Once you’ve got a quality frame, a set of the best road bike wheels is arguably the best upgrade you can give your steed.
As the means to keeping you rolling, wheels must offer smooth and dependable hubs for drive; high stiffness for accurate tracking; be able to hold a tyre at great pressure ; provide a surface for consistent braking if your wheel is rim braked; support ever-wider tyres; and achieve all of this while still being as lightweight and aerodynamically efficient as possible.
Upgrading to a wheelset that hits these marks more accurately than what you’re currently riding can inject some serious new life into a road bike or gravel bike .
Improvements can include improved ride quality, faster average speeds or just a lower weight – something that helps with both acceleration and deceleration.
Furthermore, the switch to tubeless tyres and disc brakes has also shaken up the market substantially, with new designs pushing the boundaries of what was previously possible on road bikes. Wider rims support wide road bike tyres and gravel tyres a lot better and improve aerodynamics by smoothing the interface between the tyre and the rim.
But with hundreds of bike wheel brands offering thousands of options, buying new wheels can be a confusing task. Fortunately, our expert testers put dozens of wheels through their paces every year so you don’t have to.
If you’re weighing up aero vs climbing wheels , this list contains both types.For road and gravel, we’re generally talking about 700c wheelsets and to […]
Continue reading the original article at: www.bikeradar.com