Upgrading your wheels is a rite of passage for many cyclists, and choosing which set to plump for – an outlay that can range from several hundred to several thousand dollars – can involve poring over spec sheets and trying to decipher marketing jargon.
We have tested a great many wheels in the wind tunnel already, to provide comparative data across a whole range of models, but we also wanted to interrogate how certain design factors, namely wheel depth, spoke count, and spoke material, affect speed.
