Carbon wheelsets: how do the Chinese stack up?

    Nextie and Light Bicycle are two Chinese manufacturers of bike wheels. The Chinese make really light carbon, and at pretty great prices. I purchased a set of XC wheels that I'm using as my gravel bike wheelset with DT Swiss 240EXP hubs and ultralight rims - the set weighs about 1200g and takes off like a rocket ship. The total cost was $1,415, with $137 of shipping costs.

    However, at the end of 2021, have supply chains been sufficiently wrecked that local carbon is a better deal? Or, at least, a more palatable deal? Let's compare some wheel builds on Nextie, LightBicycle, as well as some domestic wheel manufacturers, like ENVE, Zipp, Roval, etc.

    We'll start with ENVE and use them as a benchmark. Then I'll configure a comparably specced wheel from Nextie and Light Bicycle and report weight as well as total price. Finally, we'll look at other brands, and see what makes sense.

An aside - aero? on  gravel??

The intent of the AR line of wheels is to create a rim profile aerodynamically optimized for a high volume road tire. With 28-32mm tires, the 3.4 AR is going to deliver a wattage savings of up to 10 watts at 20 mph over the G23 with the same tire. That doesn’t tell the entire story, however.  As tire width increases beyond 32mm, the 3.4 AR’s aero advantage diminishes. Going up to a 40mm tire, the two wheelsets would essentially be aerodynamically equal.

 In other words, the deep dish wheels of the SES rims are dead weight in a gravel race, but with a 32mm tire, you'd enjoy ~10W savings at 20mph. For a pure gravel wheelset, the aerodynamics are worthless. But for a mixed use (eg road+gravel), where the intent is to change tires, then you'll be able to reap aerodynamic benefits on the road, and still have a relatively light wheelset for a gravel ride. 

They also look cool as hell.

But it's a bit of a false dichotomy. The G23s are an extremely good road wheelset, especially focusing on climbing and endurance riding. That's a ton of what we have in Colorado. 

Set the stage, ENVE

ENVE G23 700c Rim

  • Inner width: 23mm
  • External width: 31.5mm
  • Depth: 25mm
  • Weight: 330g
  • Price: $975
    The G23 is ENVE's gravel-specific rim. At $975/rim, it's incredibly expensive. And at 330g, it promises ultralight builds.  Let's see what the reviews show.
    It seems that wheel builds can relatively easily hit the ~1,300g mark with Centerlock mounts and a Shimano freehub. This is the benchmark gravel wheel, so let's see what we lose by saving money.

Light Bicycle

Light  Bicycle has a nice custom wheel builder that allows you to see how much a given wheelset is going to weigh. Most of their rims also come in a "flyweight" option, which are crazy light with a low weight limit (90kg or 198lb, total).

The rims here are cheap as hell, but Light Bicycle charges a steep shipping cost and a "handling fee" for credit card transactions. This reduces their value - but not by much. Let's compare.

Falcon AR24 Disc

  • Inner width: 22mm
  • External width: 27mm
  • Depth: 24mm
  • Weight: 360g standard, 280g flyweight
  • Weight limit: 100kg standard, 90kg flyweight
  • Price: $358.86 (2 standard rims, shipped)
    • Standard rim: $143
    • Flyweight: $158
    • Shipping: $60.72 for two rims (4-5 weeks)
    • Handling fee: $12.74 for two rims
At $358.86 all-in, we're looking at less than half the price of a single ENVE rim. The value is undeniable here. The flyweight is 50g less than the ENVE G23, which would allow for some truly light wheel builds. That'll never fly for me, but for a smaller person, it may make for quite the rocket.
  • Standard, DT 240EXP hubset, 24 spokes, brass nipples, Sapim CX-Ray:
    • Weight: 1,312g
    • Price: $1,138.93
      • Subtotal: $991.40
      • Shipping: $109.02
      • Handling fee: $38.51
  • Flyweight (same as above otherwise)
    • Weight: 1,152g
    • Price: $1,169.98
      • Subtotal: $1,021.40
      • Shipping: $109
      • Handling fee: $39.56
The Standard version with DT Swiss hubs weighs the same as the ENVE G23, but the total cost is half the price. One interesting thing to note is that shipping cost is not linear - if I order two Light Bicycle wheelsets, the shipping cost only increases to $147.66. A pair of the flyweights costs $2,267.13 total, which is still $250 less than the ENVE G23 wheelset.

The North American warehouse is cheaper to ship from ($44 for a wheelset), but the wheel building service is more ($50 vs $30) and there's a rim transfer fee ($40). It's still cheaper, but availability is worse. Let's compare with a light gravel model there:

Falcon AR28 Disc

  • Standard, DT 240 EXP, 24/28 spokes, brass nipples, Sapim CX-Ray:
    • Weight: 1,379g
    • Price: $1,412.41
      • Subtotal: $1,320
      • Shipping: $44.52
      • Handling: $47.59
This rim weighs 380g, 22mm inner, 29mm outer, and 28mm depth. So it's comparable to the other ones. It's their "gravel" specific rim, so probably a fairer comparison. Still, despite saving on shipping, we're still nearly $300 over the AR24 Disc model and 67g heavier.

The build works out to be $1,000 less than the ENVE wheelset. The weight penalty is 80g, but you get DT Swiss 240 EXP hubs, which are nice.

One neat trick is to spec Bitex hubs instead of DT Swiss. Bitex hubs get good reviews, but aren't flashy or sexy. They're also massively cheap. I put together an AR24 build and a WR50 build with CX Ray spokes and Bitex hubs, weighing the same as DT Swiss, and came out to $1,836 for both sets - shipped. That's just obscene.

Nextie

Let's look at Nextie. I configured a set of wheels using their ARX NXT29ARX rims.
  • Front/rear rim: ARX NXT29ARX
    • Rim weight is 370g ea
    • Weight limit is 120kg
  • Hubset: DT 240 EXP (104g front, 212g rear)
  • Spokes: 24 x 2 Sapim CX-Ray (211.68g)
  • Nipples: 48 x 1g = 48g
  • Price: $1,509
    • Subtotal: $1,330
    • Shipping: $179
Total weight is calculated at 1,315g at $1,509 for the wheelset. 

An additional wheelset raises shipping cost to $259, but three wheelsets brings shipping costs to $437. Two wheelsets seems ideal to get the most efficient shipping overhead.

Nextie's prices are competitive with Light Bicycle, but Light Bicycle offering Bitex hubs really makes a killer deal.

Light Bicycle Wins

I just ordered the pair of wheels. At $1,836 shipped, it's nearly $700 less than a single ENVE wheelset. 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Jamis Bike Comparison: Coda vs Sequel vs Renegade

Jamis released the Sequel recently.  It's a more modern competitor of sorts to the Jamis Coda series.  The Renegade is their gravel/adventure bike, but these kinds of bikes are fantastic commuters typically.  Let's compare these bikes. EDIT: I've appended a brief "test ride" comparison to the end. Frame The Coda and Sequel are running a Reynolds 520 steel frame.  The Renegade has a 6061 aluminum frame.  The Coda and Renegade have an extra water bottle mount on the bottom of the downtube. Geometry Here are the geometries for a medium bike on both: +----------+-------+-------+---------------+------------+------------+------------+------------+-----------+---------+-----------+-----------+ | Bike     | Stack | Reach | Top Effective | Head Angle | Seat Angle | Chain Stay | Wheel base | Fork rake | BB Drop | Head Tube | Standover | +----------+-------+-------+---------------+------------+------------+------------+------------+-----------+---------+--------
Read more

Lezyne Mega XL GPS vs Wahoo Elemnt Bolt

Image
EDIT HISTORY: This post was initially published in February 2019, and updated in the summer when some firmware updates landed. Those firmware updates fixed a number of problems, but not all of them. It was updated again in October 2019 to try out the new firmware, which caused many of the old problems to resurface, effectively ruining the device. I've owned the Wahoo Elemnt Bolt for a while, and I like it. It has poor in-app route creation, and the battery life could be better. ( see my whole review here ) The Lezyne Mega XL GPS came out recently and seems like a better fit for bikepacking. Lezyne advertises a 48 hour battery life and much improved offline navigation and maps. It's also $50 cheaper. If the Lezyne delivers on it's promise, then it would be a compelling choice. I got it to test out and see how it works in real life scenarios. Side by side comparison tl;dr: The Lezyne has dramatically better route creation from the phone app. The Lezyne has bett
Read more

Drop Bar Conversions

So I've got a drop bar Mukluk. It's awesome. Here's what you need to know in order to successfully do a drop bar conversion: Geometry This step is really important, because it will determine if the end result will fit you. It would really suck to finish the rather expensive conversion and have a bike that was too big! The geometry of the bike will change. While flat handlebars are, well, flat, drop bars have significant extra reach associated with them. The Salsa Cowchipper has a reach of 68mm, and the Woodchipper has a reach of 56mm. The Salsa Rustler handlebars that came stock on my Mukluk had a 11 degree backsweep, which worked out to roughly -20mm of reach when I measured it. So, we're talking a total reach difference of 88mm. The stock stem on the Mukluk is 60mm, and you can get 30mm BMX stems, which gets us to a 58mm difference. What I found is that your lower back angle doesn't change as much as you might expect due to the narrower bars. If we d
Read more