All About the New ENVE SES 4.5 PRO Wheels in Zwift

This week, Zwift releases a new wheelset from ENVE: the SES 4.5 PRO. The real-life ENVE SES 4.5 PRO wheels were announced in July of this year, and ENVE shared that the wheels were developed with direct input from Tadej Pogačar and UAE Team Emirates XRG over two seasons. When the wheels were announced, they had amassed 25+ victories this season alone … before Tadej won the Tour de France!

Here’s what the Drop Shop says about them: “Designed for the cyclists seeking the ultimate wheelset, where low weight, aerodynamics, and rolling efficiency meet.”

The wheels are now available in the Drop Shop, accessible at level 29 and above, for a price of 675,000 Drops. This is the only wheelset in the Drop Shop with a 4-star rating for both aero and weight, so we expected them to be both fast on the flats, and light on the climbs! Since Zwift’s 4-star rating system isn’t precise enough for our taste, we ran these wheels through our standard battery of tests to determine exactly how they perform in Zwift and stack up against other wheelsets in game. (Spoiler alert: they’re fast.)

Let’s dive in and learn all about the performance of this new wheelset from ENVE…

Aero (Flat/Rolling) Performance

The ENVE SES 4.5 PRO is definitely in the upper echelon of aero performance in Zwift, with our tests showing that it is bested by only three non-disc wheelsets: the ENVE SES 8.9, ENVE SES 7.8, and DT Swiss ARC 1100 DICUT 65.

The ENVE SES 4.5 PRO is 5 seconds slower than the ENVE SES 8.9 wheelset (the most aero non-disc wheelset) across an hour of flat riding. If you include disc wheels in the picture, the ENVE SES 4.5 PRO is 10.8s slower than the fastest disc wheels in game, the DT Swiss ARC 1100 DICUT 85/Disc.

Climb Performance

The climbs are where this wheelset really shines. It turns in a time that puts it within a half second of the top climbing wheels (Zipp 353 NSW, Lightweight Meilenstein, and Roval Alpinist CLX) across an hour of climbing. All of these wheelsets trim 9+ seconds off of our stock Zwift Carbon wheels’ times in our tests.

So the ENVE SES 4.5 PRO is essentially tied with the best climbing wheels in game, while delivering much better aero performance than the other top climbing wheelsets.

Note: all test results above are from a 75kg, 183cm rider holding 300W steady using the Zwift Carbon frame.

Conclusions

These wheels show exceptional performance as climb-focused all-arounders. Perhaps the best way to see this clearly is to compare them to the best aero all-arounders in game, the DT Swiss ARC 1100 DICUT 65. Consider this:

• The ENVE SES 4.5 PRO wheels save 9.4 seconds across an hour of climbing compared to our stock Zwift Carbon wheels. The DT Swiss ARC 1100 DICUT 65 saves just 2.7 seconds. A 6.6s difference.
• The ENVE SES 4.5 PRO wheels save 41.7 seconds across an hour of flat riding compared to our stock Zwift Carbon wheels. The DT Swiss ARC 1100 DICUT 65 saves 46.2 seconds. A 4.5s difference.

So if you swap from the DT Swiss ARC 1100 DICUT 65 to the ENVE SES 4.5 PRO, you’re essentially trading seconds gained on the flats for seconds gained on the climbs.

Another way to see it clearly: check out the Tron vs Top Performers chart, which we’ve just updated by swapping out the Zipp 454 wheels with these new ENVE SES 4.5 PROs, since the new ENVE wheels effectively replace the 454s as climb-focused all-arounders, beating them in our flat and climbing tests.

These wheelsets have been, or will soon be, added to the following posts:

• Master Zwift Wheels List
• Zwift Speed Tests: Wheel Ranking Charts (coming soon)
• The Top 10 Wheelsets on Zwift (coming soon)
• Fastest Aero Bike Frames and Wheels at Each Zwift Level (coming soon)
• Fastest Aero TT Bike Frames and Wheels at Each Zwift Level (coming soon)
• Zwift Shopping Guide: What To Buy from the Drop Shop at Each Level
• Speed Tests: Concept Z1 (Tron) Bike vs Top Performers
• Zwift Speed Tests Public Data (Google Sheet)

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