Chinese brands have been transforming the prices of wheels and bikes in recent years, and you can now get a set of carbon-spoke wheels for what a fairly standard set of carbon wheels from a western brand used to cost. But do they actually make a difference? Will more than doubling the cost of a cheap bike transform the ride enough to justify the expense?
> Buy Tour de France-inspired wheels for less
The idea was simple: could a relatively inexpensive carbon road bike be made faster, better at climbing and, perhaps most importantly, look a whole lot nicer simply by fitting a much more expensive set of wheels?
The bike
This is a Ribble Endurance SL, a carbon bike with Shimano 105 mechanical that is pretty much perfect for sportives and weekend rides.
This is an excellent bike. It’s comfortable, practical and, for the money, offers pretty much everything you could reasonably want from a modern road bike. It’s the sort of machine that you can pick up used for around £700 and could happily ride all day without feeling like you’re being punished for not spending thousands more.
But there is one area where the bike definitely isn’t particularly exciting: the wheels. They’re perfectly functional, but not exactly the sort of component that gets you excited when you pull your bike out of the garage.
Their weight is on the hefty side, which is never particularly helpful when you’re trying to accelerate or ride uphill, and the rim profile is fairly narrow compared with what you’ll find on many modern carbon wheels.
The bike is also running 28mm Maxxis Detonator tyres, which measure up at around 26mm on these rims. That’s quite different from the trend towards wider rims and wider tyres that has become increasingly common on modern road bikes.
They’re also quite shallow, so there’s little aerodynamic advantage to speak of, and the ride can feel fairly harsh, letting down what is a very good frame.
My new wheels
Yoeleo sent me their brand-new QianKun wheels, which sit at the premium end of the Yoeleo range, and there’s some seriously impressive technology here. Most notably, you get carbon spokes rather than conventional steel spokes, a 23mm internal hooked rim, and a claimed weight of just 1,185g.
With the original wheels removed, it was time to fit the QianKuns and see what happened. Well, perhaps unsurprisingly, the difference was noticeable…
The bike feels considerably more responsive when accelerating, and seems to carry speed more easily. I know ‘carrying/holding speed’ is a tired old bike reviewing trope and not really quantifiable, but anyone who has switched from training hoops to premium race wheels will be able to relate – you just go faster. There’s also a more direct feeling through the bike when putting the power down, which I think is partly down to the increased stiffness of the carbon spokes.
And of course, there’s the visual transformation. A set of 50mm deep carbon wheels makes the Ribble look considerably more classy. The bike suddenly has a much more purposeful appearance, and the deep rims make the original wheels look almost comically basic by comparison.
Speed test
The QianKun wheels use a 50mm-deep rim, which is an interesting middle ground for a road bike. They’re deep enough to offer a meaningful aerodynamic benefit without going so far that you’d necessarily expect them to become a major liability on steep climbs or in strong crosswinds.
To test these speed credentials, I rode a 2.9km section of a local closed road cycle circuit. The old wheels completed the test in 5:22, riding at an average power of 212 watts. The Yoeleos sailed around the same course in 5:16, and for this run my power was lower, averaging 208 watts.
But away from the numbers, there was another interesting observation. The circuit features a fast right hander which, on the Yoeleo wheels, I was able to take at full speed without coming off the power.
The old wheels, however, felt significantly less composed, likely owing to their harsh nature. Needless to say, feeling confident to push corners is not just beneficial for average speeds, it’s crucial for having fun on descents.
How much?
So while more speed for fewer watts sounds great, we then get to the difficult subject of money. $1,650 (around £1,220) is a lot of cash to drop on a set of wheels. There’s no getting around that. In fact, if you’ve bought a relatively affordable bike like this Ribble, spending that much on wheels can seem slightly ridiculous.
In my eyes at least, carbon wheels absolutely look better than the stock alternatives. More importantly, they seem to make the bike feel faster pretty much everywhere. They’re lighter when climbing, more responsive when accelerating and more aerodynamic when you’re trying to maintain speed on flatter roads.
Do you need to spend big money on wheels to make a cheap bike good? Absolutely not. But the wheels can have a huge influence on how a bike feels, and the gap between affordable bikes and expensive bikes can sometimes be narrowed considerably by upgrading the right component.
Do you think wheel upgrades are worth it, even on cheap bikes? Let us know in the comments.
