Roadie question-

Looking to upgrade roadbike wheels for longer distance training rides and maybe trying a sportive day on one of the merida weekends (or crc now)

so.. Mavic Kysrium Equipe or Easton EA50SL

thoughts please

Neither get some handbuilt ones instead. Lighter and easier to service/repair which will be built to your requirements weight etc. It really is the only way to go.
Look at hubs such as ultegra/ambrosio/record/hope with open pro/excellight/dt swiss rims. Some of these combinations may be a little more than the wheels you have mentioned but wil be far far superior.

Really wouldn't recommend Ksyriums – winter road salt disintegrated the crappy plastic flanges on mine that hold the spokes on the hub, a piss-poor piece of design IMO.

Gotta agree with Ed2001 there, replaced mine with a handbuilt pair and the difference is remarkable.

I've been running the Ksyriums (Elites tho) since last year – including quite a few winter rides. They've been absolutely faultless. I haven't run the Eastons, so can't really compare.

I briefly had a pair of the Kyrium Equipes and thought they were awful. I would say they were the worst road wheels I have ever owned. They were by far the most sluggish wheels I have ever ridden on. They seemed to ride like a much heavier wheelset IMO. I moved them on pretty quickly.

I have owned the Elites and thought they were very good wheels – but they were only £250 when I bought them. As 2tyred says mine also gave up the ghost after a couple of hard winters. But I had owned them from new and ridden circa 18k km on them so that seemed fair enough.

I also had a pair on the Easton Vista SLs which were probably the equivalent of the Easton EA50 SLs they were not that much better than the Equipes IMO. Perhaps to say they were sluggish would be a little unfair but they were a soft ride. Having said that I would have kept them other than the combination of Easton Rims and Michelin tyres was not a great one. I struggled with getting tyres on and off like no other rim.

If your heart is set on factory built have to you looked at the Fulcrum Racing 5's. IMO they ride like a much higher end wheelset. I never had any longevity issues but they were not getting thrashed everyday.

Hmmmm.
I'm gonna say I'm not 100% convinced that you can rate wheels in terms of sluggishness so accurately…
I've got a few pairs of wheels and I would say 10 psi makes more difference than a wheelset.
If you can tell a difference, fair enough, but I'm not so sure…

crikey – Member
Hmmmm.
I'm gonna say I'm not 100% convinced that you can rate wheels in terms of sluggishness so accurately…
I've got a few pairs of wheels and I would say 10 psi makes more difference than a wheelset.
If you can tell a difference, fair enough, but I'm not so sure…

I guess these things are subjective and it all comes down to your reference point. The majority of my road miles have been on either Kysrium Elites and then Kysrium ES, Premium SLs etc. Pretty much exclusively on Michelin tyres Kyrilion or Pro 2 depending on season.

Coming at it from a different perspective the only circa £200 wheelset I have been remotely happy with are the Fulcrum Racing 5's. I have had hand built Ultegra on Open Pro, Askium, Equipe and the Eastons. Never got on with any of them all "soft, slow, flex, sluggish", call it what you want.

I am pretty confident that my experiences were not down to tyre pressures – unless different wheels with the same tyre demand different pressures. Also run my pressures at the top end for my weight?

Hmmm again, I'm not suggesting that you can't tell the difference and as you've said it's all very subjective.

I prefer my Ksyrium SSLs, which are about 9 years old now, but I really can't tell any performance difference between them and Open Pro/Ultegras, Heliums etc.

The only wheels I've used which did make a difference were some deep section Gipiemmes that weighed a ton but turned long descents into a seriously fast affair…

I'd really like some Carbone Cosmics but as with training, real life gets in the way…