Buying factory built could save me £60+ on a wheel set compared to custom built ones, are custom ones worth the extra expense?

Depends who is building them. The factory built ones in my experience are shit. I had to rebuild mine they were do bad.

For me yes. The wheels I’ve had built by just riding along have held their tension perfectly through a battering whereas my hoops with flows did not. That could have been a one off and in fairness they only needed tightening up so not the end of the world. I’m also relatively heavy at 90kgs so may exacerbate things slightly.

Had 3 factory front & rear sets and never had an issue with any of them

Get the factory set and factor in a trip to the LBS if you’re unlucky and they need a true/tension down the line

Also, when I got my hoops they didn’t come taped for tubeless so if you go that route and don’t want to use tubes you’ll need to order some stans tape as well.

Even if they’re terribly built, that’s not going to cost £60 to resolve so it’s not much of a gamble.

Sounds like as I’m not after any fancy custom colours etc then I’m just as well to buy factory ones and use some of the money I’d save to have them re-tensioned by a LBS

Cheers for feedback everyone

I had mine custom made by CTBM because i was after something a little more specific; red hubs, singlespeed rear and built onto Velocity rims. If you’re after black ones with Stans rims, then you may as well get them off the shelf.

My factory built hope hoops are three years old now and they are as straight as the day they came out the box. I’ve certainly not given them an easy life.

Have a set of Pro II’s on Flow’s, built by hope four years ago, running straight and true and spoke key has never been near them.