The contents of the bladder are insulated with this alu-insert thing (see video). I know that bright colors reflect more sunlight but let’s not kid ourselves that a black hydro-vest would be that much hotter, especially since the fabric is not directly on your skin.
Owning both a white and a black USWE, I can assure you the black is noticeably hotter. 
I find that hard to believe but since you have both I stand corrected
Hmmm….looking at two black packs right now….damn it!!
Joe
I’m curious what you will think of the carbon spokes, I’ve read mixed reviews of some people finding them harsh others liking them… but not specifically nextie, since it’s more common in road wheelsets currently. but supposedly roval will be releasing a carbon spoke wheel soon as well
That thing is a little bit of a pain. If you fill your bladder to the line, it’s hard to get it in. Need to leave a little space or finish filling with the bladder in the sleeve.
I haven’t been using it, but I could try doing a test with it though using my black USWE to see how much it helps.
I’ll give a more proper take tomorrow, letting trails dry out for today since we’ve had a lot of rain. My concerns with carbon spokes were potential fragility and overly harsh ride. On the fragility side, Nextie offers 3 different types of carbon spokes, mine are the mid-weight oval. They have an even lighter carbon oval that they say is suitable for XC but I passed on those. The ones I have they say are safe to use for any type of off-road riding but we’ll see.
On the compliance part, as others have said good supple tires and appropriate tire pressure are the first line of defense here. There’s an argument that you should let your tires and suspension do their job and for the rest of the wheel you generally want high stiffness for power transfer.
Regardless, I plan to keep my old Reserve wheels as well and have the Nextie’s set up with lighter tires for racing and/or less aggressive riding, then keep my reserves with beefier tires and inserts that I’ll put on if I know I’m going to be on particularly aggressive terrain.
Do you plan on riding Conti Race Kings in 2.2“?
What’s the difference between this and the Outlander Pro 2? I am on the look out for one of the two
DT240 and the cheaper option carbon spokes are the best compromise in terms of weight/price. DT180 are ridiculously expensive compared to 240 same paying 50% more for the lighter carbon spokes
I go through most of them in the video, weight, comfort, bladder size etc
Very little in the grand scheme of things. Bladder size is exactly the same, but my new one from Hydrapack came with a shutoff valve at the end. The back panel is mesh vs slightly padded, the bladder sleeve, a little bit lighter. Some minor buckle differences, but if you look at pictures I have two outlander Pro’s with slightly different buckles. Hard for me to say I could notice a difference between the two when I’m wearing them, and I’ve now done multiple 100+ mi / 6 hr + rides with each.
(Planning on selling at least one of the outlander pro’s - but I have multiple so I can do fast swaps at aid stations / drop bag areas in longer races)
I asked uswe on their social media and they said primarily just the weight (which is only like 20g or something) so I got a outlander 2 from the feed when they had a special where you got $25 off of hydration products with one
For a large? Or still a medium?
For a large with white paint that wouldn’t surprise me too much, but that would surprise me for a medium.
I never got a true bare frameset weight on mine because I didn’t want to completely strip it down. As far as I did strip it my guess that a large black 120 with the SID shock, collar, axle is 1950-2000g.
It’s not the ~1800g fantasy I had but every claimed weight on bikes is always on a medium and I don’t know how much more a typical large weighs for comparison. My guess is at least 100g, maybe more?
love the all black look! killer build!
Cool looking frame. My white Epic 8 Evo frame is 2.2kg in size Large. Haven’t weighed the whole bike yet.
I wanted to drop back in here and update this thread with some pictures of my Nextie Alpha wheelset.
They look amazing and are coming in at 1044g on my home scale. I have a couple of tubeless ready rim-bed wheelsets but figured I would show some pictures of it here.
The carbon spokes are very stiff to the touch and much thicker than you think. I’m 195lbs and plan on putting the wheels through the ringer.
Anyone who has some questions or maybe wants to get a set on order should shoot me a PM.
I will be removing the red DT Swiss logos in the next day or so and post some more photos (I’m a big aesthetics guy).
Interesting our weights are slightly different since I think the only real difference is you got 6-bolt and I got center lock. Or did you get the aero spokes? They look oval but not sure what the aero ones look like.
I also don’t remember intentionally selecting mine to have no decals or branding. That’s just how they came, but I’d have been fine either way.
I’m hoping to get a longer ride on mine tomorrow but I did about 2 hours on them earlier in the week. They feel nice and snappy but I honestly can’t say if I find them harsher than other wheels. I think I’d need to ride the exact same section multiple times back to back swapping the wheels to see if I can really feel the difference, and that’s way too much work.
While the difference coming from some heavier alloy wheels would be huge, I also can’t say that they feel noticeably different to me than my Reserve wheels which are ~450g heavier. The ZFS-120 just feels so snappy and efficient when climbing compared to my old bike that I probably can’t discern the effects of individual component changes yet from the overall feeling of newness.