

Both are tubeless-ready and the later is compatible with thru-axles. There are also new hubs to shed about 60g of weight compared to the old 6800 wheels, and there’s a lighter carbon layup in the new rims. Claimed weight is 1,568g for the rim brake wheels and 1,639g for the disc wheels.

RS81 carbon laminate wheelsets

The RS81 series borrows features and technology from the range-topping wheels in Shimano's range but offers it in a more affordable package. There are also three rim depths to suit your requirements and budget.

RS81 carbon laminate wheelsets.jpg

RS, by the way, stands for Road Sport, and is Shimano’s attempt to offer top-level performance at a great price, and are ideal for racing and training duties.

The aluminium brake track with a carbon outer means you’re assured of reliable braking performance in all weathers and don’t have to change the brake blocks on your bike to upgrade to these. The hubs have extra wide flanges to build a stronger wheel and Shimano’s OptBal Spoke System is intended to increase the rigidity of the wheelset.

RS81 C50 — £599.95
RS81 C35 — £674.99
RS81 C24 — £379.99

RX830 35mm Tubeless Disc Brake wheelset — £399.95

Shimano-WH-RX830-road-disc-brake-wheels-2.jpg

The RX830 combines Shimano’s proven carbon laminate technology in a 17mm wide (internal) tubeless-ready rim optimised for disc brakes, so there’s no brake track on these rims. The hubs are cup and cone and ready for disc brakes with conventional quick release axles - so you’ll only see these on cheaper or older generation rim brake bikes, as most disc brake bikes are moving over to thru-axles. Shop around and you can find them discounted, as is the case for most of the wheels here.

RS610 24mm Tubeless wheelset — £151.51

This is one of Shimano’s most affordable wheels, and the rim is also tubeless-ready. They feature an offset rim design with wide flanges to provide a stronger wheel and the hubs are compatible with 10- and 11-speed cassettes.

RX31 Road Disc Brake wheelset — £242.78

Shimano RX31 wheelset.jpg

The RX31 was one of the very first dedicated disc brake wheelsets available when disc brakes started appearing on production road bikes a few years ago. Shimano has built a solid wheelset around 24mm profile aluminium clincher rims with 24 stainless steel butted and bladed straight pull spokes in each wheel to best deal with the disc brake forces. Hubs are now thru-axle compatible with contact sealed bearings with an 8,9,10 and 11-speed compatible freehub.

- Review: Shimano RX31 wheelset

RS330 Alloy clincher wheelset — £155.99

Looking like a good upgrade option for many entry-level bikes, though you’re likely to see these wheels specced on a lot of mid-range bikes, the RS-330 uses a lightweight aluminium rim with a 30mm depth providing good aerodynamics, making them ideal for anyone wanting to inject a bit more speed into their riding.

RS21 Alloy clincher wheelset — £145

This wheelset uses Shimano’s proven hub design with angular contact bearings and a wide flange for extra wheel strength, laced to 24mm high rims with a handy wear indicator. Steel butted and bladed straight pull spokes with a 2-cross lacing pattern improve wheel rigidity.

RS11 Alloy clincher wheelset — £99.99

rs11 wheels.JPG

You’re getting a bit more technology in return for your extra £50 at RRP over the RS010 wheels below, with a 24mm profile aluminium rim and bladed stainless steel straight pull spokes - 16 up front and 24 our back. The hubs have labyrinth sealed angular contact bearings and low-friction seals for low rolling resistance and good durability.

RS010 Alloy clincher wheelset — £119

The RS010 is the most affordable in the RS line and uses much of the same technology as you'd expect higher up the range, and is a really good entry-level wheelset. You get the same 24mm rim depth as the more expensive wheels with 20 front spokes and 24 rear spokes and quick release hubs with wide flanges, contact bearings and steel axles.

RX010 Centre Lock Disc wheelset — £123.10

RX010.jpg

An affordable disc brake wheelset with 28 spokes in each wheel for extra durability and a 24mm rim for low weight, combined with Centre Lock disc rotor mounting system. The rim width is recommended for 25 to 38mm wide tyres. The hubs use regular quick release axles.

R500 24mm wheelset — £94.79

Shimano’s most affordable wheelset and one you’ll see on a lot of entry-level road bikes with 8 and 9-speed drivetrains. Combining 24mm aero and anodised rims with 20 black chrome plated spokes in each wheel and weighing 1,884g, it’s a solid wheelset.

22 of the best road bike wheels

• One of the most popular upgrades, better wheels (and tyres) can dramatically improve your bike’s ride.

• Stock wheels are often heavy and of mediocre quality — upgrading can reduce weight and improve reliability.

• If you want to go faster, choose wheels with deep-section rims; aerodynamics is far more important than weight.

• You’ve a choice of clinchers, tubulars or tubeless, with matching tyres; each system has pros and cons.

• Wheels benefit from the human touch; the best handbuilt wheels are still superior to wheels built entirely by machine.

Upgrading the wheels is one of the first changes many people make to their bikes. Why are wheels so important and how do you choose a better set of hoops?

It's one of the bike industry's guilty secrets: the wheels on even quite pricy road bikes are often a bit ordinary. That means upgrading your wheels can make a big difference to the feel and performance of your bike.

There are several reasons why you might want better wheels. If you're doing a lot of commuting on bad roads (the potholed streets of just about any UK major city for example) you might want a set of beefy wheels for weekday riding, and to switch to something lighter or more aerodynamic for the weekend.

Or you might have decided to keep the run-of-the-mill wheels your bike came with for training and to fit better-performance wheels for sunny days and important events.

>> Read more: All wheel reviews on road.cc

Wheel construction

The basics of wheel construction haven't changed in decades because, quite simply, they work extraordinarily well. A bike wheel can carry hundreds of times its own weight; pretty remarkable structural efficiency.

Your basic tension-spoked wheel consists of a hub that houses bearings so the whole thing can turn easily, a rim for the tyre to sit on and steel spokes under tension that hold it all together.

The tension in the spokes is the vital factor. When you load a wheel, the tension goes down in the spokes between the hub and the ground. As long as it never hits zero, the wheel can support you and your bike.

Nevertheless, wheels have evolved in the last couple of decades, and now usually have fewer spokes and deeper rims, both changes that improve aerodynamics. The spokes themselves may be flattened to better cut through the air too.

Perhaps the biggest change is the use of carbon fiber for rims. That's made possible deep, highly aerodynamic rims with minimal weight penalty. Carbon wheels are still more expensive than wheels with aluminium rims, but prices have been steadily decreasing for the last few years.

Tubulars, clinchers and tubeless

In terms of how tyres mount, there are three types of wheel rim. Rims for tubular tyres — which have the inner tube sewn into the carcass — have a shallow dip where the tyre is glued on. These are the lightest rims, and tubular fans say their soft floaty ride is unparalleled. However, for the vast majority of people the faff of gluing, and the difficulty of fixing a punctured tubular makes them too much hassle.

Clincher or wire-on rims have raised sidewalls with a hook where the tyre bead engages, and the tyre has a separate inner tube. In other words, this is the standard bike rim and tyre we all know and love. Fixing a flat is a simple matter of changing the tube and swapping tyres just requires tyre levers and a pump.

Tubeless tyres are a special case of clinchers. Tyre and rim are manufactured to precise tolerances to enable an airtight seal. The rim has no holes and the tyre is coated internally with rubber so there's no need for an inner tube. Some manufacturers forego the rubber coating and base their tubeless systems around use of sealant. That has the advantage of making them more resistant to penetration punctures, in addition to their natural resistance to pinch punctures.

Weight vs Aerodynamics

If performance is your aim, there's strong evidence that you should put more priority on aerodynamics than weight. Way back in 2001 bike engineer Kraig Willett analysed the forces on wheels and concluded:

"When evaluating wheel performance, wheel aerodynamics are the most important, distantly followed by wheel mass. Wheel inertia effects in all cases are so small that they are arguably insignificant."

That goes against the long-standing conventional wisdom that wheel weight is vitally important to performance because wheels have to be spun up to speed as well as moved along the road.

But you don't do much accelerating when you ride a bike, and even when you do the speed changes involved are relatively gradual. That means you spend most of your time, and therefore effort, simply shoving the air out of the way, and you should choose wheels accordingly.

Pro teams have drawn similar conclusions, which is why you now see far more deep-section wheels in the peloton than you did even ten years ago. Aero wheels are free speed in a breakaway or sprint.

The big disadvantage of deep-section wheels is the effect of crosswinds, which can blow you off track. Some wheels are less affected than others. Zipp's Firecrest shape is widely considered to be among the least problematic thanks to its bulged sidewalls, and most wheelmakers now offer something similar.

Rim width

Just as tyres have become a bit wider in recent years, with the previously ubiquitous 23mm size giving away to 25, 26 and even 28mm tyres, so rims have spread out too. All other things being equal, a wider rim makes for a stiffer, stronger wheel and also makes the tyre effectively a bit fatter.

Wider rims are also claimed to be more aerodynamic because air flows more smoothly between tyre and rim if they are about the same size. Wheel maker Mavic has taken this to its logical conclusion with its CX01 Blades, plastic fairings that fill the groove between its Yksion CXR tyre and Cosmic CXR wheel. The UCI won't let pros use them, but that doesn't affect triathletes and UK time trial riders.

Can we build it?

Wheelbuilding (CC BY-NC-ND Cory Grunkemeyer:Flickr)

If you want your wheels to be durable, then how they were built is just as important as the components that went into them. For wheels to be durable, the tension needs to be high and even. If it's not high then spokes can come loose as you ride because the tension can drop to zero under load. If the tension is not even then the wheel is unlikely to stay round and true, even if it's that way out of the box.

A step in the wheel-building process called 'stress-relieving' also improves wheel longevity by preventing fatigue failure at the spoke heads. If your relatively new wheels start breaking spokes it's a good bet they weren't stress-relieved properly when they were built.

Most wheels these days are built by machines. It's possible to set up wheel building machines to get all of these things right, or very nearly right, but sometimes factories take short-cuts, especially when the objective is to build inexpensive wheels. The less time each wheel spends in the machine, the more wheels the factory can build.

Spokes (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 Jon Bowen:Flickr)

That's why cheap machine-built wheels have a poor reputation, but if a wheel builder doesn't know what he or she is doing, humans can build poor wheels too. The most efficient way of mass-producing high-quality wheels seems to be to let machines quickly do the spadework and then finish them by hand, as Joe Graney found when Santa Cruz decided to build its own wheels.

Alternatively, you can get top-quality wheels that have been built by hand from start to finish, either off-the-peg or custom built. Barnoldswick parts-meisters Hope have been making well-regarded wheels for years, including road wheels, while Hunt Bike Wheels is a new entrant in the field. You'll find wheels built by several others in the selection below.

If you want something truly special, a wheelbuilder who really knows their stuff can help you choose exactly the right combination of hubs, rims and spokes for your needs. The doyen of this approach in the UK is probably Liverpool's Pete Matthews whose resume includes building wheels for Tour de France King of the Mountains Robert Millar, legendary rouleur Sean Yates and comedian Alexei Sayle. Many good bike shops have a similar if less storied figure lurking in the workshop, quietly crafting wheels that last until the rim sidewalls wear out.

Names to look for

The major wheel brands nevertheless produce good wheels, by and large. Riders report thousands of happy miles on wheels by Mavic, Bontrager, Shimano, Reynolds, Zipp, DT Swiss and many others. Here are some of our favourite wheels from the last couple of years.

DT Swiss PRC 1400 Spline 65 — £1,507.48

DT Swiss PRC 1400 Spline 65.jpg

The new DT Swiss PRC 1400 Spline clincher wheels come with deep section 65mm rims for aerodynamic efficiency. They're well made and come with excellent internals, plus you can run them tubeless.

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 1100 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.

Read our review of the DT Swiss PRC 1400 Spline 65 wheels
Find a DT Swiss dealer

Hunt Superdura Dynamo Disc — £499

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If you're looking at a dynamo system for your road bike then the SONdelux hub dynamo is pretty much the best out there for low resistance and weight, and it's renowned for great build quality which is matched by the rest of the components on these excellent Hunt wheels. Considering how much the dynamo costs on its own, the price is excellent too. They might be a bit much for the odd night ride, but if you rack up the miles after dark they're an investment worth considering.

Read our review of the Hunt Superdura Dynamo Disc wheels

AlexRims CXD4 — £287.99

Alex Rims Alex CXD4 Road Disc Wheelset.jpg

AlexRims knows a thing or two about making rims (the clue's in the name), so it's not a surprise that it's moving into the wheelset market. And if these CXD4s are anything to go by, you should definitely look at them as an option if you're upgrading your bike or speccing a new build.

On the road the wheels feel nice and stiff, with no obvious flex either from sprint efforts or heavy cornering. The bearings run smoothly, and whipping the cassette off showed that there's not very much notching on the alloy freehub body. The 1,580g all-in weight is pretty good for a disc wheelset at this price. Shimano's RX31s are 380g heavier for the same kind of money, and similar-weight wheelsets from the likes of Cero, Kinesis and Hunt come in at least £50 more expensive.

Read our review of the AlexRims CXD4
Find an AlexRims dealer

Hunt 3650 Carbon Wide Aero — £899

Hunt 3650 Carbon Wide Aero Road Wheelset.jpg

Going wide and deep, Hunt has created a set of fast, durable and light wheels in the 3650 Carbon Wide Aeros. With a specification of high-end parts and great build quality, Hunt isn't trying to reinvent the wheel but it is certainly refining it to a level of performance unheard of on sub-£1,000 wheelsets.

The name 3650 comes from how deep they are: 36mm at the front and 50mm at the rear. It's quite a common combination for many riders as it is so adaptable to various weather conditions and the topography of your chosen route.

The front gives you a slight aero advantage over a more standard box rim shape without getting battered around by crosswinds, and it also keeps the weight down for climbing.

Read our review of the Hunt 3650 Carbon Wide Aero wheels

DT Swiss PR 1400 Dicut OXiC — £703.20

DT Swiss PR 1400 Dicut Oxic Performance road wheel.jpg

The PR 1400 Dicut OXiC wheels feature a ceramic coated rim surface that provides reassuring braking performance in a range of conditions, making them ideal for year-round cycling in the UK.

The application of a hardwearing ceramic coating on the rim is nothing new: Mavic used to produce a highly regarded ceramic back in the day. DT Swiss, though, reckons its new OXiC treatment is able to deform with the rim, which means the coating can't become detached from the aluminium, a problem that plagued Mavic ceramic rims. DT is confident the ceramic coating won't wear our over the normal lifespan of the rim, and it won't fade in the sun.

Read our review of the DT Swiss PR 1400 Dicut OXiC wheels
Find a DT SWiss dealer

Shimano Dura-Ace C24 Carbon Clincher — £709.99

Shimano Dura Ace C24 Carbon Clincher wheelset.jpg

I've been running the C24s with 25mm Continental Grand Prix 4000 tyres (Shimano advises that you use tyres ranging from 23mm to 28mm with these wheels) and they've been very quick, accelerating fast, and the ride quality is hard to fault.

The C24s, which have just been given a graphics/aesthetics update to match Shimano's new R9100 components, have the shallowest rim heights of any wheels in the Dura-Ace range: the front is 21mm and the rear is 24mm. They're not particularly wide either: 15mm internal, 20.8mm external, whereas the new C40 and C60 clinchers are both 17mm internal and 24mm external, following the trend towards more width.

Read our review of the Shimano Dura-Ace C24s
Find a Shimano dealer

Hunt 30Carbon Gravel Disc — £879

Hunt 30 Carbon Gravel Disc Wheelset.jpg

I've been thrashing the Hunt 30Carbon Gravel Disc wheels around the roads and bridleways of the south west, as well as using them for a touring trip to Cuba where they endured all kinds of surfaces, pot-holes and being lashed to roof-racks with string. And I like them, a lot.

As the name suggests, the 30Carbon Gravel Disc wheels are aimed at the fast-growing new gravel/all-road/adventure bike category. Gravel bikes are aimed at riders who want to go quickly on the road, with the freedom to take a turn off the tarmac and explore further into the wild than you could on a traditional road bike. They're typically built tougher than a road bike, and consequently heavier. If you're looking for an upgrade to your gravel bike, wheels may be on your list, and with a weight of less than 1,500g, these are likely to be quite a bit lighter than most stock wheels.

Read our review of the Hunt 30Carbon Gravel Disc wheels

BORG22T Disc Road/CX tubular — £340

BORG22T Wheels.jpg

The BORG22T wheelset features 22mm-deep aluminium tubular rims and triple butted Sapim Force spokes laced onto Miche Syntium DX hubs. It's not a flashy package, but it bats well above its price tag – it's tough, fast and will suit riders looking for a brilliant cyclo-cross wheelset.

Sometimes a product will genuinely surprise you. Take a look at the spec list of the BORG22T wheels and you'd be forgiven for not expecting much, and certainly not at this price. But I put them on my bike and was surprised to find they're excellent. I wouldn't expect to find a tubular disc wheelset below the £1,000 mark; finding such a great set of wheels for £340 has made me question why I'd spend more.

Read our review of the BORG22T Disc Road/CX tubular wheels

Roval CLX 50 Disc — £1,788

Specialized Roval CLX 50 DISC Wheelset.jpg

Since Roval parent Specialized introduced the Roval Rapide CLX 40 wheels two years ago, they've been busy and the CLX 50 wheels are the CLX 40s' spiritual replacement. They're a marked improvement, too, with better aerodynamic performance and an impressively low weight for the disc brake version here.

The aim for the new Roval CLX 50 was to marry the aero performance of the deeper section CLX 64 with the lightness of the shallower CLX 32. At 1,415g with a 50mm-deep rim and disc brake hubs, they would appear to have achieved that objective.

This is a very attractive weight in a hugely competitive wheel market. They're not much heavier than the £4.8k Lightweight Meilenstein C Disc wheels, for example, and only a smidgen heavier than the so-called lightweight, shallow, rim-braked FFWD F3R carbon clinchers. You can have aero and low weight it would seem. And a Zipp 404 Firecrest Disc wheelset? That's a comparatively portly 1,715g.

Read our review of the Roval CLX 50 Disc
Find a Roval dealer

Halo Evaura Uni 6D — £348.98

Halo Evaura Uni 6D 700C wheelset.jpg

Halo seems very proud of its new Evaura Universal 6D 700C wheelset, and quite rightly. These are well-made wheels that can be adapted for a variety of cycles and purposes. The ride quality is excellent, the weight modest and – despite the dishing needed to make it disc-brake compatible – it proved impossible to provoke them into twisting or flexing.

The idea behind this wheelset is to make it as adaptable as possible to the new rash of wheel and braking standards that is spreading across the industry. While most conventional road frames take a 130mm rear axle, disc brake-equipped bikes are commonly adopting the 135mm found on mountain bikes. (Mountain bike rear axles are themselves now getting longer, but that's another story...)

Read our review of the Halo Evaura Uni 6D wheels
Find a Halo dealer

Fast Forward F3R Full Carbon Clincher Wheels — £999.99

Fast Foward F3R Full Carbon Clincher Wheelset.jpg

Fast Forward F3R Full Carbon Clincher wheels are a lightweight option that provide excellent acceleration and a high level of stiffness, although the lack of aero credentials might put off some who aren't pure climbers.

Fast Forward bills the Full Carbon Clincher as a wheelset that's particularly suited to climbing. The carbon rims are 30mm deep and 22.4mm wide with quite a rounded profile and a blunt inner edge – far more U-shaped than V-shaped.

Read our review of the Fast Forward F3R Full Carbon Clincher wheels
Find a Fast Forward dealer

Knight Composites 65 wheels — £2,000

Knight 65 Wheelset.jpg

The Knight 65 Carbon Fibre clinchers offer very good stiffness, but their real skill is in cutting through the air at high speeds and feeling stable with it.

These wheels – Knight's own rims laced to DT Swiss 240 hubs – have a whole lot going for them. Okay, at 65mm deep they're never going to be particularly light, our pair coming in at 1,680g (including rim strips and skewers), but that's not unusual. For comparison, Zipp's 404s are a claimed 1,505g (you also need to factor in the weight of the rim strips and skewers) and Bontrager's 70mm-deep Aeolus 7s are a claimed 1,610g.

It's when you fire the Knight 65s up to speed that things get impressive. As tester Mat Brett put it: "I have a few routes that I ride regularly as personal time trials for reviewing bikes and kit – rolling rather than hilly – and I've used these wheels to help achieve consistently fast times over several weeks and in a wide variety of conditions. I measure power every ride and my view is that these wheels are offering impressive speeds for the wattage I'm putting out. It's unscientific and highly anecdotal, so take it or leave it, but this is my experience."

Read our review of the Knight Composites 65 DT Swiss 240 wheels
Find a Knight Composites dealer

DT Swiss RRC 65 Dicut clinchers — £1,150

DT Swiss RRC 65 Dicut C - 1.jpg

They might be a lot of money but these DT Swiss RRC 65 Dicut clincher wheels are fast and stable, and they offer a good braking performance too.

These wheels are at their best when slicing along at high speed. They maintain pace beautifully with an appreciably lower resistance than shallow section rims. The RRC 65s also accelerate well, especially considering their 65mm rim depth. Weighing 745g (front) and 885g (rear) – excluding skewers; combined weight is 1,630g (DT's official total weight is 45g lower) – they spin up to speed with little fuss. For comparison, Zipp's 58mm deep 404 Firecrest Carbon Clinchers have claimed weights of 725g and 895g (1,620g total).

Some people might consider 65mm a little deep for general road use but we rode with these wheels on both a road bike and more occasionally on a TT bike for six weeks and they were superb. We really rate these wheels highly, and not just for racing against the clock.

Read our review of the DT Swiss RRC 65 Dicut clinchers
Find a DT Swiss dealer

Vision Team 35 — £299.99

Vision Team 35 Wheelset .jpg

Vision's Team 35s are competent and durable entry-level race wheels, with the added bonus of being very comfortable for a set of semi-deep-section alloy clinchers. The black anodised finish gives them a cool stealth look too.

The Team 35s are a revamped version of Vision's long-standing T35 model, and with a recommended retail price of £229.95 they sit right at that level of a first serious performance upgrade for a lot of bikes.

At first glance they seem a bit porky at 1,820g, especially considering the quoted weight is some 100g less than that, but the good thing is they never feel sluggish out on the road. You notice it a little if things get really steep or you ask for some rapid acceleration from a standing start, so if you're searching for a climber's set of wheels, look elsewhere.

Otherwise, the Team 35s are hard to knock. Considering the depth of the alloy rim, you'd expect them to feel harsh, but they don't.

Read our review of the Vision Team 35 wheels
Find a Vision dealer

Swiss Side Hadron 625 — £1,329

Swiss Side Hadron 625 wheelset.jpg

"Hur hur hur your wheels are called Hard... oh no, wait, it's Hadron." To Swiss ears, the name may well conjure up the crowning peak of European scientific endeavour, but it's perilously close to something that provided regular amusement to the Sunday morning crew back at home. That's as may be, but the Swiss Side Hadron 625s are stonkingly good 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 625 wheels

Superstar Components Pave 28 wheels — £269.99

The least expensive wheels we've ever given four and a half stars, the Superstar Pace 28s demonstrate that custom handbuilt wheels can be competitive on weight and reliability with any factory wheels. They have wide rims in the modern style and are built on reliable Icon hubs. They're comparable to substantially more expensive wheels from other manufacturers; light enough to race on while still managing to be as tough as old boots, and look how shiny they are.

Read our review of the Superstar Components Pave 28 wheels

Hunt 4Season Aero V2 — £299

Hunt 4Season Aero V2 wheels

Hunt's entry-level road clinchers look like an excellent choice. They succeed the now-discontinued 4Season Dura Road wheels which we liked a lot, and like those wheels, these look to be a good first upgrade over heavy stock wheels, or as a good quality winter or all-round option, they're right on the money.

The 4Season Aero V2 wheels have the same hubs. We had no issues with the 4-pawl freehub, nor with the sealed EZO bearings. Everything ran smoothly in spite of being subjected to some biblical conditions. The supplied skewers are an external cam, with a nylon insert instead of the brass one you get on the more expensive Hunt wheels, but they do the job without any fuss.

Read our review of the Hunt 4Season Dura Road
Find a Hunt dealer

Pro-Lite Bortola A21 wheels — £349.99

The 1,540g weight of these wide, tubeless-ready wheels is impressive for an aluminium wheelset even if that is about 65g over the claimed weight. With the Bortolas Pro-Lite haven't sacrificed strength or durability to achieve it, it's more of a by-product of well chosen, proven components.

On the road, they're smooth and comfortable, but light enough to reward a little out of the saddle dig on a steep section while climbing.

Overall the Bortolas are perfect all rounder wheels that only really lose out in terms of aerodynamics due to that shallow rim.

Read our review of the Pro-Lite Bortola A21 wheels

Pro-Lite Revo A21W — £269.99

Pro-Lite Revo A21 Disc Clincher Wheelset.jpg

Road disc and gravel wheels are getting better, lighter and cheaper, and right at the forefront of that trend are the Pro-Lite Revo A21s. At 1,650g, with a Centerlock option, thru-axle compatibility and a wide track rim, they're a bargain, and pretty future-proof too.

Pro-Lite builds all its wheels by hand and the Revos arrived nice and true, with even spoke tension. The spokes are bladed and triple butted, and Pro-Lite uses a brass washer at the spoke head to better distribute the forces there.

The Revos use a 21mm deep rim (hence the name), which is 23.8mm wide externally and 19mm internally. That makes it ideal for 28-32mm tyres, although 25mm rubber and bigger chamber tyres will be fine too.

Read our review of the Pro-Lite Revo A21W
Find a Pro-Lite dealer

Stan's NoTubes ZTR Grail Team — £457.95

Stans NoTubes ZTR Grail Disc Wheelset.jpg

We've been hugely impressed with these wheels. With 25mm slicks at high pressures they're fast on the road, and they've proven extremely tough when riding with knobbly tyres at low pressures off-road. They're a decent weight, the hubs are easily interchangeable to different axle standards, and the company's Bead Socket Technology (BST) means getting a tubeless tyre inflated is a cinch.

The Grail rims are wide: 24mm on the outside, 21mm on the inside. The rims are also quite deep, 24.5mm, making them the company's deepest – and therefore more aero – rim to date. They're constructed from aluminium and weigh a claimed 460g apiece. The BST rim profile features a shallow seating area so the tyre bead locates right up against the side of the rim. Getting a Schwalbe One tubeless tyre to inflate was ridiculously easy – a slosh of sealant inside and a track pump to inflate the tyre.

If you want a disc- and tubeless-ready wheelset with a wide rim profile to make the most of the growing number of wide tubeless tyres, the Stan's NoTubes ZTR Grail Team wheels combine a competitive price, decent weight and impressive performance. Add in the easy tubeless compatibility and axle versatility, and they're seriously worth considering.

Read our review of the Stan's NoTubes ZTR Grail Team
Find a Stan's NoTubes dealer

Edco Optima Roches (22mm) Tubeless Ready Wheels — £599.99

Traditional looks meets modern width in these wheels from Swiss-based Edco, which have 22mm wide rims and are ready for Tubeless tyres like those offered by Hutchinson, Bontrager or Schwalbe.

There are a lot of clever touches to these wheels like the MultiSys freewheel body, designed to accept both Shimano/SRAM and Campagnolo cassettes so you don't need new wheels if you ever change gearing allegiance.

These wheels ride well, are a sensible 1571g and come with a whopping eight-year guarantee.

Read our review of the Edco Optima Roches (22mm) Tubeless Ready Wheels
Find an Edco dealer​

Swiss Side Hadron 485 — around £1,329

Swissside Hadron 485 wheelset

Hadron wheels (named after that big circular tunnel near Geneva, of course) are available in rim depths of 48.5mm, 62.5mm and 80mm (front)/85mm (rear). 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 485
Find a Swiss Side dealer

Fulcrum Racing Quattro Carbon DB — £869.99

Fulcrum Racing Quattro Carbon DB wheelset.jpg

The Fulcrum Racing Quattro Carbon DB wheels could well redefine the modern bicycle wheel. They're bang on trend for a broad range of today's disc brake-equipped bikes and promise the trinity of light, fast and strong.

First, they're the right material: carbon fibre, with a 3k core and unidirectional surface. And while Fulcrum doesn't tout them as tubeless ready, they are, with only the valve hole in the bed of the 40mm-deep aero section rims.

The broad carbon rims are laced with 18 spokes in the front and 21 in the rear – a number low enough to keep the weight down, but high enough to make the wheels feel bombproof.

Paradoxically, they ride like function-specific race-day wheels, all revved up and raring to rip up the road, and so, naturally, you expect them to be fragile and delicate, with a need to be guarded from harm and children's sticky fingers. In reality, they're street tough and ready for couple of pints and a scrap.

Read our review of the Fulcrum Racing Quattro Carbon DB
Find a Fulcrum dealer

Spin K2 Carbone XLR38 25mm Fat Boy Clincher wheels — £990.00

The closest equivalent to these wheels in the current Spin range is the DM8 Custom Shop Pro ThirtyEight Super Fly Boy. They're still 38mm deep, but now wider to give better support and shape to 25-28mm tyres.

The XLR38s offered bags of speed with a fat rim profile reminiscent of a Zipp or Enve but at a fraction of the price. We expect theSuper Fly Boys to be just as good, making them an ideal upgrade for anyone looking to invest in their first deep section carbon wheels.

Spin offers a choice of rim depths, laced to its own SPN Precision hubs. With the 38mm rims, they weigh 1500g per pair. That's a very competitive weight, certainly for the price. You won't get much lighter unless you're prepared to spend quite a lot more money. Braking with the supplied QuickStop Black Shadow brake blocks was excellent.

Read our review of the Spin K2 Carbone XLR38 25mm Fat Boy Clincher wheels

Reynolds Aero 58 clincher wheels — £1,890.99

The ultimate in aero wheel performance comes with the combination of a deep rim, a wide tyre bed and a shape that's not affected badly by sidewinds. The Reynolds Aero 58s fit the bill.

On the road, the Aero 58s are discernibly fast and easily give you a 2km/h speed increase over a high profile wheel such as a Mavic Ksyrium. Reynolds claim best-in-class stability is sidewinds and out testing bore this out. Consistent, high cross winds proved no problem whatsoever, it was only in really gusty conditions, such as when passing a gap in a hedgerow, that the 58s could be unsettled.

Braking performance in the dry is very good, not so great in the wet, but no worse than most carbon rims, and while the 1601g weight isn't feathery, it's pretty good for such deep wheels.

Fast, quick-accelerating and superbly stable in crosswinds, the Aero 58s are our benchmark in carbon clincher performance.

Read our review of the Reynolds Aero 58 clincher wheels
Find a Reynolds dealer

Lightweight Meilenstein tubular — £3,549

Lightweight Meilenstein wheelset

Yes, they're very expensive, but the Lightweight Meilenstein carbon tubulars are superlight and equally stiff, resulting in an exceptional performance out on the road.

As the name suggests, Lightweight makes very light wheels. Our Meilensteins, with 47.5mm-deep and 20mm-wide rims, hit the road.cc Scales of Truth at 480g for the front (Lightweight claims 475g) and 640g rear (Lightweight claims 625g). That's a total of just 1,120g. The skewers add 44g.

You might expect that because they weigh so little the Meilensteins will flex about all over the place as soon as you jack up the power. That would seem logical, but the biggest surprise in their performance is that they're very, very stiff.

From the first pedal stroke you can feel that these are light wheels and acceleration is little short of superb. Really, you'll be astonished.

Read our review of the Lightweight Meilenstein tubular
Find a Lightweight dealer

Fulcrum wheels are immensely popular, both as original equipment on complete new bikes and when bought after market. The range is broad and a little complicated so here’s our guide to navigating it.

Fulcrum is a sub-brand of Italian component manufacturer Campagnolo. It makes wheels that are compatible with Shimano/SRAM systems as well as with Campag’s own products.

This isn't a test, although we do reference our reviews where relevant. This is simply an overview of the range to tell you what's what and help you decide what's most suitable for you.

Prices are for wheels with Shimano/SRAM-compatible freehubs

Racing 7 LG — £160.99

The Racing 7 LG is Fulcrum’s most affordable wheelset, at an RRP of £189.99. It comes with machined aluminium rims that have a 23mm external width and a 17mm internal width, suitable for tyre widths of 25mm to 32mm.

fulcrum-racing7lg-wheelset.jpg

The rear rim is 27.5mm deep while the front one is 24.5mm, the idea being to add extra stiffness at the back without affecting the handling at the front. The rear rim is also asymmetric, designed to allow the better balancing of spoke tensions between the driveside and non driveside. The driveside hub flange is oversized to add more rigidity.

The wheelset weight is a claimed 1,763g.

The Racing 7 CX (£139.99) is similar but it comes with double seals to protect the ball bearing seats from the water and mud associated with cyclocross.

Like all Fulcrum wheels, these are available with either a Shimano/SRAM or a Campagnolo freehub.

Buy if: You’re after a reliable, no-frills wheel for everyday riding and training.

Racing 5 — £219.99

When we reviewed the Racing 5s (RRP £269.99) we said, “They're strong and not too heavy, and have shrugged off months of wet miles with nary a whimper.”

Fulcrum Racing 5 wheelset

Rather than round spokes, the Racing 5s come with double-butted steel spokes that are aero profiled – in other words, they’re flattened to reduce drag. They’re also straight-pull – there’s no bend.

Check out our Fulcrum Racing 5 review.

A CX version is listed, with double sealing to protect the bearings, but we've been unable to find anywhere that has the Shimano version in stock.

A £250 disc brake version of the Racing 5 (RRP: £349.99) is also available. As well as the ability to take rotors (6 bolt or Fulcrum’s AFS – Axial Fixing System – design), the wheels have disc-specific rims with a 24.5mm external width for the easier fitting of 25mm tyres.

Buy if: You want solid commuting or training wheels that roll well and don't cost the earth.

Racing Quattro — £259.99

Racing Quattros (RRP: £329.99) have deeper rims than the cheaper Fulcrum wheels: 35mm. The idea is to improve aerodynamics and “increase torsional and lateral stiffness compared with a conventional profile, for improved high speed stability.”

fulcrum-racing-quattro-lg-wheelset.jpg

The 21 rear spokes are arranged according to what Fulcrum calls its 2:1 Two-to-One system, with 14 on the driveside and 7 on the non-driveside. Fulcrum says that this limits the loss of rim tension when you pedal.

“Slackening and torsion are limited and the transfer of the athlete’s power is much more effective,” it says.

Fulcrum claims a wheelset weight of 1,725g.

When we reviewed the Racing Quattros we said, “A lot of wheel for not a lot of money. Fast and durable, a great all-rounder.”

Check out our Fulcrum Racing Quattro review.

The double-sealed CX version is £245 (RRP: £340).

Buy if: You’re looking for something that’s strong and durable with a little extra rim depth.

Racing 3 — £369.99

Racing 3s (RRP: £480) are quite a lot lighter than Quattros (the claimed wheelset weight is 1,550g) partly because of shallower rims – the front is 26mm, the rear is 30mm. They’re narrower too, with an internal rim width of 15mm and an external width of 20.5mm.

Fulcrum Racing 3 wheelset

At £399 the Racing 3 is the cheapest of Fulcrum’s wheelsets to be available in a 2-Way Fit (RRP: £600). That means you can fit either standard clinchers or go tubeless because there are no holes in the rim.

Check out Road Tubeless: Everything You Need To Know and also our Buyer’s Guide To Tubeless Tyres.

When we reviewed the 2-Way Fit version on road.cc, we called it, “A good wheel choice if you're taking the tubeless plunge – responsive, strong and well-made. Stylish too.”

Buy if: You’d like stiff and responsive wheels for training, sportives, and even racing duties.

Read our review of the Fulcrum Racing 3 2-Way Fit wheels

Racing Zero — £650

It’s a large step up in price to the Racing Zero (RRP £799.99), but this is a high-level aluminium wheelset with a 25mm-deep front rim, 30mm-deep rear rim, carbon front hub body, and USB ceramic bearings. Fulcrum claims these are 30% lighter, 40% more resistant, and 50% smoother than standard steel bearings.

The Zero wheelset is lightweight at a claimed 1,440g. The £650 2-Way Fit (RRP £824.99) version is 20g heavier, but it does give you the opportunity to ditch your inner tubes.

Fulcrum has applied a treatment to the rims of the £879.99 Racing Zero Nite (RRP £1,049.99) that was unveiled a couple of years ago.

Fulcrum Racing Zero Nite 04

“The Plasma Electrolytic Oxidation process both hardens the metal, increasing its resistance to wear, [and creates] a surface that improves braking performance in both wet and dry conditions,” says Fulcrum.

Fulcrum Racing Zero Nite 21

Buy if: You’d like a lightweight aluminium wheelset and are prepared to pay for a high performance.

Red Wind — from £779.99

The Red Wind wheels are an aero lineup with structural carbon rims and an aluminium braking surface, which is always better than braking on carbon.

The most basic Red Wind wheelset (RRP £924.99) comes with 50mm deep rims and so does the £1,399.99 XLR 50, the difference being that the more expensive wheels come with Fulcrum’s CULT (Ceramic Ultimate Level Technology) bearings. These use corrosion-resistant steel races and no grease in order to keep the rolling resistance low. Weight of the Red Wind XLR 50 is a claimed 1,590g.

fulcrum-red-wind-50-clincher-wheelset.jpg

Racing Quattro Carbon — £849

The Racing Quattro Carbon wheelset (RRP £999.99) is designed to be aerodynamically efficient and reasonably light, weighing a claimed 1,555g. It has 40mm deep carbon-fibre rims that are 24.2mm wide to support tyres from 25mm to 32mm.

fulcrum-racing-quattro-carbon-clincher-700c-wheelset-black-white-EV252554-8590-1.jpg

As with Fulcrum’s other non-disc carbon-rimmed wheels, the Racing Quattro Carbon has a 3Diamant surface treatment on the braking tracks. This is machining that, according to Fulcrum, “Eliminates the imperfections caused by the non-homogenous resin deposits and allows the brake pad to work directly on the woven carbon fibres.” The idea is to improve the braking performance in both wet and dry conditions.

The Racing Quattro Carbon is also available in a disc version (£928.20, RRP £1,199.99). When we reviewed them we described these wheels as “Light, fast, stiff and strong, and very, very versatile.”

Fulcrum Racing Quattro Carbon DB wheelset.jpg

Read our review of Fulcrum Racing Quattro Carbon Disc wheels.

Buy if: You’re after lightweight and stiff wheels in a versatile depth.

Racing Zero Carbon — £1,199

The Racing Zero Carbon Clincher combines 30mm-deep/24.5mm wide carbon rims with aluminium aero spokes and carbon bodied hubs. The bearings are USB ceramic. The wheelset has a claimed weight of just 1,358g but the pair's supposed to cost a hefty £1,799.99.

Fulcrum Racing Zero Carbon Road Wheels.jpg

Buy if: You want high-quality carbon wheels in a shallow depth.

Racing Speed — £999

The Racing Speed (RRP £1,499.99) is a very light tubular wheelset (a claimed 1,260g) that comes with 35mm deep full carbon rims. That makes this a highly versatile race option, suitable for climbing and fast-paced riding on the flat.

fulcrum-racing-speed-wheels.jpg

The Racing Speed XLR 35 is built with the same rims and the same aero, straight pull spokes, but it has carbon rather than aluminium hub bodies and CULT ceramic bearings rather than standard steel ones. That drops the weight by a claimed 25g but raises the price to £1.999.99.

Buy if: You want light race wheels for a variety of situations.

We’ve previously taken you through the wheel ranges from Mavic and Fulcrum, now it’s time to turn our attention to Shimano’s rather large offering of wheels. Shimano wheels are frequently specced by bike manufacturers and they’re popular aftermarket upgrades, no doubt helped by being a common sight in the professional peloton - it supplies wheels to more teams than any other brand.

Your complete guide to Shimano groupsets

Dura-Ace R9100 and R9170 wheelsets

Shimano unveiled new Dura-Ace wheels with the launch of its latest groupset last summer. The new C40 and C60 wheels have a fashionably wide rim designed for improved aerodynamics.

Shimano-WH-R9170-C60-TU-Dura-Ace-Disc-Center-Lock-Carbon-Wheels-51446-0-1482926918.jpeg

The rims have a wider profile than the previous generation Dura-Ace wheels, following the current trend for bulbous profiles that are more stable in crosswinds than the older V-shape rims. Each is available in a clincher or tubular version, so you can emulate the pros if you want or be sensible and fit some inner tubes.

Alternatively, the R9170 versions of the C40 and C60 wheels are designed solely for disc brakes and use a 12mm thru-axle hub and a rim that is tubeless compatible. There’s also a tubular option as well.

If you want the lightest option, the R9100-C24 has a very shallow 24mm rim that keeps the weight low, making it an ideal wheelset for climbers. It's virtually unchanged from the previous R9000-C24 in case you're wondering.

Clincher

R9100 C24 — £698.99
R9100 C40 — £999
R9170 C40 Disc — £1,549
R9100 C60 — £994.99
R9170 C60 Disc — £1, 034.99

Tubular

R9100 C40 Carbon — £1,599.98
R9170 C40 Disc — £1,763.98
R9100 C60 Carbon — £1,774.98
R9170 C60 Disc — £1,499.98

Shimano’s previous Dura-Ace R9000 generation wheels are still available if you shop around. There’s the C24 (£1,999.98) and C75 (£1,699.98), the classic C50 (£1,599.98) and finally the C35 (£1,499.98).

Review: Shimano Dura-Ace C24 Carbon Clincher wheelset

Ultegra RS700 and RS770 wheelsets

Shimano-WH-RS770-C30-Tubeless-Ready-Disc-Clincher-Road-Wheel_107971_1_Supersize.jpg

Along with the latest version of Ultegra 8000 launched this year, which follows closely in the wake of new Dura-Ace, Shimano released updated wheels. It’s offering two wheelsets under the Ultegra label, the carbon-laminate RS700 for rim brakes (£369.99) and the RS770 (£674.99) for disc brakes.

Both are tubeless-ready and the later is compatible with thru-axles. There are also new hubs to shed about 60g of weight compared to the old 6800 wheels, and there’s a lighter carbon layup in the new rims. Claimed weight is 1,568g for the rim brake wheels and 1,639g for the disc wheels.

RS81 carbon laminate wheelsets

The RS81 series borrows features and technology from the range-topping wheels in Shimano's range but offers it in a more affordable package. There are also three rim depths to suit your requirements and budget.

RS81 carbon laminate wheelsets.jpg

RS, by the way, stands for Road Sport, and is Shimano’s attempt to offer top-level performance at a great price, and are ideal for racing and training duties.

The aluminium brake track with a carbon outer means you’re assured of reliable braking performance in all weathers and don’t have to change the brake blocks on your bike to upgrade to these. The hubs have extra wide flanges to build a stronger wheel and Shimano’s OptBal Spoke System is intended to increase the rigidity of the wheelset.

RS81 C50 — £599.95
RS81 C35 — £674.99
RS81 C24 — £379.99

RX830 35mm Tubeless Disc Brake wheelset — £399.95

Shimano-WH-RX830-road-disc-brake-wheels-2.jpg

The RX830 combines Shimano’s proven carbon laminate technology in a 17mm wide (internal) tubeless-ready rim optimised for disc brakes, so there’s no brake track on these rims. The hubs are cup and cone and ready for disc brakes with conventional quick release axles - so you’ll only see these on cheaper or older generation rim brake bikes, as most disc brake bikes are moving over to thru-axles. Shop around and you can find them discounted, as is the case for most of the wheels here.

RS610 24mm Tubeless wheelset — £151.51

This is one of Shimano’s most affordable wheels, and the rim is also tubeless-ready. They feature an offset rim design with wide flanges to provide a stronger wheel and the hubs are compatible with 10- and 11-speed cassettes.

RX31 Road Disc Brake wheelset — £242.78

Shimano RX31 wheelset.jpg

The RX31 was one of the very first dedicated disc brake wheelsets available when disc brakes started appearing on production road bikes a few years ago. Shimano has built a solid wheelset around 24mm profile aluminium clincher rims with 24 stainless steel butted and bladed straight pull spokes in each wheel to best deal with the disc brake forces. Hubs are now thru-axle compatible with contact sealed bearings with an 8,9,10 and 11-speed compatible freehub.

- Review: Shimano RX31 wheelset

RS330 Alloy clincher wheelset — £155.99

Looking like a good upgrade option for many entry-level bikes, though you’re likely to see these wheels specced on a lot of mid-range bikes, the RS-330 uses a lightweight aluminium rim with a 30mm depth providing good aerodynamics, making them ideal for anyone wanting to inject a bit more speed into their riding.

RS21 Alloy clincher wheelset — £145

This wheelset uses Shimano’s proven hub design with angular contact bearings and a wide flange for extra wheel strength, laced to 24mm high rims with a handy wear indicator. Steel butted and bladed straight pull spokes with a 2-cross lacing pattern improve wheel rigidity.

RS11 Alloy clincher wheelset — £99.99

rs11 wheels.JPG

You’re getting a bit more technology in return for your extra £50 at RRP over the RS010 wheels below, with a 24mm profile aluminium rim and bladed stainless steel straight pull spokes - 16 up front and 24 our back. The hubs have labyrinth sealed angular contact bearings and low-friction seals for low rolling resistance and good durability.

RS010 Alloy clincher wheelset — £119

The RS010 is the most affordable in the RS line and uses much of the same technology as you'd expect higher up the range, and is a really good entry-level wheelset. You get the same 24mm rim depth as the more expensive wheels with 20 front spokes and 24 rear spokes and quick release hubs with wide flanges, contact bearings and steel axles.

RX010 Centre Lock Disc wheelset — £123.10

RX010.jpg

An affordable disc brake wheelset with 28 spokes in each wheel for extra durability and a 24mm rim for low weight, combined with Centre Lock disc rotor mounting system. The rim width is recommended for 25 to 38mm wide tyres. The hubs use regular quick release axles.

R500 24mm wheelset — £94.79

Shimano’s most affordable wheelset and one you’ll see on a lot of entry-level road bikes with 8 and 9-speed drivetrains. Combining 24mm aero and anodised rims with 20 black chrome plated spokes in each wheel and weighing 1,884g, it’s a solid wheelset.

22 of the best road bike wheels

• One of the most popular upgrades, better wheels (and tyres) can dramatically improve your bike’s ride.

• Stock wheels are often heavy and of mediocre quality — upgrading can reduce weight and improve reliability.

• If you want to go faster, choose wheels with deep-section rims; aerodynamics is far more important than weight.

• You’ve a choice of clinchers, tubulars or tubeless, with matching tyres; each system has pros and cons.

• Wheels benefit from the human touch; the best handbuilt wheels are still superior to wheels built entirely by machine.

Upgrading the wheels is one of the first changes many people make to their bikes. Why are wheels so important and how do you choose a better set of hoops?

It's one of the bike industry's guilty secrets: the wheels on even quite pricy road bikes are often a bit ordinary. That means upgrading your wheels can make a big difference to the feel and performance of your bike.

There are several reasons why you might want better wheels. If you're doing a lot of commuting on bad roads (the potholed streets of just about any UK major city for example) you might want a set of beefy wheels for weekday riding, and to switch to something lighter or more aerodynamic for the weekend.

Or you might have decided to keep the run-of-the-mill wheels your bike came with for training and to fit better-performance wheels for sunny days and important events.

>> Read more: All wheel reviews on road.cc

Wheel construction

The basics of wheel construction haven't changed in decades because, quite simply, they work extraordinarily well. A bike wheel can carry hundreds of times its own weight; pretty remarkable structural efficiency.

Your basic tension-spoked wheel consists of a hub that houses bearings so the whole thing can turn easily, a rim for the tyre to sit on and steel spokes under tension that hold it all together.

The tension in the spokes is the vital factor. When you load a wheel, the tension goes down in the spokes between the hub and the ground. As long as it never hits zero, the wheel can support you and your bike.

Nevertheless, wheels have evolved in the last couple of decades, and now usually have fewer spokes and deeper rims, both changes that improve aerodynamics. The spokes themselves may be flattened to better cut through the air too.

Perhaps the biggest change is the use of carbon fiber for rims. That's made possible deep, highly aerodynamic rims with minimal weight penalty. Carbon wheels are still more expensive than wheels with aluminium rims, but prices have been steadily decreasing for the last few years.

Tubulars, clinchers and tubeless

In terms of how tyres mount, there are three types of wheel rim. Rims for tubular tyres — which have the inner tube sewn into the carcass — have a shallow dip where the tyre is glued on. These are the lightest rims, and tubular fans say their soft floaty ride is unparalleled. However, for the vast majority of people the faff of gluing, and the difficulty of fixing a punctured tubular makes them too much hassle.

Clincher or wire-on rims have raised sidewalls with a hook where the tyre bead engages, and the tyre has a separate inner tube. In other words, this is the standard bike rim and tyre we all know and love. Fixing a flat is a simple matter of changing the tube and swapping tyres just requires tyre levers and a pump.

Tubeless tyres are a special case of clinchers. Tyre and rim are manufactured to precise tolerances to enable an airtight seal. The rim has no holes and the tyre is coated internally with rubber so there's no need for an inner tube. Some manufacturers forego the rubber coating and base their tubeless systems around use of sealant. That has the advantage of making them more resistant to penetration punctures, in addition to their natural resistance to pinch punctures.

Weight vs Aerodynamics

If performance is your aim, there's strong evidence that you should put more priority on aerodynamics than weight. Way back in 2001 bike engineer Kraig Willett analysed the forces on wheels and concluded:

"When evaluating wheel performance, wheel aerodynamics are the most important, distantly followed by wheel mass. Wheel inertia effects in all cases are so small that they are arguably insignificant."

That goes against the long-standing conventional wisdom that wheel weight is vitally important to performance because wheels have to be spun up to speed as well as moved along the road.

But you don't do much accelerating when you ride a bike, and even when you do the speed changes involved are relatively gradual. That means you spend most of your time, and therefore effort, simply shoving the air out of the way, and you should choose wheels accordingly.

Pro teams have drawn similar conclusions, which is why you now see far more deep-section wheels in the peloton than you did even ten years ago. Aero wheels are free speed in a breakaway or sprint.

The big disadvantage of deep-section wheels is the effect of crosswinds, which can blow you off track. Some wheels are less affected than others. Zipp's Firecrest shape is widely considered to be among the least problematic thanks to its bulged sidewalls, and most wheelmakers now offer something similar.

Rim width

Just as tyres have become a bit wider in recent years, with the previously ubiquitous 23mm size giving away to 25, 26 and even 28mm tyres, so rims have spread out too. All other things being equal, a wider rim makes for a stiffer, stronger wheel and also makes the tyre effectively a bit fatter.

Wider rims are also claimed to be more aerodynamic because air flows more smoothly between tyre and rim if they are about the same size. Wheel maker Mavic has taken this to its logical conclusion with its CX01 Blades, plastic fairings that fill the groove between its Yksion CXR tyre and Cosmic CXR wheel. The UCI won't let pros use them, but that doesn't affect triathletes and UK time trial riders.

Can we build it?

Wheelbuilding (CC BY-NC-ND Cory Grunkemeyer:Flickr)

If you want your wheels to be durable, then how they were built is just as important as the components that went into them. For wheels to be durable, the tension needs to be high and even. If it's not high then spokes can come loose as you ride because the tension can drop to zero under load. If the tension is not even then the wheel is unlikely to stay round and true, even if it's that way out of the box.

A step in the wheel-building process called 'stress-relieving' also improves wheel longevity by preventing fatigue failure at the spoke heads. If your relatively new wheels start breaking spokes it's a good bet they weren't stress-relieved properly when they were built.

Most wheels these days are built by machines. It's possible to set up wheel building machines to get all of these things right, or very nearly right, but sometimes factories take short-cuts, especially when the objective is to build inexpensive wheels. The less time each wheel spends in the machine, the more wheels the factory can build.

Spokes (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 Jon Bowen:Flickr)

That's why cheap machine-built wheels have a poor reputation, but if a wheel builder doesn't know what he or she is doing, humans can build poor wheels too. The most efficient way of mass-producing high-quality wheels seems to be to let machines quickly do the spadework and then finish them by hand, as Joe Graney found when Santa Cruz decided to build its own wheels.

Alternatively, you can get top-quality wheels that have been built by hand from start to finish, either off-the-peg or custom built. Barnoldswick parts-meisters Hope have been making well-regarded wheels for years, including road wheels, while Hunt Bike Wheels is a new entrant in the field. You'll find wheels built by several others in the selection below.

If you want something truly special, a wheelbuilder who really knows their stuff can help you choose exactly the right combination of hubs, rims and spokes for your needs. The doyen of this approach in the UK is probably Liverpool's Pete Matthews whose resume includes building wheels for Tour de France King of the Mountains Robert Millar, legendary rouleur Sean Yates and comedian Alexei Sayle. Many good bike shops have a similar if less storied figure lurking in the workshop, quietly crafting wheels that last until the rim sidewalls wear out.

Names to look for

The major wheel brands nevertheless produce good wheels, by and large. Riders report thousands of happy miles on wheels by Mavic, Bontrager, Shimano, Reynolds, Zipp, DT Swiss and many others. Here are some of our favourite wheels from the last couple of years.

DT Swiss PRC 1400 Spline 65 — £1,507.48

DT Swiss PRC 1400 Spline 65.jpg

The new DT Swiss PRC 1400 Spline clincher wheels come with deep section 65mm rims for aerodynamic efficiency. They're well made and come with excellent internals, plus you can run them tubeless.

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 1100 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.

Read our review of the DT Swiss PRC 1400 Spline 65 wheels
Find a DT Swiss dealer

Hunt Superdura Dynamo Disc — £499

Hunt Superdura Dynamo Disc wheelset -1.jpg

If you're looking at a dynamo system for your road bike then the SONdelux hub dynamo is pretty much the best out there for low resistance and weight, and it's renowned for great build quality which is matched by the rest of the components on these excellent Hunt wheels. Considering how much the dynamo costs on its own, the price is excellent too. They might be a bit much for the odd night ride, but if you rack up the miles after dark they're an investment worth considering.

Read our review of the Hunt Superdura Dynamo Disc wheels

AlexRims CXD4 — £287.99

Alex Rims Alex CXD4 Road Disc Wheelset.jpg

AlexRims knows a thing or two about making rims (the clue's in the name), so it's not a surprise that it's moving into the wheelset market. And if these CXD4s are anything to go by, you should definitely look at them as an option if you're upgrading your bike or speccing a new build.

On the road the wheels feel nice and stiff, with no obvious flex either from sprint efforts or heavy cornering. The bearings run smoothly, and whipping the cassette off showed that there's not very much notching on the alloy freehub body. The 1,580g all-in weight is pretty good for a disc wheelset at this price. Shimano's RX31s are 380g heavier for the same kind of money, and similar-weight wheelsets from the likes of Cero, Kinesis and Hunt come in at least £50 more expensive.

Read our review of the AlexRims CXD4
Find an AlexRims dealer

Hunt 3650 Carbon Wide Aero — £899

Hunt 3650 Carbon Wide Aero Road Wheelset.jpg

Going wide and deep, Hunt has created a set of fast, durable and light wheels in the 3650 Carbon Wide Aeros. With a specification of high-end parts and great build quality, Hunt isn't trying to reinvent the wheel but it is certainly refining it to a level of performance unheard of on sub-£1,000 wheelsets.

The name 3650 comes from how deep they are: 36mm at the front and 50mm at the rear. It's quite a common combination for many riders as it is so adaptable to various weather conditions and the topography of your chosen route.

The front gives you a slight aero advantage over a more standard box rim shape without getting battered around by crosswinds, and it also keeps the weight down for climbing.

Read our review of the Hunt 3650 Carbon Wide Aero wheels

DT Swiss PR 1400 Dicut OXiC — £703.20

DT Swiss PR 1400 Dicut Oxic Performance road wheel.jpg

The PR 1400 Dicut OXiC wheels feature a ceramic coated rim surface that provides reassuring braking performance in a range of conditions, making them ideal for year-round cycling in the UK.

The application of a hardwearing ceramic coating on the rim is nothing new: Mavic used to produce a highly regarded ceramic back in the day. DT Swiss, though, reckons its new OXiC treatment is able to deform with the rim, which means the coating can't become detached from the aluminium, a problem that plagued Mavic ceramic rims. DT is confident the ceramic coating won't wear our over the normal lifespan of the rim, and it won't fade in the sun.

Read our review of the DT Swiss PR 1400 Dicut OXiC wheels
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Shimano Dura-Ace C24 Carbon Clincher — £709.99

Shimano Dura Ace C24 Carbon Clincher wheelset.jpg

I've been running the C24s with 25mm Continental Grand Prix 4000 tyres (Shimano advises that you use tyres ranging from 23mm to 28mm with these wheels) and they've been very quick, accelerating fast, and the ride quality is hard to fault.

The C24s, which have just been given a graphics/aesthetics update to match Shimano's new R9100 components, have the shallowest rim heights of any wheels in the Dura-Ace range: the front is 21mm and the rear is 24mm. They're not particularly wide either: 15mm internal, 20.8mm external, whereas the new C40 and C60 clinchers are both 17mm internal and 24mm external, following the trend towards more width.

Read our review of the Shimano Dura-Ace C24s
Find a Shimano dealer

Hunt 30Carbon Gravel Disc — £879

Hunt 30 Carbon Gravel Disc Wheelset.jpg

I've been thrashing the Hunt 30Carbon Gravel Disc wheels around the roads and bridleways of the south west, as well as using them for a touring trip to Cuba where they endured all kinds of surfaces, pot-holes and being lashed to roof-racks with string. And I like them, a lot.

As the name suggests, the 30Carbon Gravel Disc wheels are aimed at the fast-growing new gravel/all-road/adventure bike category. Gravel bikes are aimed at riders who want to go quickly on the road, with the freedom to take a turn off the tarmac and explore further into the wild than you could on a traditional road bike. They're typically built tougher than a road bike, and consequently heavier. If you're looking for an upgrade to your gravel bike, wheels may be on your list, and with a weight of less than 1,500g, these are likely to be quite a bit lighter than most stock wheels.

Read our review of the Hunt 30Carbon Gravel Disc wheels

BORG22T Disc Road/CX tubular — £340

BORG22T Wheels.jpg

The BORG22T wheelset features 22mm-deep aluminium tubular rims and triple butted Sapim Force spokes laced onto Miche Syntium DX hubs. It's not a flashy package, but it bats well above its price tag – it's tough, fast and will suit riders looking for a brilliant cyclo-cross wheelset.

Sometimes a product will genuinely surprise you. Take a look at the spec list of the BORG22T wheels and you'd be forgiven for not expecting much, and certainly not at this price. But I put them on my bike and was surprised to find they're excellent. I wouldn't expect to find a tubular disc wheelset below the £1,000 mark; finding such a great set of wheels for £340 has made me question why I'd spend more.

Read our review of the BORG22T Disc Road/CX tubular wheels

Roval CLX 50 Disc — £1,788

Specialized Roval CLX 50 DISC Wheelset.jpg

Since Roval parent Specialized introduced the Roval Rapide CLX 40 wheels two years ago, they've been busy and the CLX 50 wheels are the CLX 40s' spiritual replacement. They're a marked improvement, too, with better aerodynamic performance and an impressively low weight for the disc brake version here.

The aim for the new Roval CLX 50 was to marry the aero performance of the deeper section CLX 64 with the lightness of the shallower CLX 32. At 1,415g with a 50mm-deep rim and disc brake hubs, they would appear to have achieved that objective.

This is a very attractive weight in a hugely competitive wheel market. They're not much heavier than the £4.8k Lightweight Meilenstein C Disc wheels, for example, and only a smidgen heavier than the so-called lightweight, shallow, rim-braked FFWD F3R carbon clinchers. You can have aero and low weight it would seem. And a Zipp 404 Firecrest Disc wheelset? That's a comparatively portly 1,715g.

Read our review of the Roval CLX 50 Disc
Find a Roval dealer

Halo Evaura Uni 6D — £348.98

Halo Evaura Uni 6D 700C wheelset.jpg

Halo seems very proud of its new Evaura Universal 6D 700C wheelset, and quite rightly. These are well-made wheels that can be adapted for a variety of cycles and purposes. The ride quality is excellent, the weight modest and – despite the dishing needed to make it disc-brake compatible – it proved impossible to provoke them into twisting or flexing.

The idea behind this wheelset is to make it as adaptable as possible to the new rash of wheel and braking standards that is spreading across the industry. While most conventional road frames take a 130mm rear axle, disc brake-equipped bikes are commonly adopting the 135mm found on mountain bikes. (Mountain bike rear axles are themselves now getting longer, but that's another story...)

Read our review of the Halo Evaura Uni 6D wheels
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Fast Forward F3R Full Carbon Clincher Wheels — £999.99

Fast Foward F3R Full Carbon Clincher Wheelset.jpg

Fast Forward F3R Full Carbon Clincher wheels are a lightweight option that provide excellent acceleration and a high level of stiffness, although the lack of aero credentials might put off some who aren't pure climbers.

Fast Forward bills the Full Carbon Clincher as a wheelset that's particularly suited to climbing. The carbon rims are 30mm deep and 22.4mm wide with quite a rounded profile and a blunt inner edge – far more U-shaped than V-shaped.

Read our review of the Fast Forward F3R Full Carbon Clincher wheels
Find a Fast Forward dealer

Knight Composites 65 wheels — £2,000

Knight 65 Wheelset.jpg

The Knight 65 Carbon Fibre clinchers offer very good stiffness, but their real skill is in cutting through the air at high speeds and feeling stable with it.

These wheels – Knight's own rims laced to DT Swiss 240 hubs – have a whole lot going for them. Okay, at 65mm deep they're never going to be particularly light, our pair coming in at 1,680g (including rim strips and skewers), but that's not unusual. For comparison, Zipp's 404s are a claimed 1,505g (you also need to factor in the weight of the rim strips and skewers) and Bontrager's 70mm-deep Aeolus 7s are a claimed 1,610g.

It's when you fire the Knight 65s up to speed that things get impressive. As tester Mat Brett put it: "I have a few routes that I ride regularly as personal time trials for reviewing bikes and kit – rolling rather than hilly – and I've used these wheels to help achieve consistently fast times over several weeks and in a wide variety of conditions. I measure power every ride and my view is that these wheels are offering impressive speeds for the wattage I'm putting out. It's unscientific and highly anecdotal, so take it or leave it, but this is my experience."

Read our review of the Knight Composites 65 DT Swiss 240 wheels
Find a Knight Composites dealer

DT Swiss RRC 65 Dicut clinchers — £1,150

DT Swiss RRC 65 Dicut C - 1.jpg

They might be a lot of money but these DT Swiss RRC 65 Dicut clincher wheels are fast and stable, and they offer a good braking performance too.

These wheels are at their best when slicing along at high speed. They maintain pace beautifully with an appreciably lower resistance than shallow section rims. The RRC 65s also accelerate well, especially considering their 65mm rim depth. Weighing 745g (front) and 885g (rear) – excluding skewers; combined weight is 1,630g (DT's official total weight is 45g lower) – they spin up to speed with little fuss. For comparison, Zipp's 58mm deep 404 Firecrest Carbon Clinchers have claimed weights of 725g and 895g (1,620g total).

Some people might consider 65mm a little deep for general road use but we rode with these wheels on both a road bike and more occasionally on a TT bike for six weeks and they were superb. We really rate these wheels highly, and not just for racing against the clock.

Read our review of the DT Swiss RRC 65 Dicut clinchers
Find a DT Swiss dealer

Vision Team 35 — £299.99

Vision Team 35 Wheelset .jpg

Vision's Team 35s are competent and durable entry-level race wheels, with the added bonus of being very comfortable for a set of semi-deep-section alloy clinchers. The black anodised finish gives them a cool stealth look too.

The Team 35s are a revamped version of Vision's long-standing T35 model, and with a recommended retail price of £229.95 they sit right at that level of a first serious performance upgrade for a lot of bikes.

At first glance they seem a bit porky at 1,820g, especially considering the quoted weight is some 100g less than that, but the good thing is they never feel sluggish out on the road. You notice it a little if things get really steep or you ask for some rapid acceleration from a standing start, so if you're searching for a climber's set of wheels, look elsewhere.

Otherwise, the Team 35s are hard to knock. Considering the depth of the alloy rim, you'd expect them to feel harsh, but they don't.

Read our review of the Vision Team 35 wheels
Find a Vision dealer

Swiss Side Hadron 625 — £1,329

Swiss Side Hadron 625 wheelset.jpg

"Hur hur hur your wheels are called Hard... oh no, wait, it's Hadron." To Swiss ears, the name may well conjure up the crowning peak of European scientific endeavour, but it's perilously close to something that provided regular amusement to the Sunday morning crew back at home. That's as may be, but the Swiss Side Hadron 625s are stonkingly good 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 625 wheels

Superstar Components Pave 28 wheels — £269.99

The least expensive wheels we've ever given four and a half stars, the Superstar Pace 28s demonstrate that custom handbuilt wheels can be competitive on weight and reliability with any factory wheels. They have wide rims in the modern style and are built on reliable Icon hubs. They're comparable to substantially more expensive wheels from other manufacturers; light enough to race on while still managing to be as tough as old boots, and look how shiny they are.

Read our review of the Superstar Components Pave 28 wheels

Hunt 4Season Aero V2 — £299

Hunt 4Season Aero V2 wheels

Hunt's entry-level road clinchers look like an excellent choice. They succeed the now-discontinued 4Season Dura Road wheels which we liked a lot, and like those wheels, these look to be a good first upgrade over heavy stock wheels, or as a good quality winter or all-round option, they're right on the money.

The 4Season Aero V2 wheels have the same hubs. We had no issues with the 4-pawl freehub, nor with the sealed EZO bearings. Everything ran smoothly in spite of being subjected to some biblical conditions. The supplied skewers are an external cam, with a nylon insert instead of the brass one you get on the more expensive Hunt wheels, but they do the job without any fuss.

Read our review of the Hunt 4Season Dura Road
Find a Hunt dealer

Pro-Lite Bortola A21 wheels — £349.99

The 1,540g weight of these wide, tubeless-ready wheels is impressive for an aluminium wheelset even if that is about 65g over the claimed weight. With the Bortolas Pro-Lite haven't sacrificed strength or durability to achieve it, it's more of a by-product of well chosen, proven components.

On the road, they're smooth and comfortable, but light enough to reward a little out of the saddle dig on a steep section while climbing.

Overall the Bortolas are perfect all rounder wheels that only really lose out in terms of aerodynamics due to that shallow rim.

Read our review of the Pro-Lite Bortola A21 wheels

Pro-Lite Revo A21W — £269.99

Pro-Lite Revo A21 Disc Clincher Wheelset.jpg

Road disc and gravel wheels are getting better, lighter and cheaper, and right at the forefront of that trend are the Pro-Lite Revo A21s. At 1,650g, with a Centerlock option, thru-axle compatibility and a wide track rim, they're a bargain, and pretty future-proof too.

Pro-Lite builds all its wheels by hand and the Revos arrived nice and true, with even spoke tension. The spokes are bladed and triple butted, and Pro-Lite uses a brass washer at the spoke head to better distribute the forces there.

The Revos use a 21mm deep rim (hence the name), which is 23.8mm wide externally and 19mm internally. That makes it ideal for 28-32mm tyres, although 25mm rubber and bigger chamber tyres will be fine too.

Read our review of the Pro-Lite Revo A21W
Find a Pro-Lite dealer

Stan's NoTubes ZTR Grail Team — £457.95

Stans NoTubes ZTR Grail Disc Wheelset.jpg

We've been hugely impressed with these wheels. With 25mm slicks at high pressures they're fast on the road, and they've proven extremely tough when riding with knobbly tyres at low pressures off-road. They're a decent weight, the hubs are easily interchangeable to different axle standards, and the company's Bead Socket Technology (BST) means getting a tubeless tyre inflated is a cinch.

The Grail rims are wide: 24mm on the outside, 21mm on the inside. The rims are also quite deep, 24.5mm, making them the company's deepest – and therefore more aero – rim to date. They're constructed from aluminium and weigh a claimed 460g apiece. The BST rim profile features a shallow seating area so the tyre bead locates right up against the side of the rim. Getting a Schwalbe One tubeless tyre to inflate was ridiculously easy – a slosh of sealant inside and a track pump to inflate the tyre.

If you want a disc- and tubeless-ready wheelset with a wide rim profile to make the most of the growing number of wide tubeless tyres, the Stan's NoTubes ZTR Grail Team wheels combine a competitive price, decent weight and impressive performance. Add in the easy tubeless compatibility and axle versatility, and they're seriously worth considering.

Read our review of the Stan's NoTubes ZTR Grail Team
Find a Stan's NoTubes dealer

Edco Optima Roches (22mm) Tubeless Ready Wheels — £599.99

Traditional looks meets modern width in these wheels from Swiss-based Edco, which have 22mm wide rims and are ready for Tubeless tyres like those offered by Hutchinson, Bontrager or Schwalbe.

There are a lot of clever touches to these wheels like the MultiSys freewheel body, designed to accept both Shimano/SRAM and Campagnolo cassettes so you don't need new wheels if you ever change gearing allegiance.

These wheels ride well, are a sensible 1571g and come with a whopping eight-year guarantee.

Read our review of the Edco Optima Roches (22mm) Tubeless Ready Wheels
Find an Edco dealer​

Swiss Side Hadron 485 — around £1,329

Swissside Hadron 485 wheelset

Hadron wheels (named after that big circular tunnel near Geneva, of course) are available in rim depths of 48.5mm, 62.5mm and 80mm (front)/85mm (rear). 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 485
Find a Swiss Side dealer

Fulcrum Racing Quattro Carbon DB — £869.99

Fulcrum Racing Quattro Carbon DB wheelset.jpg

The Fulcrum Racing Quattro Carbon DB wheels could well redefine the modern bicycle wheel. They're bang on trend for a broad range of today's disc brake-equipped bikes and promise the trinity of light, fast and strong.

First, they're the right material: carbon fibre, with a 3k core and unidirectional surface. And while Fulcrum doesn't tout them as tubeless ready, they are, with only the valve hole in the bed of the 40mm-deep aero section rims.

The broad carbon rims are laced with 18 spokes in the front and 21 in the rear – a number low enough to keep the weight down, but high enough to make the wheels feel bombproof.

Paradoxically, they ride like function-specific race-day wheels, all revved up and raring to rip up the road, and so, naturally, you expect them to be fragile and delicate, with a need to be guarded from harm and children's sticky fingers. In reality, they're street tough and ready for couple of pints and a scrap.

Read our review of the Fulcrum Racing Quattro Carbon DB
Find a Fulcrum dealer

Spin K2 Carbone XLR38 25mm Fat Boy Clincher wheels — £990.00

The closest equivalent to these wheels in the current Spin range is the DM8 Custom Shop Pro ThirtyEight Super Fly Boy. They're still 38mm deep, but now wider to give better support and shape to 25-28mm tyres.

The XLR38s offered bags of speed with a fat rim profile reminiscent of a Zipp or Enve but at a fraction of the price. We expect theSuper Fly Boys to be just as good, making them an ideal upgrade for anyone looking to invest in their first deep section carbon wheels.

Spin offers a choice of rim depths, laced to its own SPN Precision hubs. With the 38mm rims, they weigh 1500g per pair. That's a very competitive weight, certainly for the price. You won't get much lighter unless you're prepared to spend quite a lot more money. Braking with the supplied QuickStop Black Shadow brake blocks was excellent.

Read our review of the Spin K2 Carbone XLR38 25mm Fat Boy Clincher wheels

Reynolds Aero 58 clincher wheels — £1,890.99

The ultimate in aero wheel performance comes with the combination of a deep rim, a wide tyre bed and a shape that's not affected badly by sidewinds. The Reynolds Aero 58s fit the bill.

On the road, the Aero 58s are discernibly fast and easily give you a 2km/h speed increase over a high profile wheel such as a Mavic Ksyrium. Reynolds claim best-in-class stability is sidewinds and out testing bore this out. Consistent, high cross winds proved no problem whatsoever, it was only in really gusty conditions, such as when passing a gap in a hedgerow, that the 58s could be unsettled.

Braking performance in the dry is very good, not so great in the wet, but no worse than most carbon rims, and while the 1601g weight isn't feathery, it's pretty good for such deep wheels.

Fast, quick-accelerating and superbly stable in crosswinds, the Aero 58s are our benchmark in carbon clincher performance.

Read our review of the Reynolds Aero 58 clincher wheels
Find a Reynolds dealer

Lightweight Meilenstein tubular — £3,549

Lightweight Meilenstein wheelset

Yes, they're very expensive, but the Lightweight Meilenstein carbon tubulars are superlight and equally stiff, resulting in an exceptional performance out on the road.

As the name suggests, Lightweight makes very light wheels. Our Meilensteins, with 47.5mm-deep and 20mm-wide rims, hit the road.cc Scales of Truth at 480g for the front (Lightweight claims 475g) and 640g rear (Lightweight claims 625g). That's a total of just 1,120g. The skewers add 44g.

You might expect that because they weigh so little the Meilensteins will flex about all over the place as soon as you jack up the power. That would seem logical, but the biggest surprise in their performance is that they're very, very stiff.

From the first pedal stroke you can feel that these are light wheels and acceleration is little short of superb. Really, you'll be astonished.

Read our review of the Lightweight Meilenstein tubular
Find a Lightweight dealer

Since the first edition of this guide a couple of years ago the range of tubeless-ready wheels available to you has doubled, to the point where this guide is becoming obsolete; you now have to make an effort to avoid tubeless-compatible wheels rather than having to hunt them down. We found almost 200 different models listed by manufacturers, though they’re not all available in the UK yet. Let’s take a look.

What almost all tubeless-ready wheels now have in common is a shoulder in the rim well for the tyre bead to sit on, with a lip on the inside edge to keep it there. Subtle changes to the shapes of rims and the profiles of tyres over the last couple of years have made mounting tubeless tyres easier while simultaneously improving the security of their fit.

American Classic

American Classic Sprint 350 Tubeless wheelset.jpg

American Classic has a substantial range of tubeless wheels, including some up-to-the-minute wide-rim designs, and some of the lightest aluminium-rimmed wheels around.

American Classic recently shut down its Taiwanese factory, but some of its wheels are still available through dealers.

Read our review of the American Classic Sprint 350 Tubeless wheels
Read our review of the American Classic Argent Tubeless wheels

Bontrager

Bontrager Affinity Elite Road Disc wheelset

Trek’s wheel and component brand was early to get on board with tubeless mountain bike tyres, so it’s no surprise there’s a wide range of Bontrager tubeless-ready wheels, from the entry level Affinity Comp right up to the all-carbon Aeolus range of racing wheels.

Bontrager has recently introduced two new lines of carbon-rimmed tubeless wheels, the Aeolus XXX and Aeolus Pro series.

Read our review of the Bontrager Aura 5
Read our review of the Bontrager Affinity Elite Disc wheels
Find a Bontrager dealer

Campagnolo & Fulcrum

Fulcrum-Racing-4-DB-2-Way-Fit-Disc-Center-Lock-Wheelset-2018-Model-black-28-set-front-12x100-rear-12x142-Shimano-59177-188315-1502371684.jpeg

Campagnolo and subsidiary wheel brand Fulcrum call their tubeless system 2-Way Fit — sometimes shortened to 2WF — as it works with both standard tyres and tubeless tyres. Campagnolo says this allows a rider to “test which of the two solutions suits them best or use the clincher for training and the tubeless tire for the day of the race”.

There are nine models in the two marques’ ranges from the Campagnolo Zondas to the Fulcrum Racing Zeros. Four new disc-brake tubeless models were recently announced under the Fulcrum marque, along with one new disc-brake tubeless Campagnolo wheel, all with 2-Way Fit rims.

Read our review of the Fulcrum Racing 3 2-Way Fit wheels

Cero

Cero ARD23 Aluminium Disc Clincher Wheelset - rim bed.jpg

The wheel brand of Derbyshire cycle shop Cycle Division, Cero has a range of five tubeless-compatible wheels with aluminium or carbon rims that represent very good value for money for the weight and performance on offer.

Read our review of the Cero ARD23 Aluminium Disc wheels

DT Swiss

DT Swiss R24 Spline wheelset - rim bed 2

All DT Swiss’ wheels appear to be tubeless-ready, a sensible move by the wheelmaker to broaden the appeal of its hoops. The range covers every imaginable road and cyclo-cross application and a huge price band from the budget R24 Splines at under £200 up to the ERC 1100 Dicut disc brake at £2,000 per pair.

Read our review of the DT Swiss R24 Spline disc brake wheels

Easton

EC90SL_Clincher_Wheelset.jpg

With a starting point at almost £700, Easton's tubeless offerings are very much pitched at the high end and racing, and include three models with carbon fibre rims for speed demons.

Find an Easton dealer

Edco

Edco Roches Tubeless Ready Wheelset

Edco has a large range of tubeless wheels, not all of which seem to be available in the UK, but which includes the startlingly light Supersport Neggias at a claimed weight of 1,179g.

Find an Edco dealer

Halo

Halo Evaura 6D 700c wheelset

Some of your best-value options in tubeless come from British brand Halo whose range includes the Evaura 6D wheels we reviewed recently and two Uni models that can be used with either discs or rim brakes.

Read our review of the Halo Evaura 6D wheels
Find a Halo dealer

Hunt

Hunt Race Season Aero Wide wheelset

New British wheel contender Hunt specialises in tubeless — in fact, it doesn't make anything else, aside from a couple of models for tubular tyres. The range comprises twelve models at the time of writing, six for disc brakes and six for rim brakes. We've been very impressed by the performance and value of the wheels we've reviewed so far.

Read our review of the Hunt 4Season Dura Road wheels
Read our review of the Hunt Race Season Aero Wide wheels

Kinesis

Kinesis Crosslight CX Disc

To go with its well-regarded road and cyclo-cross frames, Kinesis has a range of four tubeless-ready wheels, two for cyclo-cross use and two for road, with disc- and regular-braked versions of the latter.

Read our review of the Kinesis Crosslight CX Disc wheels

Knight Composites

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If these newly-released wheels from Knight Composites live up to their claims, the tubeless technology they embody could be a game-changer. Working with tyre maker Schwalbe, Knight has developed a hookless rim, drawing lessons from the design of automotive tyres and says fitting a Schwalbe tyre to a Knight tubeless rim is easier than Mavic's Road UST set-up.

Read more: Knight launch new TLA wheels, claimed to be the world's 'easiest and fastest'

Mavic

Mavic Ksyrium Elite Disc All Road.jpeg

Mavic was surprisingly late to the road tubeless party given its wide range of mountain bike tubeless wheels, but as of June 2017 has gone all in with a 14-model line-up of wheels that use a road-specific version of the UST technology Mavic pioneered for mountain bikes back in the 1990s.

Mavic says its UST wheels work best with its own UST tyres because the manufacturing tolerances of tyres and rims are very tightly controlled, but other manufacturer's road tubeless tyres will work.

Mavic Road UST cross-section

Mavic Road UST cross-section

Novatec

Novatec 30 Alu Clincher wheelset - Main

We've liked the Novatec tubeless wheels we've reviewed. As well as tubeless compatibility they have lots of thoughtful features such as compatibility with both Shimano and Campagnolo cassettes and a steel strip in the aluminium freehub body that stops sprocket splines from digging into it.

Read our review of the Novatec CXD wheels
Read our review of the Novatec Thirty wheels
Find a Novatec dealer

Parcours

Parcours Grimpeur wheelset.jpg

Parcours has a four-wheel range, tightly focused on going fast.

Read our review of the Parcours Grimpeur wheelset

Prime

Prime Road Race alloy wheelset - decal.jpg

A component brand backed by the mighty buying power of Chain Reaction Cycles, Prime has a range of tubeless-compatible wheels ranging from workaday alloy wheels at £115/pair to aero carbon wheels at £800. They've all come down in price since launch and some are now exceptionally good value; carbon wheels for around £500 is hard to beat.

Read our review of the Prime Race Road Alloy wheels

Pro Lite

Pro-Lite Bortola A21 wheelset - rim

Pro Lite has a big range of tubeless wheels, with at least seven models, but we've only been able to find a UK source for one of them the light but sensibly priced Bortola A21W.

Read our review of the Pro-Lite Bortola A21 wheels
Find a Pro Lite dealer

Reynolds

ASSAULT_Disk.jpg

Acclaimed US carbon fibre specialist Reynolds has one of the larger ranges of tubeless-ready wheels, with an aluminium-rimmed wheelset kicking the range off.

Ritchey

Ritchey Classic Zeta wheelset.jpg

Ritchey has a six-wheel tubeless line-up, comprising three Zeta models with aluminium rims and three WCS Apex models with carbon fibre rims. The tyre mounting tech may be bang up to date, but Ritchey has emphasised old-school reliability and durability with features like J-bend spokes and brass nipples.

Shimano

Shimano WH-6800 wheelset.jpg

Despite partnering with tyre maker Hutchinson to develop tubeless tyres for the road in the early 2000s, Shimano hasn't gone all in, and just offers four models. They're good value, though with the Ultegra model wheels a particular bargain at the time of writing.

Read our review of the Shimano WH-6800 Ultegra wheels
Find a Shimano dealer

Stan's No Tubes

Stans NoTubes Alpha 340 Wheelset

Tubeless pioneer and sealant maker Stan's NoTubes was quick to get on board when tubeless tech crossed over from mountain bikes to the road. Stan's claims the Bead Socket Technology used in its rims gives a more secure seal between tire and rim and a proper tire profile for lower pressures, faster cornering and less rolling resistance.

Read our review of the Stan's NoTubes Alpha 340 wheels
Find a Stan's No Tubes dealer

Velocite

Velocite RT50 tubeless carbon wheelset - rim

This Taiwanese carbon fibre specialist offers a range of keenly priced carbon wheels and an aluminium-rimmed model, all ready for tubeless tyres with the right rim strip and sealant.

Read our review of the Velocite RT50 wheels

Zipp

Zipp 30 Course Disc-brake Clincher wheels tight.jpg

Famous for aero wheels, Zipp only recently made the leap into tubeless wheels with two models of aluminium-rimmed wheels, one for disc brakes, and one for rim brakes. It's bang up to date with a 25mm rim (external width) and there's an optional SRAM XD freehub body so you can fit a 10-42 cassette if you want to use a single-ring gear system.

In 2017 Zipp announced a tubeless, disc-compatible version of the 303 carbon clincher wheels.

Read our review of the Zipp 30 Course Disc wheels