Tubeless wheelsets have become way more popular recently, thanks especially to the growing number of tubeless tyres out there these days, and here are some of the best that we've reviewed for over a grand.
Check out 10 of the best tubeless wheelsets for under £1,000
A tubeless system is essentially a clincher tyre inflated onto a rim without an inner tube. Instead, an airtight chamber is created with a tubeless-specific tyre, developed with a special bead and a compatible rim.
One big advantage is the substantially reduced risk of puncturing, as long as you use liquid sealant inside the tyre and keep it topped up. If the tyre is punctured, the sealant plugs the hole. The tyre might suffer a small drop in pressure if you puncture, but the sealant will deal with most small holes caused by flint and thorns, allowing you to keep riding.
If you want to go tubeless you need the right wheels, and here are 10 of the best, some for rim brakes and some for discs. They've all been awarded an overall of score of at least 8 out of 10 in road.cc reviews.
Clicking on the name of each wheelset will take you to a dealer.
Hunt 30 Carbon Dynamo Disc £1,059
These Carbon 30 Disc Dynamo wheels are excellent. The rim is 30mm deep, made from unidirectional T24/30 carbon fibre with the spoke holes reinforced with a 3K weave. It's a reasonably wide profile, with a 27mm external width and a 21mm internal profile.
The wheels came with tubeless rim tape fitted, and a hole for the valve. Fitting Schwalbe G-One Speeds was easy. Our review pair came tightly built and true, and they stayed that way during testing. With 28 spokes front and rear they're built for bikepacking and ultra-distance rather than fully loaded touring; Hunt recommends a 115kg limit for rider and luggage.
The SON Delux dynamo is specifically designed for road riding. It weighs just 395g and when turned off generates just 0.4W of drag, barely more than a standard front hub. The efficiency is rated at 65%, and the dynamo outputs 3W of power at 20km/h, so to power your lights or your USB charger you can expect to be putting less than 5W into the system. We used the dynamo with a Busch & Muller IQ-X front light and a Supernova E3 rear, getting easily enough power to light the way.
At the rear Hunt is using its 4Season Disc hub that has extra shielding for the EZO cartridge bearings inside. Both front and rear hubs use standard J-bend spokes which should be fairly easy to find a replacement for if you pop one out on tour. The wheels come with two spares of each length to take with you too, plus a spoke key, 6-bolt adaptors for the Centerlock disc mounts, tubeless rim tape (fitted) and tubeless valves.
Overall these wheels are excellent. They're light and well built, the front dynamo is as good as they come for road riding and the rear hub has been great too. They're sensibly built, come with spares, and are set up for the long haul.
Reynolds ATR X 650B £1,105
The original ATR rim was a chunky affair, and this design (called the ATR 2 when we reviewed it, but having since be renamed) is even wider: 23mm internally and 32mm externally, with a depth of 40mm. The bulbous profile follows the developments in aero wheel technology that are pushing towards increasingly toroidal designs, but Reynolds doesn't make any particular aero claims for this wheelset.
You get 24 spokes front and rear; that's not much for an all-purpose wheelset like this, but one of the main benefits of a carbon rim is that it's laterally stiffer for the same weight, meaning that the spoke count can be reduced.
If you're heading off to terrain that's more challenging, especially with a loaded bike, then carbon does still have advantages over alloy for its impact resistance.
These ATR wheels were easy to set up tubeless. Ours came fitted with rim tape and were supplied with valves. The 40mm Schwalbe G-Ones went up first time; bigger tyres that were a baggier fit required a couple of extra wraps of tape to tighten things up, but we got them sealed just fine.
Our test wheels came fitted a Shimano 11-speed freehub. You can also have an XD driver if you want a wider cassette, or a Campagnolo freehub.
The disc mount is Centerlock and these wheels come set up with 12mm axles front and rear. You can run the front as a 15mm axle; those end caps come with the wheels. If you want to run quick releases then QR end caps are available separately.
We had a very positive experience with these wheels. As a 650B wheelset, they're not necessarily overpriced considering the materials and build quality (and lifetime warranty), but you might question whether, for riding on the road with big tyres, a carbon rim has enough of a benefit over alloy to justify the inevitable price difference. It'll depend on what you're planning. If your riding takes you to genuinely technical terrain, or you're riding a loaded bike, or both, the extra stiffness and impact resistance of a carbon rim will be useful. If you're looking for more comfort on the road then the performance is great, but the price hike less justified.
Read our review
Find a Reynolds dealer
Fast Forward F4R FCC Tubeless DT 350 £1,159.99
These Fast Forward F4R FCC Tubeless Ready wheels are seriously good for their price tag. They're stable in strong winds, quick to spin up to speed and also quick to stop. What's more, you get great hubs and high-end pads. It's a great package.
This full carbon wheelset comes in at a very respectable 1,450g. The rims are 26mm wide externally, laced to the brilliant DT Swiss 350 hubs with DT Aerolite spokes.
Those hubs are pretty bombproof. While these wheels were used in mostly dry conditions, we've had these hubs on wheels that have seen some horrendous weather; they're solid and don't require much attention. While we're on reliability, we had zero spoke tension issues even after a few big hits in races.
At 45mm deep, these strike a great balance between speed, quick acceleration and handling. They don't pick up strong winds which is probably down to the blunt profile at the leading and trailing edges.
One of the attractions of this set of wheels is what you get for your money. They come in a well-padded double wheel bag with a zippered storage compartment containing brake pads and skewers. You also get a set of tubeless valves.
Read our review
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Giant SLR 0 42mm £1,379.48
The Giant SLR 0 42mm wheels are an ideal all-round go-faster set of hoops. The rims are wide, feel fast and handle well. The hubs are simple to service, quiet and robust. They performed excellently during testing in my mix of hilly races, flat criteriums and general riding with good braking and stability in crosswinds.
The 42mm-deep full-carbon rims are tubeless ready and the spokes are DT Aerolites – straight-pull with internal nipples. This gives a very clean build, although one that isn't so easy for maintenance. Not that it will matter, for a while at least, as the wheels were perfectly straight out of the box and remained that way.
The hubs are Giant branded, with DT Swiss 240 internals. This is a great balance between performance and reliability with easy maintenance.
We didn't find these wheels hard to handle in windy conditions. In fact, they felt very stable. The wheels also feel zippy when climbing thanks to the respectable weight: 629g front and 791g rear, giving a total of 1,420g. Weight isn't everything, though. We were also impressed with the lateral stiffness.
Overall, we were impressed with these Giant wheels because they're a great option if you want one wheelset for racing and general riding.
Read our review
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DT Swiss PRC 1400 Spline 65 £1,120.00
The DT Swiss PRC 1400 Spline clincher wheels have deep section 65mm rims for aerodynamic efficiency, they're well made and come with excellent internals.
The rim is a NACA shape with a fairly blunt profile, although the PRCs are in no way bulbous like Zipps, for example. The PRCs can be a little hard to handle on some gusty, blustery days, but this is rare – and not much different from any other wheels of a similar depth.
The PRC wheels use DT Swiss's well-respected 240 hubs. The freehub features a ratchet system (rather than standard pawls). Springs push two 36-tooth star ratchets together to engage when you pedal, all of the teeth engaging at the same time in just 10 degrees. This system works really well and durability is excellent.
The wheels feel stiff in use, so you can set your brake pads very close to the rim without danger of rubbing when you corner hard or ride out of the saddle.
Braking in dry conditions is good – progressive without any grabbing – and braking in the wet, although not exceptional, is sure and confident.
You get tubeless tape and tubeless valves as part of the package (along with RWS Steel quick releases and SwissStop Black Prince brake pads). Setting them up tubeless is easy enough.
You are getting some seriously good wheels for your money here. Granted, these don't offer quite the aero performance of DT Swiss's ARC 1100 Dicut wheels but the PRCs feature excellent components, they're stiff, braking is good and, for their depth, they feel pretty stable in most conditions. This is a reliable high-performance wheelset that puts in a great performance in a variety of conditions.
Read our review
Find a DT Swiss dealer
Roval CLX 50 Disc £1,850
Fast, light and wide, these tubeless carbon disc brake wheels offer excellent performance.
The aim for the new Roval CLX 50 was to marry the aero performance of the deeper section CLX 64 with the lightness of the shallower CLX 32. At 1,415g with a 50mm-deep rim and disc brake hubs, they appear to have achieved that objective. This is a very attractive weight in a hugely competitive wheel market.
It's a full carbon fibre construction, tubeless ready and available in disc or rim brake versions, with a wide and bulbous profile rim. Internal rim width is 20.7mm, external is 29.4mm, ensuring wider tyres are happily accommodated; between 22 and 47mm can be used.
The clincher rims are tubeless-ready, using a hookless bead design that is favoured by a few other wheel brands, and claimed to provide a stronger rim with less weight.
At the centre of the wheels are new hubs designed to minimise drag. That accounts for the smooth shape. Inside the hubs are DT Swiss 240 internals with upgraded CeramicSpeed bearings. DT Swiss also supplies the Aerolite spokes.
These wheels are superbly fast in a straight line and maintain excellent momentum when you're really pushing hard on the pedals. They're also tough and dependable. They easily shrug off bad road surfaces; we've smashed into potholes and ridden them along gravel tracks and they've taken all the punishment with no sign of loose spokes or going out of true.
They're smooth and comfortable for a deep-section wheelset, something you really appreciate when riding along a washboard or chattery surface, where the rapid vibrations can easily unsettle an otherwise smooth ride, and especially if you head off onto gravel or dirt roads.
The Rovals handle winds superbly. The rounded rim profile provides exceptionally good stability with little sign of buffeting even in the strongest gusts.
Read our review
Find a Roval dealer
Mavic Cosmic Pro Carbon SL UST £1,899.00
Mavic's Cosmic Pro Carbon SL UST wheels make tubeless technology truly nothing to fear, with all the benefits attached. These are very capable performance all-rounders.
Compared to the previous model, these wheels come with a re-engineered, deeper rim bed with an additional lip to create a secure tubeless seal, and specially designed Yksion Pro tyres to fit this new design.
The rim has an external width of 25mm rim, an internal width of 17mm and a 40mm depth, with a NACA-inspired profile. The excellent iTgMax laser brake track treatment improves the braking performance.
These wheels excel in pretty much any conditions – including gusty winds, where they stay remarkably stable. On climbs they're stiff as you like and they'll slice through valley headwinds.
Although not quite the performance-value proposition they used to be back when they were clinchers, Mavic's Cosmic Pro Carbon SL USTs are still competitive, while boasting arguably the easiest-to-install tubeless interface around.
Read our review
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Bontrager Aeolus XXX 4 TLR Clincher Road £1,999.98
Bontrager's Aeolus XXX 4 TLR clincher wheels are stiff, lightweight and steady in use and offer good braking in both wet and dry conditions. This is a great all-round aero wheelset that's suitable for a wide variety of conditions.
The rim shape is completely new, developed using CFD (computational fluid dynamics) software and wind tunnel testing. The external width at the brake track is 27mm while the internal width is to 21mm, offering plenty of support for the 25mm tyres for which these wheels are optimised. Bontrager says that the Aeolus XXX 4 has lower drag than the Zipp 303 NSW at all yaw angles from 0-17.5°, with the Zipp slightly lower at 20°.
The wheelset is lightweight considering the rim depth, ours coming in at 1,420g for the pair. The focus here is more on aerodynamics, but you're never going to turn down a saving.
The Aeolus XXX 4 TLRs are stiff and stable. Crosswinds do have an effect, but it's not massive considering the 47mm rim depth and there's none of that twitchiness that you get with some aero rims. The Aeolus XXX 4 TLRs have behaved well on super-windy rides recently. Crosswinds do have an effect, of course, but it's not massive considering the 47mm rim depth and, even more important to my mind, the wheels behave predictably. There's none of that twitchiness that you get with some.
Bontrager has introduced a new feature to the rim brake versions of its Aeolus XXX wheels called a Laser Control Track. Automated laser machining 'roughens the brake track to an optimised level that maximises braking performance when used with SwissStop Black Prince pads (which come as part of the package). Braking performance is noticeably better than before, especially in wet conditions.
All of Bontrager's XXX models are tubeless-ready, coming with the necessary rim strips, valve stems and sealant refill kit.
Read our review
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Knight 35 Tubeless £2,000.00
The Knight 35 wheels are fast; they are also stiff, reliable and stable.
The 35s come with DT Swiss 240 hubs, which are brilliant. With cartridge bearings and easy servicing, they should last for ages.
Spokes are Sapim's CX Rays. One thing that slightly annoyed our reviewer was the use of internal nipples. Yes, it looks clean but should you ping these out of true thanks to a pothole, it's more of a hassle to get them straight again.
Although the wheelset isn't superlight – ours came in at 1,590g with rim tape and skewers installed – the weight is still pretty low, and translates to a nippy feel. It's very easy to get these wheels up to speed and then increase that speed, especially when climbing.
The 35s are the shallowest section wheels that Knight offers. The rim profile is somewhere between a 'V' shape and a 'U'. This gives the rim an external width of 25mm, sitting very nicely with wider tyres.
The brake track is engineered with a 3mm brake surface for improved heat dissipation in an attempt by Knight to combat brake fade and even blow-outs on long descents. The braking is smooth and consistent. While stopping still isn't as good as aluminium rims, there is room for improvement in the form of softer brake pads; those supplied are quite hard. That does mean they'll last quite a while, but we were quick to swap in a softer pad for better power.
Overall, the Knight 35s offer a very good package for a shallow carbon clincher.
Read our review
Buy from Sigma Sport
Edco Brocon Disc £2,900
The new Edco Brocon Disc Brake wheelset pushes the boundaries when it comes to the design and use of carbon fibre pretty much throughout. The wheels are light, strong and offer a wonderful ride feel, but you do have to pay nearly three grand for them.
For the Brocons' construction, Edco has used a 10k carbon weave design rather than a uni-directional one (woven, rather than all the fibres travel in one direction), saying that the higher shield strength of the woven material increases the impact strength. It's certainly a strong set of wheels and they feel absolutely solid.
The Brocons are based around 28mm-deep, tubeless-ready carbon rims, which means they are more of an 'all-rounder' than a deeper pure race wheel, although that does keep the weight down. (Ignore the name on the rim – we were sent an early set, incorrectly labelled.)
The pair weigh just 1,500g including the supplied tubeless rim tape, which is pretty impressive for a disc brake wheelset. With an inner rim width of just 17mm, Edco recommends tyres only up to 28mm wide.
What really sets the Brocons apart from most other wheels is the use of carbon fibre for the spokes that are easily adjusted or replaced. The hubs are aluminium alloy with NBK bearings and water resistant o-rings.
The Brocons are very stiff with is absolutely no feeling of lateral flex when you are giving it everything in a sprint or on a climb. This stiffness doesn't translate to harshness, though, as the carbon fibre spokes give a plush ride taking out any road buzz.
The Edcos are solid and feel very strong, standing up to all the abuse we threw at them and remaining true throughout. The hubs feel very smooth and the freehub pawl engagement is brilliantly quick.
These are very good wheels and although the price is high because of the technology and materials, it's not necessarily excessive for what you are getting.
Read our review
Find an Edco dealer
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