Knight 65 Wheelset

The Knight 65 Carbon Fibre clinchers offer very good stiffness, but their real skill is in cutting through the air at high speeds and feeling stable with it.

We have to start every aero product reviews with the same caveat as other cycling media: we don't have a wind tunnel. In that respect we can only report the manufacturers' wind tunnel claims, and Knight says that the 65 carbon fibre clincher outperforms the Zipp 404, Mavic CXR60 and Enve 6 (across yaw angles from 0° to 20°, 2.5° increments, at 25mph, front wheel only).

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Knight says that the difference between the 65s and its competition is greatest at higher yaw angles. Go to Knight's website to check out the claims in full. Of course, the other manufacturers might well dispute these findings.

It's worth pointing out that the Knight 65s – the 65 referring to the rim depth in millimetres – are 7mm deeper than Zipp 404s, so you might expect more aero efficiency there.

Out in the real world, these wheels – Knight's own rims laced to DT Swiss 240 hubs – have a whole lot going for them. Okay, at 65mm deep they're never going to be particularly light, our pair coming in at 1,680g (including rim strips and skewers), but that's not unusual. For comparison, Zipp's 404s are a claimed 1,505g (you also need to factor in the weight of the rim strips and skewers) and Bontrager's 70mm-deep Aeolus 7s are a claimed 1,610g.

If you're swapping from a super-light shallow-rimmed set of wheels you might not be blown away by the Knight 65s' acceleration, but it's on a level with other wheels of this type, and the same goes for climbing: good, but not spectacular.

It's when you fire the Knight 65s up to speed that things get impressive. I have a few routes that I ride regularly as personal time trials for reviewing bikes and kit – rolling rather than hilly – and I've used these wheels to help achieve consistently fast times over several weeks and in a wide variety of conditions. I measure power every ride and my view is that these wheels are offering impressive speeds for the wattage I'm putting out. It's unscientific and highly anecdotal, so take it or leave it, but this is my experience.

Knight reckons that the speed is largely down to the fact that it concentrates on 'trailing edge aerodynamic manipulation'. What's that? Well, you have the section of the wheel that first hits the air – the tyre-leading edge – and then you have the trailing edge, at the back of the wheel, where the rim hits the air first. Knight says that its parabola rim profile "offers a gradual widening of airflow around the trailing edge, which produces less disturbance over the down tube and frame".

>> Check out our guide to the best road bike wheels here

Putting speed to one side, the other thing you notice when riding the Knight 65s is that they're usually very stable in crosswinds. I have a section of road on the edge of Salisbury Plain where I always take deep-section wheels during reviewing – a slight downhill that goes on for a couple of miles, where the wind nearly always comes from the side. Taking the 65s there I found that, yes, a strong gust might put a bit of pressure on the steering, but not nearly as much as you might think – not much more than you'd expect with wheels of half the depth, and not enough to cause any handling issues in the vast majority of circumstances.

I found the Knight 65s to be pretty stiff wheels. I set the brake pads close to the rims and had to throw the bike about in an exaggerated comedy fashion before I experienced any brake rub.

When it comes to braking, the Knight 65s perform like most other carbon-rimmed wheels out there in that you don't get the same bite that you do with aluminium, but you adjust to that to an extent. Wet weather braking isn't amazing but, again, that's carbon fibre for you.

The road.cc vernier callipers say that the Knight 65s are 28mm across at the brake track, providing a wide seat for your tyres. I've been running them with 25mm Continental Grand Prix 4000s and that combo has provided good, sure-footed handling.

As I mentioned, Knight makes its own rims but not the other components. The hubs are from DT Swiss, the spokes are from Sapim (20 front, 24 rear) and the nipples (which are hidden away internally so they're not particularly easy to access if the wheel goes out of true) are from Pillar. All high-quality stuff.

The DT Swiss 240 hubs used here have a great reputation, but if you want to save weight you can get the same rims on DT Swiss 180 hubs with ceramic bearings. You'll save about 36g, but the wheelset will cost you £2,198.

We had the Shimano/SRAM freehub version, but both the 180 and the 240 versions of the Knight 65s are available in Campagnolo options (same prices). After several weeks of testing there are marks on the freehub body caused by the sprockets, but nothing alarming.

Verdict

Aero wheels that come into their own at high speeds and provide good stability