I’m looking to upgrade the stock wheels on my gravel bike. There seems to be so many options at this price it’s hard to decide – currently I am between some zipp 303s or campagnolo shamal db, both get good reviews online.

Any others I should consider?

Cheers
Andy

I’ve been very happy with my Hunt Carbon Gravel Wides.

I’ve been very happy with my Hunt Carbon Gravel Wides.

Agree with this though I have little experience of decent wheels. I also bought a set of 650b wheels for the bike but very rarely fit them, if that helps!

zipp 303s are reasonable weight and the hubs are easy to service, no idea on campag but if they are like every other campag product ime they’ll have some proprietary part that the UK Distributor never has in stock

FFWD drift carbon wheels were great when I reviewed them but at the time they were £500 over your budget, not sure on price now

Parcours Alta are worth a look

If you can stretch to them, Stayer handbuilt on dt Swiss hubs will last you a lifetime and are a lovey stiff, strong and puncture free wheel. Plus supporting a lovey small business.
My gravel ones were so good I ordered a road pair, and don’t get hunt, bearings an are made of cheese, tyres are a nightmare to get on and my road pair were flexy as hell.

Gravel Adventure

Farsports or Light Bicycle with DT 350 hubs.

Scribe do some well reviewed ones. Hunt also well teviewed and 15% off right now.

Stayer handbuilt on dt Swiss hubs will last you a lifetime and are a lovey stiff, strong and puncture free wheel

I’ve never had a puncture on any wheel, tyres however are a different story 😉

At that budget i’d be getting a custom built wheelset from my lbs, something like Lightbicycle rims on extra light hubs?

Personally if you’re spending a grand I’d get something with branded hubs (Hope, DT etc) that I know I’ll be able to get bits for years down the line.

The majority of wheel brands who do carbon wheels at this price point will use rebranded generic hubs such as Novatech (Hunt) or Chosen (Scribe) which, whilst pretty decent could be hard to get parts for as they don’t manufacture their own stuff and can’t just make more bits down the line even they do try to hold spares initially.

My kid’s bike came with OEM Formula hubs, 18 months after I bought it I wanted to covert the front hub, emailed Formula ‘no, sorry we’ve changed hub designs and have no parts for this model’ New hub time, ho hum.

pick hubs with adjustable axle standards. my big spend wheels for life were CK / light bikes. amazing wheels however you can’t change the rear from 135 to more recent standards

When I was in the same position I went with the 303s for life time warranty.

hatter

Personally if you’re spending a grand I’d get something with branded hubs (Hope, DT etc) that I know I’ll be able to get bits for years down the line.

The majority of wheel brands who do carbon wheels at this price point will use rebranded generic hubs such as Novatech (Hunt) or Chosen (Scribe) which, whilst pretty decent could be hard to get parts for as they don’t manufacture their own stuff and can’t just make more bits down the line even they do try to hold spares initially.

Fair point – I will say Hunt have pretty good spares availability, I was able to buy axle adapters for my Hunt wheels years after I bought them

I’ve had a few wheelsets over the years and am currently riding a pair of Chris King R45 hubs on Mavic Open Pro rims and they’re probably the best all-round set I’ve had.

A hubset is £610 on Freshtripe and you could have them built into a variety of rims of your choice for that £1k budget.

Stayer handbuilt on dt Swiss hubs will last you a lifetime and are a lovey stiff, strong and puncture free wheel

I’ve never had a puncture on any wheel, tyres however are a different story 😉

ok ok, i know ! but the rim profile is quite curved at the top so grounding out a tyre (as i do way too often on a gravel bike) hasnt yet pinch punctured the tyre, my old wheelset was a pain for this.

I’d be buying DT350s and getting a suitable rim put on them by a good wheelbuilder. 240s maybe. 303 are well rated though.

I will say Hunt have pretty good spares availability

And fair play to them, but as they don’t make their own hubs they are at the mercy of Novatech and what they choose to keep in production.

Whereas you can still get bits for 20+ year old DT, CK or Hope hubs, never had to work on older Zipps so can’t really comment on them.

For £1K I’d be having chat with Strada or Sharp Precision wheels.

I was very unoriginal and got Zipp 303s (partly as they were reduced).

Probably slightly better/faster/whatever else options out there for specific reasons, but they’re a good safe option and very nice wheels. Plus as above, Zipp/SRAM aren’t going anywhere anytime soon so unlikely to struggle for spares for a good few years if needed!