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Wake up Western bike wheel brands! Have Chinese carbon wheels now overtaken established brands factoring in performance and price?
If you're someone who's interested in making your road bike faster, chances are you’ve looked at buying a set of carbon wheels. For the past two decades or so this segment has been almost entirely dominated by Western brands such as Zipp, Mavic, Bontrager and Roval, but there is a way of getting carbon wheels for less.
Buying direct from China is undoubtedly cheaper, but in the past it's been said that there's a sacrifice to be made in terms of performance and/or quality. In 2025, is that still the case? We've been investigating...
Chinese carbon road bike wheels are by no means a new thing, but we did think that it was about time to delve a bit deeper since they have recently enjoyed a surge in popularity. While numerous road.cc staff members and reviewers have plenty of positive things to say about Chinese wheels, you only need to look as far as our road bike wheels buyer's guide to see that it's often the Western brands that we recommend as offering the average Lycra-clad Brit the best all-round value for money.
Topping that list for the last couple of updates has been the Hunt Limitless 48 wheelset, wheels that have recently been superseded by the Hunt Limitless Sub 50s.
These latest wheels are very fast, pretty light, impressively stable, come with all sorts of peace of mind as far as the warranty goes, and with the price tag of £1,479 seriously undercutting much of flagship competition, you'd expect them to continue to top this list.
While reviewing these wheels though, it got me thinking... are they really the best value for money wheels you can buy right now?
To take on the best of the West, I knew I needed to find something that could not only undercut the Hunt wheels in terms of price, but also deliver when it came to consistent manufacturing, aerodynamics, stability, weight, durability and post-sale service. This ruled out buying direct from the likes of Temu or Aliexpress, so I set about browsing the ranges from the likes of Winspace, EliteWheels and Ican.
I settled on the latest Falcon Turbo Pro wheelset from Light Bicycle, a well-established Chinese brand that I've had good experiences with. To make the comparison with the Hunts as fair as possible, I then tried to spec them in a like-for-like build, or as close as reasonably possible.
Before we take a look at the exact specs of the wheels, let's just clarify what exactly I mean when I say 'Chinese brand'...
Aren’t most bike wheels made in Asia nowadays?
The Giant factory in Taiwan
Let’s not kid ourselves, most of us are aware by now that most ‘Western’ cycling brands get the majority of their carbon fibre products manufactured in Asia. ENVE are definitely a notable exception with their SES wheels, but the US brand are very much in the minority. In most cases, your carbon wheels are probably being made in a factory in either Taiwan or China.
You might, for some reason or another, feel a bit cheated to learn this, but the truth is that it’s Asia where nearly all the expertise in carbon fibre manufacturing is, so it makes a lot of sense for products that use carbon fibre to be produced there.
If you take these Hunts as an example, they’re designed in the UK, assembled in the UK and distributed from the UK. This means that if you do have any issues with them, you can talk to a team of customer service staff that are based in the UK. The rims are made in the Far East, but using a closed mould – this means that no one else can use this design of rim profile.
Light Bicycle differ to Hunt in that they're a direct-to-consumer brand. The rims could, for all I know, be made in the factory next door, but the key distinction is that Light Bicycle, like many ‘Chinese’ brands, own the factory that their products are made in, before shipping them direct to you wherever in the world you reside. This process makes Light Bicycle a Chinese direct-to-consumer brand.
How do the two wheelsets compare?
To illustrate the kind of performance-to-price ratio that Chinese direct-to-consumer wheels can offer, I've incorporated the wheelsets into one of my favourite childhood games: Top Trumps!
The Falcon Pro Turbo 50 price includes relevant shipping and duty to be paid to get them in to the UK. The actual wheelset price: £1,028
As you can see, the results are alarming. For £300 less than the best that the West has to offer you, I can have a wider, lighter, deeper and hooked wheelset. They get pipped by the shallower Zipps in terms of weight, but those Zipp wheels would set you back three times the price at RRP. Based on that information alone, I know which wheels I'd be choosing!
A closer look at the Light Bicycle Falcon Pro Turbo 50
This is not the first set of Light Bicycle wheels that I have used. My dad has been using a set for the past few years, and other than forgetting to spec them with drainage holes, and the hub (from a Western brand) breaking… they’ve been very good!
This new set, though, is quite a bit different. That 50mm-deep wheel has a twisted wavy profile that is said not only to reduce air drag and improve crosswind stability, but also enhance lateral stiffness. The super wide profile will pair nicely with 28mm or 30mm tyres, and in the centre of them I’ve opted for the ever reliable DT Swiss 240 hubs.
> Are expensive carbon wheels worth it?
And that brings us on to another big advantage of buying wheels from a brand like Light Bicycle. Whereas the Hunt Sub 50s are available in two variations, either with steel or carbon spokes, the Falcon Pros have almost endless possibilities.
On the Light Bicycle website there are seven different depths and widths of their wavy rim, then there are eight different hubs to choose from plus various colours, ratchet tooth counts etc. There are well over 200 different combinations in total.
To be honest I was initially a little bit baffled by all this choice, so I decided to make the wheels as close to the Hunts as possible and then see what they cost. I think I came pretty close; they’re almost identically deep and certainly as wide.
I wanted hooks so I can use them with more of the tyres that I have lying about, and the DT Swiss hubs are just a bit of a staple. If they’re good enough for Visma–Lease a Bike, then they’re good enough for me!
Next question then, what are they like out on the road?
The road test
I think that I won’t really be offending anyone by saying that it is now relatively easy to make a fast bike wheel. The difference between the fastest and slowest wheels of the same depth in a wind tunnel is a matter of a few watts, so it won’t surprise you to find out that we’ve found no measurable differences in speed between these two wheelsets in our real-world testing when equipped with the same tyres.
> How strong are Chinese carbon road bike wheels, and why are they cheaper?
Where wheel development has come on a long way in the last decade or so is stability. I was recently in Lanzarote – an island that feels like one of the windiest places on earth when you ride there – and the difference has never been so obvious. A set of Mavic Cosmics from a decade or so ago were billowing about all over the place, whereas on the Falcons there was a steady sideways pressure, but none of that sudden jerking about. It really was an eye-opener that demonstrated to me quite how far we’ve come.
This is an area where the Hunts also absolutely excel. That super wide rim profile bats off crosswinds like Freddie Flintoff, and they’ll outperform just about every other wheelset of this depth. Unfortunately for Hunt, the Falcons are one of the very few wheelsets that can stand side-by-side with them. I don’t know if it's the waviness or simply the width and smooth transition to the tyre, but whatever it is, it worked for me.
Maybe the Falcons would be really floppy in a sprint? Nope. There's been no skimping in terms of lateral stiffness, with 24 spokes front and rear.
Maybe they accelerate slowly? Negative. That low weight means they're right up there with the best 50mm wheels out there in my opinion, and I like the fact that you can choose between a 36T or 54T ratchet when purchasing the wheels.
Maybe they aren't as true or de-tension themselves when you hit a hole? I had both sets of wheels out of the box and straight onto a truing stand to find that they're well dished, true laterally and radially, and the spoke tensions are even.
In terms of the supplied accessories, I think the tubeless tape supplied with the Falcons is much better than what Hunt have used. The valves are pretty much identical, but you do get a set of wheel bags with the Hunts. That's some points clawed back!
How are 'Chinese' wheels cheaper?
It's safe to say that the Light Bicycle wheels have impressed so far, and so I was keen to find out how they can undercut the Western brands if the quality really is on a par.
road.cc: How do you keep your prices low?
Light Bicycle: “Very early on, Light Bicycle took a risk in the direct-to-consumer business. When we say direct to consumer, we truly mean direct to consumer, no middlemen, simple factory to customer. Many companies will operate "direct to consumer," but they are purchasing their rims from different manufacturers, pushing up the end price.“
Are there fewer QC checks?
“There are definitely not fewer quality checks in place; if anything, there are more; it is a constant battle to change the narrative on Chinese made products but we are extremely proud of our people and our process and would happily put our rims up against any brand in the industry. As an added bonus, due to our custom nature, our wheelsets are hand-laced, resulting in a very premium product for the price.”
What are the negatives of buying direct from China?
In the past, I'd argue that the biggest downfall of direct-to-consumer goods from China has been the complete lack of consistency between products. This seems to be changing with the dawn of named brands rather than no-name factories simply going for high volume sales on the likes of AliExpress and Temu.
When you buy direct from Light Bicycle, for example, the brand now have a reputation to uphold. They don't want you to be disappointed with the product because then you won't recommend them or purchase again. So if the quality and consistency is now on a par with Western brands, what are the negatives? Well, I've thought long and hard about it and here are my thoughts:
Delivery time
If you try to buy an in-stock wheelset from a Western brand, you'll likely have them on your doorstep a fair bit quicker than you will from a Chinese brand. With Hunt, for example, the order was placed and two days later the wheels arrived. Light Bicycle have tried to minimise this wait with warehouses in Canada and Europe, but even then you're probably looking at between two to three weeks from ordering for your order to be delivered.
Warranty time
Likewise, if something goes wrong with your wheelset and it's covered by warranty then the wait could be longer for the Chinese wheelset. In the past, if I've had an issue with my Hunts like requiring a new freehub, it's been with me within a few days. Due to the location of parts, this is likely going to be over a week for a Chinese direct-to-consumer brand.
The mind boggling choice
This could be argued as both a positive and a negative, and I think it's only fair to recognise that some people don't want to do the hard work of choosing what the best wheel for them is. Take Hunt's Limitless range as an example; the brand has already chosen the hubs, spokes and rim widths that it thinks are best for the target rider. Yes, I love the choice that Light Bicycle offers me, but I can see how it could be intimidating to someone who doesn't write about bikes for a living.
Warranty period
Many Western brands have recently been beefing up their warranty periods, and most wheels now coming with a lifetime warranty. That's what the Hunts come with, whereas the Light Bicycle Pro range benefit from a five-year warranty. Good, but not as good as the example we have here.
Crash replacement
When comparing prices it's important to note the additional benefits that you get. The Sub 50s are £300 more expensive than the Falcon Turbo Pros, but you do get free 'H_Care', Hunt's free crash replacement service for the first owner. Light Bicycle do offer a discount (25% off), but this is definitely a difference worth noting if you're accident prone or are looking at racing the wheelsets.
China > the West?
Firstly, I should say that both of these wheelsets are absolutely brilliant, and both will do you proud. I'd be very happy to spend my own money on either, and I'm a fussy bugger! I also think that we're at a point where some Chinese carbon road bike wheels have caught up with the best of the West in terms of performance and price, which makes them a very realistic option to anyone in the market for a bike upgrade.
If you're prepared to wait just a few weeks for a new set of wheels, then you can make an absolute killing in savings. In the case of the Light Bicycle wheels, they face no penalty in terms of quality or performance. I'm not for a moment telling everyone to go out and buy any old direct-to-consumer wheelset, but there are some that are definitely worth considering.
What next?
It seems hard to imagine that brands as big as the ones in the wheel industry could be eclipsed. Can someone like Light Bicycle really sell more wheels in the UK than someone like Zipp? I got a bit reminiscent and realised that things really can change fast. It wasn't all too long ago that Mavic had the UK wheel market in their pocket, quickly followed by a series of well-documented struggles before emerging out the other side.
As they own the factories that the wheels are built in, Chinese brands seem to be fast learning the trick of jumping on the latest trends as the West plays it safe with wheels that sometimes look dated before they've even hit the shelves. I suspect this means that Chinese carbon wheels are only going to be talked about more and more in years to come.
We've recently seen Chinese groupsets and bikes loudly try to upset the established brands, and I don't think they've managed it. With wheels, though, the Western brands can't stand still for a minute, because if our favourite wheels are already getting a run for their money then other brands will very fast become irrelevant.
Western wheel brands, this is your wake-up call! Either way, we'll have some very fast wheels on our bikes for years to come.
Let us know which wheels you'd choose and why down in the comments section below
Jamie has been riding bikes since a tender age but really caught the bug for racing and reviewing whilst studying towards a master's in Mechanical engineering at Swansea University. Having graduated, he decided he really quite liked working with bikes and is now a full-time addition to the road.cc team. When not writing about tech news or working on the Youtube channel, you can still find him racing local crits trying to cling on to his cat 2 licence...and missing every break going...
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54 comments
I've been running a set of Light Bicycle WR40 wheels for a year now, no complaints from me so far.
Personally I liked that I could spec them how I wanted, brass nipples to avoid corrosion, DT Swiss 240 hub, no holes in the rim so I never have to faff with tubeless tape again.
They were delivered within a couple weeks of ordering them, as I wasn't in any rush this wasn't an issue.
How about product safety regs and EU safety testing that a UK or European brand has to comply with?
To sell anything in the UK via a recognised outlet you need to comply to EU and or BSI.
But this is the digital age. There is nothing stopping them from selling online via places like Aliexpress where they can circumvent these standards. You buy at your own risk.
You will get those who are ready to take a chance. Mostly they feel they get a deal. But if your product fails then you've nowhere to turn and no consumer rights. For something as expensive as a bike or wheelset many feel it's not worth the risk.
AliExpress does offer refunds - I easily returned a video doorbell that had just stopped working and got a refund. I think it varies according to the seller (similar to eBay), but it seems that they are working hard to improve the image of Chinese manufacturers.
I didn't say they didn't. I said they will use that site (among others) to sell their stuff. Not all items offer warranties. And if you were to have a defect it's not going to be easy to get a replacement.
That's what I was getting at - in case my post wasn't clear, the Q about regs and testing was directed at the D2C brands based in China and the fact they could skip all that. In fact they probably do some or all of the testing as EN standards are often used for in-house tests, but that's not the same as external verification eg as done by SGS. And market survaillence regs .. not sure how they cover that. It could be something to include in product reviews in future.
Aliexpress: who will copy anything and everything and sell it at a fraction of the price. Their official standpoint is that a design is only protected if it is registered as a trademark/patent/whatever by a Chinese corporation in China. Anything else is fair game.
Correction. The copying is nothing to do with AliExpress. They just permit potetially copyright/design mark / IP violations on their platform. They are a marketplace not a manufacturer.
You should read their T&C when you try to complain to them about a copyright infringement!
Read what I wrote.
Well, gosh, I did
But you complain to Aliexpress about copyright infringements, not to every single no-name factory producing stuff for them.
Same as you complain to Shein, Temu, Amazon, Walmart, or every other online 'marketplace'. They are the ones selling it, and they are the ones supposedly responsible for stopping selling it
Who in their sound mind wants to support athe CCP dictatorship that doesn't respect fair trade, the international rule of law, intellectual property and human rights?
The only vote we have with the CCP dictatorship is not to buy their supposedly cheap products which in reality is an exchange of sovereign capabilities and so a loss of freedom.
A very bad bargain and something not priced into the deal at all, which allows the globalist to trade away our freedom without any accounting of that.
It's difficult to try and have the moral high ground when your choices are Chinese produced product sold by China vs Chinese produced product sold by Western company. Chances are your wheels/bike etc were already made there to begin with.
ironically, if you wrote your post condemning China and its human rights on a smartphone, it came off a production line located within the CCP.
Indeed, it's a choice of Made in China vs "Designed/Engineered/Built" in England, which we all know means the same thing.
It really annoys me, the whole "Engineered in England" thing. Some companies go further and shamelessly incorporate it in their brand name; Brooks England. Or the product is emblazoned with Union Flags, etc.
It annoys me on two levels. Firstly the dishonesty. They are tapping in to the fact that for some people buying local is important, so they just sell them the lie.
But also, we are just coaching the Chinese how to beat us. We play the short-term gain to their long-term game when we give them our IP. It's like training a massive neural network, one that is hostile to us.
Incidentally, if your smartphone is a Samsung then it did not come off a CCP production line.
A lot of the manufacturing for these brands happens in Taiwan which although how close that is to China generally is a hot topic, ime Taiwan and China are quite different in many ways.
That is true (provided your phone is post-2019) but several parts of it will probably still be manufactured in China from whence they were exported to the Samsung factories in India, Vietnam and elsewhere.
Almost every smartphone made in the worlds screen and CPU is a chinese product. even if the rest was made elsewhere.
You could choose a UK or EU brand who manufactures in Taiwan or SE Asia via a non-Chinese owned factory, if you wanted to base a purchase on that. It's generally hard to get that kind of information but a journalist can always ask and a brand can always choose to be up front about it. In future brands could decide be more open about all this and let customers decide, though natural caginess related to competitors etc is to be expected.
not sure why you're telling me this. I know how it works.
You allude to the reasons why in another comment. Standards and customer protection if things break. Warranties, consumer rights etc. you won't get many of them with a non-uk / non-eu registered brand. They have reputations to keep and generally supply chains, design teams, commercial , sponsorship deals etc. you just don't get that with all but a few Chinese brands. Only one if which has really poked its head up in the form of XDS carbon-tech which to be frank look like a brand using open mould frame sets.,I wouldn't expect them to remain in the pro peloton for long.
As for wheelsets, anyone who knows anything about wheels knows the money is in the hubs. And even if you look at online Chinese brands they will offer budget rims with cheap Novatec hubs at attractive prices. They will probably offer ceramic bearings or named brands like DT-Swiss and the prices then fall in line with most established brands but without the extra protections mentioned earlier.
It was a reply to your ealier comment that it's difficualt to have a high ground option when our choices are Chinese produced product sold by China vs Chinese produced product sold by Western company - just saying that there's more choice than that, more to where things are made and who owns the facilities etc, if you want choice.
(fwiw XDS are one of the largest carbon factories, based in Shenzen. Huge company in bike industry terms. They make some of the big name stuff people pay big money for.)
Eeehm no really just no. Just no, it is all wrong.
The CCP dictactorship has managed to vastly improve Chinese citizens level of life over the last 80 years, bringing them from an occasionally starving and flooding agrarian nation to the most technologically advanced nation in the world today and keeps growing at 5%. I don't think they are that unhappy as the West thinks.
Second China is not even remotely aggresively intervening with military force as USA, often accompanied by UK puppet, so your ethicometer should be recalibrated. If we take into account their much better focused on sustainable transport (focus on bicycles often assisted , ultra fast trains, electric cars) than USA (building huge roads for huge trucks sold as family cars, flying everywhere, living in huge energy hungry houses) then your ethicometer should be again recalibrated, or at least be ready to boycott USA equally or even more.
There are powerful aggresive countries, like USA, Russia, Israel and Turkey (just practically conquered Syria if you didn't notice) that want power by military force and have made interventions in multiple countries the last 20 years. China wants power by trade and technology and there is nothing wrong to it. Yes, China uses bad practices like intellectual property theft and hacker attacks, but it is better being unemployed compared to hiding in your basement while being bombed.
What people should be really worrying though generally in the West, is the demise of their own technology and productivity. Every time you buy chinese you degrade your technology. So does though when you buy chinese with an expensive price tag, only this time you degrade your own intelligence.
"I don't think they are that unhappy as the West thinks."
Same can be said for many Russians under Putin, right?
And there are many Chinese in Xinyang province who aren't too happy with how the CCP is treating them. We should be wary of being too blinkered when it comes to a country accused of genocide against its own people. But how does that stand up against new shiny toys for cheap eh.
Yes. Or in Hong Kong, or their actions around the South China sea... The state has perhaps not been as overt or deployed armed force as widely as e.g. the US or Russia. It absolutely was and is "aggresively intervening with military force"! It's no less ruthless than others where it sees its interests threatened or potential for gain (armed annexation of Tibet; some small wars with e.g. India and Vietnam and obviously they were rather involved in Korea).
The "but the Chinese Communist Party has given us (e.g. electric lights)" is more than a little simplified. In fact - the living standards of most people around the world have changed dramatically over the last century or so (e.g. life expectancy).
And that doesn't correlate particularly well with "happiness" I'd say. Although I'm not very familiar with the discipline of hedonics - but I think "it's relative" generally applies.
That's not to diminish the efforts of the people of China to change and improve things for themselves - in the face of some terrible challenges (e.g. a sometimes genocidal neighbour). And there are plenty of examples of humans in societies just accepting that some decisions are not theirs to make or challenge, rather than fighting for those rights.
Russians and Putin are a complex relationship, but bear in mind that the previous situation they had lived was 1990s Russia under Yeltsin. If you find me a single Russian who enjoyed 1990s at home, please introduce him to me, so you can imagine how people saw Putin, at least before the war.
I guess you mean Xinjiang, but many kinds of minorities in USA aren't exactly very happy too, btw. Any kind of the slightest boycott seen so far for such reasons.
That last paragraph would appear to be the very definition of this (Russian) whataboutery.
Being charitable - very different situations. And in fact overlooking lots of US / international african slave trade history also...
EDIT - perhaps I should add - it's not like various US administrations are white knights (see many, many examples). But I don't think anyone in the UK should envy living under the Chinese Communist party, unless they never want to choose who is ruling them and what might be seen as a threat to that rule and forcefully repressed, ever again.
"I guess you mean Xinjiang, "
- I do, my error.
All I'm saying overall or will get into here is, improvements that make people 'happier' don't validate a government overall, it says that people will ignore what happens to others as long as they're better off themselves and in that respect most if not all of us have a lot to answer for. As do the governments. We should do what we can and be aware of both our limited ability to change bigger things and the hypocrisy we represent and live with.
There's a word missing from your post. That word is "Uyghurs".
Things are complex in such nations. Countries like Russia and China are very too big and diverse and do not have a clear ethnic conscience. There are people having lived for a long time, often speaking a different language even after being conquered. Some groups both in Russia and in China have seeked to gain better autonomy with a goal to get fully autonomous, like in Chechnya, so there are seen like terrorists to the government, and face Guantanamesque treatment.
So what should they do? Let these groups act free and break off and create their own country? But then how the West will see such break off, like Kosovo or like Donetsk?
And should customers boycott all similar actions from countries that try to supress terrorism, as each head of state perceives it?
The Uyghurs have been subjected to forced labour, compulsory sterilisation and abortion, separation of children from parents, destruction of homes and places of worship and over one million of them have been placed in internment camps since 2017 from whence they are not released until they prove that they have thoroughly learned and accept the Communist Party ideology and have apologised for their "misdemeanours" in not previously accepting it. Their treatment is classified by the United Nations as a crime against humanity and by the US Congress and many other legislatures as a genocide. It's extremely worrying that you appear to treat this appalling situation with a shrug of the shoulders and "what else are they supposed to do?"
And their menfolk aren't allowed to grow beards.
Sorry, but the majority of them are Muslim (another reason Beijing isn't happy) and beards are a Thing.
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