Mason X Hunt 650b Adventure Sport Disc Wheelset

The Mason X Hunt 650b Adventure Sport Disc Wheelset is a great choice for adding tyre volume and go-anywhere capability to your bike. With multiple axle and freehub options, a great build backed by a three-year warranty and decent parts supply, they earn their slight premium over the competition.

A few years back I reviewed the Mason X Hunt 4 Season Disc Wheelset, a 700c, 19mm internal-width alloy winner. Here we have the 650b update with a big-tyre friendly 25mm internal width.

> Buy now: Mason X Hunt 650b Adventure Sport Disc Wheelset from Hunt for £349

The 650b part tells you what these wheels are for – rough surfaces and running fat tyres at low pressures. Knobbly or slick, either work well. Let's be clear here – 650b isn't a trend or fad – it's a return to a sensible wheelsize that was very common in the 1950s on long-distance touring bikes. Fat, supple tyres at low pressures roll well over rough roads. If you've got a frame and fork that can take the extra tyre width, 650b makes a lot of sense for people who like comfort, grip and puncture resistance.

Hunt has again delivered a package I can only fault for being a smidge (that's a metric smidge, or 59g) heavier than advertised at 1,653g including rotor lockrings. That weight for the price and durability is pretty good these days.

The rim is a standard hooked design with a drilled and taped rim bed. Hunt says not to exceed 50psi on 35mm tyres, 45psi on 45mm tyres and 40psi on anything larger. I rode the René Herse Umtanum Ridge 55mm tyre at 25-30psi and found they were plenty stable and grippy into corners.

You're unlikely to want to exceed those limits unless you're bikepacking and have a prop-forward level of weight, in which case you might want to look at other options. Hunt says 115kg is the upper limit for rider weight, so there you go.

Spokes are triple-butted stainless steel J-bend, going from 1.6mm in the middle to 2.2mm at the corrosion-resistant brass nipple for extra strength. The rims are asymmetrically drilled, so the spoke tension is closer to the same on both sides. I say closer, because checking with a tension meter the tension side to side is not balanced, as Hunt claim.

The hubs are Centre Lock disc format, and Hunt will sell you a set of 6-bolt adapters for £20. I've used these adapters for years and they work just fine.

After about a 1,000km of mostly gravelly off-roading (and powerwashing after every ride), I slid off the freehub to see nice fresh grease still coating the freehub pawls. Clearly the sealing is good, and maintenance – cleaning and greasing – is a quick, tool-free job.

The Hunt axle design is shoulderless, meaning the endcaps can be removed and the axle slid out without tools or [shudders] unseating a bearing. This makes for the interesting option of swapping cassettes without tools – leave it fixed to the freehub, and swap the entire assembly in seconds.

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So you could swap a wheelset between Shimano and SRAM-equipped bikes tool-free. You could have a 'hilly' or 'bikepacking' cassette with a mega-range large cog, and another closer-range 'roadie' cassette for faster, flatter rides. So long as your rear mech can handle the tooth ranges required, swapping wheels or cassettes becomes the work of a minute or so.

These are 100% round wheels, didn't get less round during the test, and they stayed true and silent. They did the job without complaint or concern. The hub, with its four-pawl, 10-degree engagement always felt snappy when putting the power down, and the tubeless, pre-taped rim bed profile held different tyres just fine, even at low pressures. The included tubeless valves worked just fine too, and I was able to inject Orange Seal without any clogging.

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With such bouncy rubber onboard it's a fruitless exercise blethering on about wheel stiffness or harshness; suffice to say I finished multiple long days feeling much happier than I would on 700c hoops at higher pressures.

Hunt offers a three-year warranty including free returns, and a 60-day right-of-return even if you've ridden them, so confident are they. They also do a 35% off crash-replacement policy if you stack it.

For me, Hunt has pretty much owned the 'second wheelset' market the last few years, and a key reason is its axle options. If you have older frames with QR axles, or a mix of QR at the back and thru-axle at the front, you can spec the necessary endcap or axle when you order. At £9.99 for an axle and the same for a set of endcaps, you can convert your wheels again later, should you need to, for under £20. Sets of QR skewers are £29.99.

Hunt also supplies all relevant bearings at £5.99 a pop, and the webshop makes ordering the right ones a breeze. There's not another wheel brand I know of making it so easy to source spares.

Value

Looking at the competition, Stu really liked the Mavic Allroad SL wheelset at £589.99 and there's a non-'SL' version (1,840g), the Allroad 650b Disc Wheelset for £275. My personal caveat there, though, is that Mavic parts have been challenging to source at times.

There's a 650b option of the Fulcrum Rapid Red 5 wheelset that Stu also liked for £389.99, though that's roughly 100g heavier at 1,760g. Both the Mavics and Fulcrums use proprietary straight-pull spokes though, and in the case of the Mavics, proprietary captive nipples that can't be removed if damaged as the rim bed isn't drilled.

Overall

For me, Hunt has hit the sweet spot in the middle of the 650b wheelset Venn diagram covering price, support and performance. Unless you're looking for the lowest possible weight, or deeper rims for 'aero' reasons (and why bother, with rubber that fat?), I can't see why you'd go past the Adventure Sports.

Verdict

Well-priced and very capable wheelset backed by great parts, warranty and service