DISC BRAKE WHEELS
We test a dozen disc brake wheels to find the ideal upgrade whether you want faster, lighter or tougher
While still not everyone’s cup of tea, disc brakes have fully infiltrated the road bike market and are here to stay. The wheels need to be up to the job too - here we test 12 of the best
After first appearing on mountain bikes, disc brakes have now spread to almost every genre – pure race bikes, sportive/ comfort bikes, cyclo-cross, adventure/ gravel, touring and even aero bikes are all now available with consistently powerful and finely controlled allweather anchors.
After a few teething issues, the brakes themselves are now brilliant and the ride quality of most disc brake frames is impressive too. Unfortunately, the one thing holding a lot back from reaching full potential are the wheels they’re supplied with, so we have tested a whole range of top all-round performance options.
While we’ve only got a dozen wheels here, that selection has been narrowed down from a much wider pool of similar wheels from different brands or different wheels from the same brands. In these instances we rode all the options we could from a given brand, worked out how we’d score each offering and picked the highest scoring wheel as the test representative. Wherever it’s relevant we’ve included notes, data and comments on the other same brand wheels we’ve tested so you can make your own decisions about which model will suit you best. We’ll also be reviewing the best of the non-selected wheels separately in future issues.
To make the testing as accurate as possible we’ve run every wheel on the same test bikes – our long-term Whyte Wessex and Santa Cruz Stigmata. We also used two matched pairs of Schwalbe’s excellent G-One Speed 30mm tyres, set up tubeless at 70psi with the same amount of the same sealant in each tyre. After collecting a full set of spec and spoke tension details we’ve ridden them over the same road, rough trail, pavé and cyclo-cross mimicking test trails, in as wide a range of weather conditions as possible, for as long as possible. We’ve collated all the feedback from our ultra– experienced test team and post-ride workshop checks to create the most comprehensive, detailed and trustworthy test you’ll find to make sure you get the wheels that suit you best.