Hunt 4050 Carbon Aero Disc wheelset

The Hunt 4050 Carbon Aero Disc is a great all-round performance wheelset. They deliver a bit of an aerodynamic boost, they're very low weight and durability seems very good, all for what is a very good price. Their width also makes them compatible with a wide range of tyres.

The 4050 wheelset is based around a 40mm-deep front wheel and a 50mm rear. If your main goal is speed then going deeper gives you better aerodynamics, but the downside can be added weight and twitchy handling in blustery winds. This wheelset provides more of a balance across a load of disciplines. When tyres are fitted, even the 40mm front does enough to cheat the air, but riding past a farm gateway won't see the handlebar snatched out of your hands on windy days.

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The weight of just 1,472g (including the tubeless tape that they come fitted with straight out of the box) means they are very sprightly when it comes to climbing and acceleration too. Scrubbing too many grams can cause issues, especially if you are a larger or stronger rider. I've ridden plenty of sub-1,500g wheelsets that flex a noticeable amount when I get out of the saddle and really go for it, but the Hunts aren't one of them. Hammering up climbs or away from the lights these give away nothing whatsoever. They offer a comfortable and smooth ride too.

Durability doesn't look to have been sacrificed to create such a lightweight set of wheels, either. I've been using these for about six weeks on various test bikes and they haven't had an easy life. They've seen a fair few hundred road miles but have also been pressed into a bit of lightweight gravel riding and blasts along canal paths. For peace of mind Hunt offers a three-year guarantee against material and workmanship defects.

The 4050s were true straight out of the box and that hasn't changed. Hunt says that all of its wheels go through some harsh cobbled-rolling-road tests and the only limitations the company has put on these wheels is a 109kg rider weight limit.

Tyre compatibility

Testing the wheels on various terrains means they have also had plenty of different tyres fitted over the course of the review period. Everything from 25mm slick road rubber through to the 38mm Hutchinson Overide for a bit of byway blasting in a mixture of tubed and tubeless fitting.

No matter the width, each tyre went on and seated with ease (well, except the Giant Gavia Fondo 0, but that turned out to be a pain on pretty much every wheel it came into contact with).

The 4050s have a small lip inside the rim which Hunt calls H_LOCK, which sort of kicks the bead up against the sidewall; should you be running low pressures it works to keep the bead in situ when cornering and so on.

The rims themselves are made from a mixture of Toray T700/800 unidirectional carbon fibre with a 27mm outer width and a 19mm inner. Plenty of brands are going much wider internally – around 24/25mm – which works with larger gravel tyres, but there starts to be a trade-off when it comes to fitting narrower race tyres like 25mm, still a very common choice for road riders.

Inside the 7075-T6 aluminium alloy hubs, Hunt specifies EZO bearings which I find to be smooth rolling and durable. I've ridden thousands of miles on Hunt wheels in all sorts of conditions and I've never had any issues with the hubs or bearings.

One thing I like about the freehub that Hunt uses is how quickly the pawls engage to the 48-tooth ratchet ring. It's most noticeable when trackstanding at the lights or under really quick, hard accelerations – I'm not a fan of any slop found in between the movement of the pedals and the engagement of the freehub. These wheels have just 7.5 degrees of movement before the pawls lock in.

The 4050s have an aluminium freehub body; these can suffer from damage and wear as the cassette shifts and bites into the splines, so to get around this Hunt has used a steel spline insert which reduces damage to just a few small marks.

Freehubs available include Shimano/SRAM and Campagnolo, plus SRAM's XD and XDR Driver.

Moving from gears to brakes and it is good to see that Hunt has gone down the Centerlock route, which makes swapping discs over much quicker. Not a big deal if you are only using them on one bike, admittedly, but when you are constantly swapping wheels between test bikes you soon realise what a faff six-bolt systems are.

If your bike uses six-bolt rotors, though, don't worry as Hunt supplies adaptors in the box along with plenty of other spares like your selected axle adaptors, cassette spacer (to make them compatible with 8/9/10-speed cassettes), tubeless valves and a spare of each spoke length, including nipples.

Value

When it comes to value you really can't fault the £819 price tag when you consider the warranty, the durability and all the spares you are getting.

> Buyer’s Guide: 25 of the best tubeless wheelsets under £1,000

The direct-to-consumer model that Hunt uses does allow it to be very competitive against the larger brands, but there is some tough competition out there from other smaller wheelbuilders.

Scribe continues to deliver quality, lightweight wheels at very good prices. Its Aero Wide 50-D wheelset, for instance, is a touch more expensive at £870, but lighter by a tad at 1,449g.

Just Riding Along (JRA) offers the Mahi Mahi 40, a lightweight wheelset at 1,490g which costs £850. When Matt tested them, he was very impressed with their overall ride quality and durability, which puts them right in the firing line of the Hunts.

Conclusion

Overall, Hunt has delivered a wheelset that works for pretty much every road discipline, but especially for those rides where you want a blend of speed and also a lack of weight for when you take to the hills. The build quality is top notch, and with all of those things taken into account I can't do anything else other than recommend them.

Verdict

Lightweight, stiff and fast wheelset that delivers heaps of performance for a great price