We’ve been riding a set of these for a few months. We had noticed the attractive specs paired with a very attractive price and decided to add them to our quiver.
Alloy 35mm deep clinchers, at 1740 grams is a sweet spot for road wheels. Deep enough for some good watts savings over shallow rims, light enough to be comparable in weight to many of those same shallow rim wheels.
This wheelset retails for $315.
At that price and under, in general you’ll be buying 1900g and 24mm depth. In the $500 range, for the weight (1750+/-), you’ll still find most wheels feature a similar shallow depth. At the $700 price tag you start seeing a weight reduction of about 100g for wheels and sometimes 35mm depth.
Aero trumps Weight. We won’t go into all the science here, but yes, the watts savings of the deeper rims is where you benefit. At half the price of similar depth? Very tempting.
Out of the box we were impressed. The black finish with subtle graphics is nice. It was interesting that the machined braking surface was also finished black. The FSA/Vision folks indicate that the surface will change color under use, but after several months, ours show little wear. Aero bladed spokes, smooth hubs, rim tape, and skewers are part of the package. The allow freehub body is part of what keeps the weight low.
We mounted some Vittoria Corsa 25mm tires. Easy to install. One note, this is not a tubeless ready set of wheels. For our crew that’s not an issue. We ride plenty of tubeless wheels for cyclocross, gravel, and mountain, but for road training we’re happy with tubes.
An absolute solid (in a good way) feel while riding. We found them delightfully stiff when out of the saddle climbing or sprint efforts. Tires always color the comfort of a long ride, and we used these wheels with some excellent tires. That said, on our three hour plus rides we felt no difference between these wheels and the $2000 carbon set that had been previously mounted on the bike.
We’ve done some hard repeats as well with the Team35. We use a one mile stretch with a slight incline that’s a local Strava segment. Times were similar to other deep wheels we’ve tested, and faster than shallow rims on the same course.
These wheels have stayed true after a couple of pothole hits.
Are there faster and lighter wheelsets? For sure. You can check out a full line of FSA/Vision product (plenty of Pros use their gear). But if you’re looking for a solid training set that you won’t regret leaving on for fast group rides or an early season race, these are a bargain.