Your bike frame and wheelset choice both affect speed in Zwift, but your wheels affect it the most. While frame choice may change your 1-hour time by ~20 seconds, wheel choice can change your time by approximately ~60 seconds!
So go ahead and pick whatever frame you’d like. But make sure you’re running some fast wheels.
Wheel Tests – Introduction
While Zwift’s 4-star rating system for weight and aero is simple and easy to understand, performance varies even among wheelsets with the same star ratings–because the stars are just an approximation.
So we’ve ranked all the wheels against each other based on their actual performance on flat roads (2 laps of Tempus Fugit) and a long, steep climb (Alpe du Zwift).
Wheel Timings
This chart shows actual timings for flat and climb tests, in seconds. The shorter the bar, the faster the wheels.
Notes:
- Flat tests run on 2 laps of Tempus Fugit at 300 watts steady with an isolated 75kg rider 183cm tall, using the Zwift Aero bike frame. This test data is used for all flat results on this page.
- Climb tests run on Alpe du Zwift using 300 watts steady with an isolated 75kg rider 183cm tall, using the Zwift Aero bike frame. This test data is used for all climbing results on this page.
Percentile Rankings
Trying to choose a wheelset based on timing data can be a mathematical nightmare! Yes, you’ve got our timings above. But how much of your race is uphill, how much of it is flat, and how long is the race?
Percentile rankings make it easy to compare wheels against each other and spot the top performers.
Flat Course Performance (Percentile Rankings)
Climbing Performance (Percentile Rankings)
Wheel Percentile Rankings, Stacked
This format lets you easily see how wheelsets perform across both flats and climbs, and compare that performance with other wheelsets. This is useful for planning your race strategy.
Example: you want a top-performing wheelset for a road race up Alpe du Zwift, so you look at the longest bars. But you know the race will be won or lost on the big climb, so you go with the ENVE SES 3.4 wheels since they are near the top of the climbing rankings and also offer solid performance on the flats.
Your Feedback
We’d love to know what you think of these charts, including suggestions for improvements. Share your comments below.
[…] Zwift level. According to Zwift Insider, the most aero wheels we could unlock at our level were the Roval CLX64’s, which could be paired with the Zwift Aero frame. For users with a higher level there are faster […]
This is the best I’ve seen!
One thing I really want to know though is how the Tron compares.
I’m 80kg and on a hilly race (anything with 300m or more of climbing) or a key hill that can split the group, I want to know at how much of a disadvantage I’d be worth the trip bike.