The Mavic Crossmax XL S is the flagship alloy trail wheelset from French wheel aficionados Mavic. Touted as the best they’ve ever made.

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By singletrackross

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Mavic Crossmax XL S: mid-term review

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Went out of tension twice in 4 months.
Non-standard spokes.
Alloy nipples.

All the things you don’t want in a wheelset. WTF does a product need to do to get a bad review?

APF

I got a set of these for £300 in CRC’s Black Friday sale. Pretty chuffed with them myself.
I’ve never had Mavic factory wheels go out of tension, so never thought of checking them! I’ll check these 🙂

Went out of tension twice in 4 months.
Non-standard spokes.
Alloy nipples.

All the things you don’t want in a wheelset. WTF does a product need to do to get a bad review?

Yet we’ve run ‘old’ Crossmax XL and newer Crossmax wheelsets for 6+ years, and they were second hand to us.

They’ve actually done better than other wheels we have had, a Hope hubbed one (shell cracked), Raceface (ate freehubs every couple of months), DTSwiss (rims of Cheeses) and Sun Ringle (would not keep tension and soft rims).