I’m considering an upgrade for my Emonda slr. Currently have Aeolus 37’s on it, but want something deeper. Something in the 50-60mm range is what I’m thinking. My current wheels are ~1500 grams and I run a 28mm tire.
No crit racing. I do mostly fondos and other long distance events. I like to ride fast.
I’m considering three different sets at the moment.
Enve SES 4.5
Reserve 52/63
Enve 65
Seems like they all have pros/cons. The SES is pretty well out of what I want to spend, but checks all the other boxes. Light, aero, is made.
The reserves are nice and wide, but the warranty is worse than enve and they’re made in Taiwan. Heaviest of the bunch at 1660 grams
The Foundations are nicely priced and made in the US, but they are a bit narrow for aero purposes with 28mm tires. Sort of heavy.
Budget is under 2k. I get a nice discount through my racing association, but the SES is still crazy pricing.
From the composites engineers, to our team of wheelwrights, to our group of Rider Support reps, Reserve stands behind the wheels we make. Whether you’re flying down the legendary DH track at Ft. William, railing corners at the Mission Crit, or leaving it all out there on Queen Ka’ahumanu Highway, if you break a wheel, we’ll send you a new one to keep you going. If you back over it with your car, we’ll get you a low-cost crash replacement ASAP. We know that missing a ride sucks, and missing a race can mean throwing away months of prep, so we’ll do everything we can to ensure that never happens because of one of our wheels.
Anyway I just bought some Reserves and can’t beat em for the price. Super solid. I would love some Enve wheels someday but just don’t think their price is justified anymore…
Have a look at Swiss Side’s offerings, they are highly regarded as having great aerodynamics. SwissSide works for a lot of other companies (e. g. DT Swiss, BMC and others) to optimize the aerodynamics of bikes and wheelsets. They are not the lightest, though. But aero > weight.
Edit: They seem to have a sale going on. A carbon gravel wheelset for < 1,000 € sounds great. If I hadn’t moved countries earlier this year, I’d be tempted to pick up a pair for myself.
Check out the Zipp 404 or 303 Firecrest Wheels. 23-25 ID on the wheels, deeper section wheels and relatively lightweight compared to the Reserve and Foundation wheels. I see them on Merlin Cycles right now for like $1750 ish for the set.
Even in Shimano land (aka Japan), Shimano carbon wheels were rare. There was an aluminum rim brake wheelset that was very popular as a training wheelset (forgot the name), but their carbon wheels never got a lot of traction.
My impression is that Shimano carbon wheels are nice, but they are always behind the curve, e. g. deeper wheels were late compared with competitors and the inner rim width was very conservative. Weight-wise, they were not standing out either. The price was alright, but more expensive than e. g. Hunt. So to me it seems Shimano carbon wheels are boring, unremarkable products that don’t stand out in any way.
It is a bit of a pity as Shimano hubs have in my experience been bombproof. I have been using Shimano SLX, XT and XTR hubs for almost three decades now. I have never, ever serviced one of them, nor did I need to. On my previous mountain bikes, the hubs outlasted the rims after 10 years of use with seemingly no degradation in performance.
