Wheel upgrade depends heavily on the type of bike, rider and planned events.
- Considering typical road use, many bikes come with budget wheel sets that are either non-aero, heavy or both. They are often lower end aluminum with less than ideal shapes for wind resistance.
- As such, there are often good gains to be made by upgrading to a better aero wheel set for most uses. Weight is secondary unless you are focusing on pure climbing events with hilltop finishes.
- In either case, you will often see bikes with great overall specs but skimp a bit on the wheels. If that is true, a new wheelset can wake up an otherwise “good” bike and turn it into something faster and/or more exciting.
- Additionally, with the move to wider tires and wheels, sometimes you can improve comfort and grip by getting a wider wheelset coupled with wider tires to get more grip and lower pressure to make the ride smoother. This also happens to be faster from the reduced vertical motion associated with higher pressure tire and wheel setups.
- So, an upgrade to wider and more aero is a win/win situation with many of the stock wheels found on a lot of bikes.