[Closed] Worth spending £££ on wheels?

The last set of wheels I got hand built very well lasted and the hubs were great.did the best part of 4000 all mountain km on them so it's not all about the parts as much as the builder some days

decent alloy rim, on a Hope-level hub, well built, is a minimum for me.

£££ suggests something tricker, like carbon rims, which to me is questionable as I end up breaking rims eventually.

If I had the money then I could see the value in a 1600 gram carbon wheelset, with a cushcore insert on the rear. That'd be stiffer than an Alu set and pretty bombproof. Other than that, JRA Flow MK3 builds look great - 1770g for 400 quid.

Wheels are the best upgrade imo

Always always always 🙂

Yep.

And I much prefer second hand decent wheels to new less good ones, budget needn't hold you back

Decent wheels make a huge difference. However, I've found minimal difference in performance between a £400 wheelset and a pair almost double that.I went from a pair of King hubs on dt swiss to X9 on Stans flow and there was a difference, but not £400 of difference.

Longevity might be another matter.

I've a set of Alpkit Rumpus 650b+ wheels and a set of Hope XC 29er wheels for my Solaris. The Hope wheels are definitely "better" but that's not to say that the Rumpus wheels are bad but they aren't as, hmm, refined. The first thought I had when I got them was "sturdy". My wife also has a set of Rumpus wheels on her Stooge.

I've done lots of bikepacking and blasting round on both wheelsets with no issues - kit and me will come to 100kg - I'll have probably done 9000km on the Hopes and about 2000km on the Rumpus.

Given the choice, if it was me, I'd get the Hopes (or equivalent) but if you want to save cash then the Alpkit wheels will be fine.

As the saying goes - "light, strong, cheap. Pick any two...."

What how does it affect the quality of the ride? Are more expensive wheels simply preferable because they are lighter and in theory, stronger?

The alpkit set aren't that price though for the combo you need (unless you want to run a generic  boost adaptor in the front).

The hope 35s are not really plus. If going custom build on hope's I'd looked at scraper i40 or one of the two wide dtswiss rims.

With the same frame as you I'm building a set of scraper i40s on dtswiss 350 hubs. I'm using a non-boost front hub though and getting the MRP better boost kit for it. As I also have a set of 29er wheels with the same front hub this gives the longitude another option/mode depending where I'm riding. The 350/i40 combi is around 4/500g less than the alpkit wheels.

Lighter wheels accelerate and respond to changes in direction faster. Stonger wheels will take more abuse and be less likely to ding, crack or bend. Materials that are both light and strong are more expensive than those that excel in only one of the criteria.

I like to upgrade my stuff "more often" and always buy "quality budget type" stuff. I'am not doing any races but bike and train a lot. Love to try this and that and don't have stress when stuff gets smashed. Some bikers right away feel the difference of a couple grams - I don't.

My mtb biking group: the bikes with the expensive wheels are definitely not faster...- the owners only worry more about their bikes.

Back wheel for GBP 140 sounds good to me.

Spent the most I've ever spent on a MTB upgrade when I got some SC Reserve wheels for my Hightower. Figured that I loved the bike so why settle for something cheaper if the wheels I wanted were attainable.

I properly hit the rear on a rock in the lakes a few weeks ago. Wrote the tyre off and put a tiny lacquer chip on the edge of the rim. Non-limited lifetime warranty on them though, so if I do manage to break one whilst riding, they will try to replace within 24 hours free of charge!

Oh, and they transformed how the bike rode. It's like they were made for this bike.

I have a set of the 30mm wide hope ones on my karate monkey.

they have managed a camping trip (part off road) loaded up to the point where I could barely lift the bike. On top of that, i weigh 130kg.

still running perfectly true.

Nice wheels give years of pleasure, i think i paid about £300 for the pair, so not a lot in the long run.

I'm not sure I noticed much when I bought mine - road and mtb.

I got a lovely set of DT EX471 wheels built up for my Trigger Carbon last year. PT Cycles did a terrific job. I'm n to convinced I could tell the difference between those and my so called flexy stock wheels. Maybe I'm not aggressive or heavy enough. The ARC27 on my current bike gets middling reviews but I'm perfectly happy with them.

I also bought a pair of Fulcrum Carbon Disc wheels for my road bike - cheap for brand name carbon, but still very expensive in comparison to a good pair of alloy MTB wheels (I never thought I'd spend so much).  Not convinced I can tell difference there either. Maybe slightly more responsive and maybe a little less vibration - not sure. I got them last year just before a serious amount of work travel kicked in and I didn't really get to spend much time on the bike - so hard to remember what it was like on the old wheels. They look fantastic though. 🙂

I guess my answer is maybe. Especially if you have really really heavy wheels stock or you just broken a wheel, then I'd be more inclined to buy a nice upgrade than a cheap replacement.