Watts per dollar or your opinion doesn’t matter!
Can’t quantify the watts but some recent builds…
Nice alloy 650b rims built on Hope RS4 hubs ~£500
Ultralight LB AR35 carbon rims with novatec hubs ~£600, sub 1,300g wheelset.
Back in 2019 before price rises, LB AR46 on DT350 hubs, £510, ~1500g wheelset.
If you want Roval, Enve, Zipp, Campag, etc. then yes, the £/w saved gap is massive.
I remember when LB did well in Hambini’s possibly fake aero tests. The price of their wheels doubled. They have since come down in price but much higher than they had been.
Yes, because normal bearings are better sealed (which is where most of the drag comes from).
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For me the main benefit is the durability. after 3ish years, I’ve never had to true them. I got the rims off of Aliexpress for $150ish each. Had my bike shop build them up on DT Swiss and they have been rock solid. I’m an aging XC marathon guy, so I’m not doing drops or anything.
Durability is a huge factor for me. On aluminum rims my wheels would always get out of true after a while, be it road or XC. I switched to carbon years back and haven’t had to true a wheel since.
From a design standpoint, carbon has allowed manufacturers to work on their carbon layups to change the characteristics of the wheels based on the discipline. This is where there can be a lot of variation between manufacturers.
There are a lot of ways to sink money into your bike and the sport, but I’ve never regretted the money I put into carbon wheels.
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Yes, on a road bike they make a massive difference.
- Carbon wheels are typically deeper and aero gains are real.
- Much, much better road feel and stability during cornering. Good wheels give you a taste of what the ground feels like without being overly harsh and tiring you out.
- Weight gains are a thing if you come from cheap alloy wheels.
- Carbon wheels typically come in more flavors (e. g. wider inner rim widths, etc.).
- A lot of the qualities that make a good (carbon) wheel are not captured in specs. People tend to be hyperfocussed on weight and depth as a parameter, but things like comfort, good tracking, stability in cross winds or ease of running tubeless tires are not neatly captured into numbers.
- Wheels that focus mostly on weight as a selling point can be finicky and less robust. (Just search for Rides of Japan on Youtube and look for his experience with some of the wheelsets. Being a weight weenie can cause a lot of head ache and heart ache.)
Carbon wheels used to be super expensive, but there are more affordable options out there now, even first-party ones. For $1,500ish you can get Zipp 303Ses, the cheaper Enve wheelsets, Hunt wheels, etc.
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Absolutely secondary to how awesome deep carbon wheels look.
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What @Kuttermax said.
Also, there are good and bad carbon builds. Good and bad alloy builds. There is just way more to a wheel than the rim (carbon or aluminum). For example, hub type (flange spacing), number and type of spokes, spoke pattern, etc…can make more of a difference in stiffness and compliance than the rim itself.
Point being, educate yourself on what makes a wheel stiff, compliant, aero, durable and seek out that wheel. But, asking whether carbon or alloy is better to me is missing the point.
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As soon as you want an aero wheel, you are looking at carbon, no? I am not aware of really deep aluminum wheels. I have heard that in the past there were hybrid wheels where you had an aluminum rim with a carbon aero faring on top.
And the reason that many carbon wheels are stiffer is basic physics: the rim is like a tube, and the larger the diameter, the stiffer it is.
That being said, my mountain bike has high-quality aluminum wheels from Stan’s with XTR hubs and they are excellent. My XC bike weighs less than 10 kg even though it has a mid-grade carbon frame and aluminum wheels.
Absolutely. This is where carbon can go an alloy can’t.
Paul Lew disagrees with you. He has been on the record saying the rim counts for 20%. Hub and spoke choice account for the majority believe it or not (if what Paul Lew says is true). I tend to believe him.
One final point Paul makes is the fatigue life of carbon is virtually unlimited. This is not possible with alloy.
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You’re both right!
The stiffness of the rim itself, is dependent on the moment of inertia of the cross section. Which in terms are dominated by the height, which is raised to the 3rd power.
The overall stiffness of the assembled wheel depends a lot on the spokes, their number, their tension, number of crosses and so on. Finally the hub matters too
Those are still available today…HED Jet wheels use this construction method, as do some FLO Wheels.
The original Campagnolo Shamal wheels would like a word…
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In a world of inexpensive carbon wheels are they still worth it? Perhaps that makes more sense for rim brakes (since aluminum brake surfaces perform better), but for disc wheels? I’m not so sure.
Yes, that’s correct. I meant to write all other things being equal, deeper wheels tend to be stiffer, because the rim tends to get stiffer as size increases. I should have been more precise, though.
Carbon wheels are typically more expensive and thus, tend to have fancier spokes and hubs than alloy wheels. (My MTB wheels are a counter example.) That makes carbon wheels stiffer as well, although as you have correctly pointed out many factors have nothing to do with the rim material.
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Oh, absolutely not….and I’m not certain even if those wheels are available in a disc version.
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Fwiw, sometimes I find myself liking aluminum wheels better, at least in the “budget” category.
I have a set of Industry Nine UL250 TRA wheels and they super light, super wide, and feel extra stiff despite being aluminum. On the other hand at a similar price point I have Reynolds AR41 wheels on my other bike. They’re more aero, but they’re definitely heavier, narrower, and less stiff. Still a good wheel though.
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I’m still using Dura Ace C50’s on the Cervelo. Maybe not the lightest but the braking is reassuringly good for rim brakes.
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I find that, too, there is a gap between good aluminum wheels and good carbon wheels. Wheels that are in no man’s land price-wise need not be universally good. I’m seriously impressed by my aluminum mountain bike wheels, Stans aluminum rims and sexy-looking Shimano XTR hubs. And they are quite light, my hardtail weighs less 9.9 kg.
I think carbon wheels make a difference on a road bike due to aero advantages with deeper wheels but on a gravel or mountain bike less so. Lightweight wheels feel nice but the overall effect on speed is very small.
Ceramic bearings on the other hand, I would never bother. Most of the drag (which is quite minimal) comes from the seals of the bearings. Cheap ceramic bearings have crappy seals and will soon end up worse than regular steel bearings. I accidentally bought ceramic pulley wheels (BBB ones) to my cx bike and they literally seized after few races. So much for the reduced drag 
And if you really want to, you can take the seals off from the regular bearings and replace the grease with oil to minimise the drag.
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