All About the New Roval Terra Aero CLX Gravel Wheels in Zwift

This week’s game update includes a fresh set of gravel wheels from Roval: the Terra Aero CLX. While these wheels have been tested covertly by pros for several months, it’s only in the last couple of weeks that we’ve seen them announced publicly.

These wheels are interesting IRL for a few reasons, including their unique “Chopped Aero Speed” design and the front wheel being slightly deeper (50mm) than the rear (45mm). These are the aero gravel wheels in Roval’s lineup, while the Terra CLX III is their lightweight gravel offering.

Here’s how these wheels are described in the Drop Shop: “The fastest gravel race wheels are flat – you read that correctly. Flat. Our novel truncated airfoil may look odd & flat but with up to 5.84 watts faster than Terra CLX II, with aero gains that matter from mile one to mile two hundred.”

The wheels are now available in the Drop Shop, accessible at level 38 and above, for 650,000 Drops. Notably, they are rated 3 stars for aero and 2 for weight, the only gravel wheelset in game with such a high rating apart from the new Zipp 303. This should indicate that they’ll perform well compared to other gravel wheels in Zwift, but 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 gravel wheelsets.

Let’s dive in and learn all about the in-game performance of the newest gravel wheelset from Roval!

Aero (Flat/Rolling) Performance

Roval’s Terra Aero CLX is neck-and-neck even with the new Zipp 303 XPLR SW, turning in a one-hour flat test time 1/10th of a second faster in our tests.

That means these two wheelsets are both the fastest on Zwift dirt, outpacing all other gravel wheels by approximately 13 seconds across an hour of riding.

Climb Performance

The Terra Aero CLX edges out the new Zipp wheels in our climb test, which aligns with the fact that these hoops from Roval are slightly lighter than Zipp’s IRL.

Roval’s Terra Aero CLX beats the Zipp 303 XPLR SW by 3.8 seconds across an hour of climbing, and beats the older gravel wheels by an additional 1-2 seconds on top of that.

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

Jungle (Dirt) Performance

The aero performance and slight climbing advantage shown in our pavement tests translate into improved performance for the Roval Terra Aero CLX in our Jungle Circuit test. These wheels edge out the Zipp 303 XPLR SW by just 0.6 across an hour of dirt riding, while edging out all the older gravel wheels by 15+ seconds.

Conclusions

The Roval Terra Aero CLX is Zwift’s new top gravel wheelset, so if you’re racing in the dirt, you’ll want to pick up a set.

That said, I do want to lodge one complaint: it looks like Zwift’s art team created these wheels by just copying the Roval Terra CLX already in game, and giving them a different wordmark and spoke count on the front wheel. The problem is, these new wheels have a deeper rim depth, and that unique “chopped aero” design. Neither of these distinctives show in game, which makes these wheels look pretty boring.

But at least they’re fast.

My guess is the artwork will be updated in a future release.

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

• Master Zwift Wheels List
• Zwift Shopping Guide: What To Buy from the Drop Shop at Each Level
• Zwift Speed Tests Public Data (Google Sheet) (added)

Questions or comments?

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