No, the 303S is zip’s equivalent to the ENVE foundation wheels, they just don’t have a 404S.
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This is part of my point. What’s the difference? They seem to be different tiers, but it’s clearly not weight and width that’s the difference. So what is it?
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Both are US made wheels. Zipp seems to have the better warranty. Zipp has the backing of SRAM where as ENVE is a smaller company. If the ENVE’s would be 5+ watts faster I think you could justify the cost difference(or if they had a better hub) but as they sit, I don’t see how they are competitive with the Zipp’s personally.
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Hmm, Enve warranty still covers any accidental not-riding damage in the first 3 years. Zipp explicitly excludes that.
I’m not going to finish comparing the warranties, but that immediately stood out in favor of Enve.
Hmmm. I didn’t see that, I’m more concerned with damage from riding I guess.
I bought Enve at the end of 2016 and back then the warranty was far superior to Zipp back then. In the last couple years both Enve and Zipp have updated warranties. I’m not in the market, but interested in how they compare. As mentioned above Enve covers accidental damage in the first 3 years, and Zipp excludes that. Enve warranty covers secondhand owner, Zipp does not. Zipp’s Keep Rolling program is a policy, with very few written details. Zipp wheels have a lifetime warranty from defects in materials or workmanship. Enve has 5 year limited and a written incidental damage protection program for anything beyond 5 years. That’s a pretty basic comparison after skimming the written warranties and program details. Its sort of a wash, with some plusses and minuses on each side.
They aren’t different tiers. The scoop is, hookless wheels are way cheaper to make than hooked wheels. Zipp was throwing away 35-45% of their hooked wheels because they didn’t pass QC (probably similar amongst brands). Molding a tiny bead hook into a carbon wheel is just difficult to do.
Since hookless are straight walled, they spend less money in manufacturing because more wheels make it out of the factory. The results were Zipp dropping the price for the entire Firecrest line. ENVE decided to raise the price for the SES line. Price means nothing in 2022, don’t try to tier wheels because there’s a $900 difference. The 404 Firecrest are also faster than the 454 NSW, that’s twice the price, in every independent aero test I’ve seen.
I’m a big fan of the 5.6 disc wheels, probably the best wheels I’ve owned. If I was buying hookless rims right now, I wouldn’t even consider ENVE because of the price gouging.
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I get what you are saying, but weren’t the firecrest always that much cheaper than the SES line? I didn’t realize they dropped the price when they went hookless.
The SES 5.6 disc go for $2550 right now, and the 2019 404 Firecrest disc were $2400. With Chris King hubs, Enve were $3200 but I’m sure a CK laced set of 404s would be around that too.
Those new 6.7s weigh less than my Gen1 3.4s… damn.
Good news is I can’t afford them 
Got something in the mail today:
The weight (no valve, no tape) is 669g front, 810g rear, for a combined weight of 1479g.
The rear wheel is exactly 56mm deep. Internal width is a smidge under 25mm, making the bead very wide (over 3.5mm each).
The wheel has relatively straight beads from the outside, then bulges out to its maximum width and then gets narrow again.
Tape and tire installation was super easy. The rear wheel Held pressure on a GP5000s TR all night with no sealant.
Front and rear 30c s TR (still 1.055 on the front).
And what I am trying out now:
That’s the 28mm Power Cup TLR, at 30.56mm on the front, close to 31mm on the rear. (Really went against BRR‘s recommendation there 
).
And that’s everything installed. Yet to be ridden.
The wheels look very nice. They are crazy wide, and appear wider than the 4.5 AR (they are wider, but I feel like you can really tell).
Wheel balance was great out of the box. Spoke tension also.
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Do you have links to the aero data?
Looks fantastic. Sweet bike.
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That’s Enve’s in-house data. I love Enve, but it’s so skewed. They tested everything with Enve 27mm tires, which would make the tire balloon on a few of the wheels (CLX 50, DT Swiss ARC 1100, Aeolus XXX6), and completely redacted the wider Rapide CLX and non-sawtooth Zipp 303/404/808.
The problem with the 303/404/808 being redacted is that they test faster than the 353/454/858 in every wind tunnel test I’ve seen, which is info Zipp doesn’t really want you to know anyways. I’d also have loved to see how the 5.6 Disc test with a 25mm tire compared to the new 6.7s with a 27mm tire. If the 6.7s with 27mm are actually faster, can’t imagine it’s by more than 1-2 watts.
I say that because of data from the latest Hunt white paper publication where they independently tested many wheels. Hunt aero tests
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Pretty crazy they removed the roval and the zipps.
I wonder if we can feel the difference between Enve 5.6, Roval Rapide Clx, Zipp 404, Dicut 1100 and Bontrager.
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I find these graphs a joke at best.
Who made these?
The Bontrager and Roval Wheels have been outdated for years now and they still used those.
Then it says 859 and 354. what’s that?
With the two wheels being outdated, what generation of ZIPP 454 are we even talking? The old super narrow ones likely Test pretty poorly with a 29mm wide tire.
Even as someone who bought their product, I am more than suspicious about their data.
The 5.6 tested pretty fast a few years back and the 7.8 have consistently been among the fastest wheels. Therefore I trusted them Enough to still build a fast wheel set. I hope they did.
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I took the wheels out for the first spin today and really didn’t went easy on them.
The fat tires make the ride really comfy and cornering very grippy.
The front wheel is on par with the Roval Rapide CLX in terms of stability. It was pretty windy, and I got a few proper gusts on a 55-60kph descent. Virtually no steering moment.
Now all I need to figure out is why the front tire is still losing air (around 1 bar during the ride, vs absolutely nothing on the rear).
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Wonder how much of that was the wheels…285W average for 2 hrs is fast!! 
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The wheels prolly saved a cool -1W compared to the Rovals I was running before 
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