Light Bicycle WR50 Compared to Premium

[simonf00]

Hello everyone,

I'm curious if anyone has experience with LB WR50's and similar spec'd "premium" wheelsets (e.g. Enve SES 4.5, Zipp 303 Firecrest). Any major noticable differences?

Thanks!

[Mr.Gib]

How the WR50's perform will in large part be a product of how you build them. Depending on hub choice they can be lighter - my flyweight rims on Carbon Ti hubs are 1350 grams for the set. You can also control stiffness with spoke choice - LB will build it anyway you want. The ability to customize is a real plus for some buyers.

Sorry, no first hand experience with current Enve or Zipp, but if you are really asking if you will be happy with the LB wheels, the broad consensus seems to be yes. Most people are very happy. I (76kg) have been riding mine pretty hard for a couple of seasons and am very satisfied with the purchase. If you have Enve type money to spend, why not build with DT180. And FWIW, lately Enve and Zipp have not been problem free, not to mention the hookless thing with Zipp - no thanks.

[jlok]

I got WR50 flyweight and WTO Ultra 60, which is double the price of the prior.

WTO wins hands down in the quality department. The rim surface finishing is the best; the CULT hubs are both beautiful and smooth and last forever. The wheel is designed as a whole rather than slapping random hubs and rims together so all the small areas are optimised, e.g. spoke holes drilling angle on both the rim and hub.

However it costs double. For one set of Bora Ultra you get two from Lightbicycle. You could build WR35 and AR55 for different uses/surfaces. I own AR45 WR50 and Ultra 60 and they're all different animals.

I'd say they are all respectable at their own price levels.

[simonf00]

Thank you for the info.

If it makes a difference, I was thinking of having them built with DT240 flyweight as I'm < 60kg. The build would come out at ~1330g for the set. I was mostly curious about ride feel especially in relation to crosswind performance. My current set of AER wheels on my Cervelo are garbage in crosswinds.

[Mr.Gib]

I have 28mm GP5000 TR on the front and the cross wind stability has been very good. But at sub 60kg, your experience might be different. Maybe you need to by a spare WR36 front wheel for windy days.

Also I don't think flyweights with DT240 will get you to 1330 grams. As noted my flyweights are 1350 with Carbon Ti hubs.

WTO wins hands down in the quality department. The rim surface finishing is the best; the CULT hubs are both beautiful and smooth and last forever. The wheel is designed as a whole rather than slapping random hubs and rims together so all the small areas are optimised, e.g. spoke holes drilling angle on both the rim and hub.

This is mostly cosmetic and as expected, but you don't comment on a performance difference. I assume that's because there's not much? What I would be willing to bet on is better durability of the wheel as a whole.

[jlok]

I have 28mm GP5000 TR on the front and the cross wind stability has been very good. But at sub 60kg, your experience might be different. Maybe you need to by a spare WR36 front wheel for windy days.

Also I don't think flyweights with DT240 will get you to 1330 grams. As noted my flyweights are 1350 with Carbon Ti hubs.

WTO wins hands down in the quality department. The rim surface finishing is the best; the CULT hubs are both beautiful and smooth and last forever. The wheel is designed as a whole rather than slapping random hubs and rims together so all the small areas are optimised, e.g. spoke holes drilling angle on both the rim and hub.

This is mostly cosmetic and as expected, but you don't comment on a performance difference. I assume that's because there's not much? What I would be willing to bet on is better durability of the wheel as a whole.

Again, the Campy wheel is designed as a whole so all details would make it a stronger wheel structure-wise. When people are chasing 1 or 2W in chain lube used, aero handlebar, hidden cable/hose etc, surely those little details in a wheel can't be ignored?

And I don't have the exact same height / width of Campy and LB wheels to compare. They are all fast in their own but my campy WTO Ultra 60 stayed true for longer than the AR45 with i9 Torch hubs. But again... very different design and they perform differently. Not sure how I could compare their performance. For my WR50 it's 24/28 spokes and super wide when comparing to Ultra WTO 60...

If performance is all required and cosmetics are to be ignored, yes by all means go for LB. Much cheaper and it's 2 for 1! I mentioned it.

[apr46]

Ive only built a few wheels so my sample set is small and the enve 4.5 AR and the current gen firecrest are wheels I have experience with. The WR50 flyweight with the twill finish is a product i currently own and the regular WR50 with the UD finish is a wheelset i used to own.

If you are literally comparing rims, at the price point the WR50 are shockingly nice to look at and really clean. That said, i think the other wheels perform better, both in terms of performance and crosswind feel. LB is pretty clear that they didnt design the WR to be an aero road wheel and they provide no evidence of even doing CFD. I run my set mostly as a gravel wheelset at this point.

Then you have to add in the fact that you are comparing it to wheels whose components have been chosen to perform together vs. a custom build option as @Jlok mentioned.

[RadB]

WTO are finished well, but that style of deep narrow (19/26) rim is very niche and has been out of favour for a few years now. Still nice to ride in the right conditions though.

[tiberiade]

I've owned WTO, Enve 3.4 and 4.5, and WR50 and I would pick the WR50 any day. LB did mess up my initial build with carbon spokes, but since I've rebuilt it with Sapim, it's been great. You can get almost 3 sets of LB while getting a single pair of Enve — I wouldn't hesitate one second.

Assuming you're going for rims that are 25mm internal (great for both road and gravel), the depth of rim and tyre you're mounting will make far more difference than the brand of the rim. If you're often changing terrains, you could get one deep set for flat terrain and a shallow one for mountains/hills.

[simonf00]

Thank you everyone for the great feedback!

[gorkypl]

I own multiple wheels built on LB rims, plus Bora WTO 45 and Shamal DB from Campagnolo. I never felt any significant difference in ride quality between wheels of similar profiles and similar weight.

However, as said above, the proprietary wheels (especially Campy with G3) have much more 'bling' to them. They look beautiful, the hubs are butter smooth and easily serviceable, the spokes enter the rims at a perfect angle, etc.
Nothing of this can be said of LB wheels - they look good but generic, the hubs are what you paid for (can be good, can be very good, but rarely as nice as Campy cup and cone), the drillings are sometimes not in line with the spokes (as they don't know which hubs will be used and how they will be laced). Still, nothing of these makes them roll noticeably worse IMO.

I would definitely use nice, branded wheels anytime I want to show off slightly. A pair of Campy, Zipp or Corima wheels definitely adds a nice touch to the overall look of a bike. On my gravel or cx bike, when bikepacking or fighting the mud I use LB without any regrets.

[Xabi]

I swapped from a custom dt240-35mm carbon wheelset to a dt Swiss erc1400-45mm.

Branded ones look better, the red strip from dt240 doesn't look good IMHO, then deeper 45mm rims handle crosswinds much better than "U shaped" 35mm ones, there must be something more than marketing in it. 35mm rims handle potholes and cracks more nicely.

[voicycle]

I have Roval Rapide CLXii with 25mm GP5000 tubeless, WR50/DT240 with 28mm GP5000 tubeless, and WR45/DT240 as gravel wheels.

The Rovals are very slightly better than the WR50s in crosswinds, but the difference is so small that the extra rubber/grip on the WR50s kind of makes it a wash. Also the Rovals are known for being exceptionally good in crosswinds so I'd say that's a good endorsement for WR50. On a windy day I'd choose the WR50s 9 times out of 10 just because of the extra tire volume - the wind is nearly as likely to push me into a sub-optimal line on a rough road with either wheelset, so I end up choosing the one better suited to bad surfaces.

Neither of my LB wheelsets were spec'ed for weight. Both are 'normal' rather than flyweight, and I chose the 240 hubs as the balance between performance, reliability, and serviceability for being used in bad conditions. I ride both sets year round and get 2+ winters out of the bearings.

At 70kg I could probably go for flyweight WR50s with higher end hubs or carbon spokes to replace my Rovals and be perfectly happy. Would get me onto 28s (31mm WAM) for my 'best day' wheels too.

I trust the LB rims enough that I've considered getting another WR wheelset made up for ultra-endurance bikepacking. Probably WR45 front and WR65 rear with a dynamo and 28 instead of 24 spokes. I rode my 24/24 spoke WR45s for an 11-day gravel race this year and they were flawless but I heard the spokes on the rear wheel flexing against each other a lot more than I'd have liked. Fully loaded bike was just a bit much for 24 spokes.

As others have said, the only functional thing my Rovals have on LB is the bling factor and perfectly matched aesthetics. That's not nothing, especially for the kind of riders who frequent this forum, but if you're price-conscious I also don't think it's enough to justify the premium.

EDIT TO ADD: was just thinking about this again and I'd say it's more like the difference between an S-Works and a standard version of the same frameset rather than the difference between Specialized and a budget brand. Better? sure. Good value for the extra cost? probably not. Worth doing anyway? depends on your priorities and finances I guess.

[TrackSmart]

Interesting thread! I got here when searching for WR50 wheelset info/opinions. Thank you to those who have done so!

I have a set of WR50 flyweight wheels that are currently being built -- I will be impatiently awaiting their slow arrival! The new laser-etched graphics look like they will add a nice, finished look to the wheels. The graphics are very subtle (visible at some angles of light, almost invisible at other angles) and seem like they will make them look less generic than a completely unlabelled wheel, without being an eyesore. On my other LB wheelsets, I opted for no logos, since I was not a fan of the decal styles available at the time. The no-logo wheels look reasonable, just generic.

For reference, we have two sets of shallow-depth LightBicycle wheelsets that are on gravel bikes (flyweight AR24 on my bike + newer flyweight AR25 on my wife's bike). Those wheelsets have no consideration for aero, given the wide tires being used and that most of my gravel rides involve tons of climbing. Both use flyweight rims with basic Novatec hubs and weigh under 1150g, which is kind of mind boggling given how inexpensive they are compared to name-brand options. My set has about 8000-10000 miles on it. My wife's set has less than half that mileage. For maintenance, I've only had to replace a single broken spoke on the rear (my bike) and true the rear wheels of both bikes about once per year. I haven't touched the front wheels. I have extra bearings on hand, but surprisingly, I haven't had to replace them yet. I had to replace bearings annually on my previous Stan's wheelset. Both wheelsets been on all kinds of dirt roads and trails, up-and-down mountain passes, etc, though admittedly, I don't do a lot of truly rocky singletrack on my gravel bike (that's what mountain bikes are for). Again, I opted for the inexpensive, but functional Novatec hubs. Those hubs are fairly lightweight, use a basic and time-tested three-pawl design, and with some extra grease in the ratchet ring are pretty quiet when coasting. I hear people complain that "the bearings are too small" (???), but maybe that's only an issue for heavier riders. I've worn out wheel bearings before, but in all cases it was due to loss of lubrication -- lots of wet rides and poorly sealing hubs -- washing away the grease in the cartridge bearings and surely had very little to do with insufficient bearing size.

[TrackSmart]

As stated, I can't say anything about the WR50 wheelset from personal experience, since I haven't received it yet, but some thoughts:

1) Performance: All of the aero testing data that I've seen suggests that in most cases, wheels of similar depth and width perform relatively similarly. I'm not saying they perform identically - I'm saying that as long as they have one of the broadly accepted rim profiles/shapes, a similar number of bladed spokes, are of similar depth, and have appropriately-sized tires installed (i.e. narrower than the rim), you will get *most* of the expected aero benefit. Let's say you'll get 80-90% of the performance with a "generic" wheelset and 100% of the potential performance with a truly optimized wheelset. Personally, I'm just not willing to pay double for that last 10-20% benefit. My WR50 flyweight wheelset will be 1/2 the price of anything remotely comparable in width, depth, and weight from the major brands. Especially with that recent Black Friday discount and the use of fairly inexpensive hubs (the same Novatecs that have served me well on the gravel wheelsets).

2) Crosswind stability: A bigger real-world you-can-actually-feel-it difference, would be cross-wind stability of the front wheel, but most modern designs do fairly well (based on my research). And people's anecdotal thoughts on the WR50's suggest they do pretty well in this regard relative to other mid-depth wheels (I did a lot of searching to find people's opinion on this). Expect to feel them blown-around more than shallow rims, but they should be broadly similar to other 50mm wheelsets of the last few years that use similar profiles/shapes.

3) Wheel width: Companies like to market wider = better, but is it true for aerodynamics? Probably not! There will usually be an aero benefit to having a smaller frontal area (the "A" in CdA). The main exception is if something is acting as a fairing. So why did I opt for the extra-wide WR50s? What it really comes down to is that wider tires can be run at lower pressures. This works much better for sealing tubeless punctures (one of my main reasons for upgrading to tubeless wheels on the road bike) and provides a more comfortable ride as an additional benefit. I'll be running 28s (ballooning out to 30-31mm) on these rims. There will be some aerodynamic benefits, but probably a bit less than narrower rims matched with even narrower tires. If you want to race time trials on smooth roads, you should stick with 25-27mm width and 80mm depth (or disc) wheels and tires that measure narrower than the rim once installed. That's not most people's daily riding.

4) Warranty: LightBicycle doesn't provide a warranty that has much value. That's always been the biggest negative of buying from them. It's unfortunate, because it would really provide greater confidence to new customers. The main offset is that their rims (separate from the hubs) are fairly inexpensive, so if you destroy a rim, you can have the wheel rebuilt after ordering a replacement rim. Even with a rebuild, you will still have spent less money than on a branded-equivalent wheel -- but it won't feel like the same bargain anymore -- since thats money you would not have paid if you purchased the more expensive wheelset. Call it a calculated risk.


For my current bike build, I almost pulled the trigger on a Zipp 303S wheelset. I could have them *right now* and they are going for ~$700 with holiday sales. Those come with a superb warranty/crash replacement policy. But they are narrow rims, and despite Zipp's claims, I don't believe you'd maintain most of the aero benefits if using them with 28mm tires (which would measure be quite a bit wider than the rims). Also: they weigh about 150-200g more than the LB Flyweight wheels I'll be ordering, and the 46mm depth is a bit on the shallow side. So, as I said, I'll be impatiently awaiting my WR50 flyweight wheels from Lightbicycle!