All About the New Swiss Side HADRON Ultimate 650 Wheels in Zwift

This week’s game update includes two new wheelsets from Swiss Side, long-term collaborators with DT Swiss, whose in-game wheels are familiar to any Zwift racer since they’re fast! Swiss Side helps optimize the aerodynamics of DT Swiss’ high-end wheel lines, while DT Swiss provides manufacturing capabilities and hubs for Swiss Side.

Swiss Side has also partnered with Van Rysel to optimize the aerodynamics of their bike frames, so it’s no coincidence these new wheels dropped at the same time as three new Van Rysel frames arrived in Zwift’s Drop Shop.

Here’s how the Swiss Side HADRON Ultimate 650 wheels are described in the Drop Shop: “Engineered at the limit. The HADRON Ultimate 650 hits the UCI depth cap with a 65mm profile optimized for aero efficiency and stability. A refined rim shape reduces crosswind sensitivity while keeping drag low – built to hold speed and control when conditions aren’t perfect.”

The wheels are now available in the Drop Shop, accessible at level 28 and above, for 550,000 Drops. They are rated 4 stars for aero and 3 for weight, which indicates they are strong performers. But just how strong? Since Zwift’s 4-star rating system isn’t precise enough for our tastes, we ran these wheels through our standard battery of tests to determine exactly how they perform in Zwift and stack up against other wheelsets.

Let’s dive in and learn all about the in-game performance of Swiss Side’s first wheelset in Zwift!

Aero (Flat/Rolling) Performance

Swiss Side’s HADRON Ultimate 650 wheels are very close to the DT Swiss ARC 1100 DICUT 65 wheels in terms of performance. And this makes sense, since they’re basically the same wheel IRL, with different branding.

The DT Swiss 65 are very fast wheels – basically the best aero-focused all-arounders in game and #2 on our Top 10 Wheelsets in Zwift list. The Swiss Side version has the same aero capabilities, while being slightly lighter. This leads to the Swiss Side wheels having a slight performance edge in both our flat and climb tests, although the weight difference is so small that the performance improvement, particularly on the flats, is within our test’s margin for error. Less than half a second!

Climb Performance

The slightly lighter weight of the Swiss Side 650 is more apparent in our climb test, with these wheels beating the DT Swiss 65 by 1.5 seconds across an hour of climbing Alpe du Zwift.

These aren’t climb-focused wheels, so they’re best used on flat and rolling races where speeds stay high. That’s not to say they’re terribly heavy – but there are better wheels for more climby races. The Swiss Side 650 improves on our baseline climb time by 5.7 seconds across an hour, while the fastest wheels, the Princeton Carbonworks Alta 3532, improve by 14.1 seconds.

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

Conclusions

The Swiss Side HADRON Ultimate 650 is the new top “aero-focused all-arounder” wheelset in Zwift, since it edges out the DT Swiss ARC 1100 DICUT 65 while being available one level lower for a slightly reduced price.

With that said, it’s worth mentioning that the Princeton Carbonworks Wake 6560 is only 2.5 seconds slower on the flat, while being 6.6 seconds faster on the climbs. So if you’re in a race with any significant climb, the Princeton hoops are probably a better bet.

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

• Master Zwift Wheels List (added)
• Fastest Aero Bike Frames and Wheels at Each Zwift Level
• The Top 10 Wheelsets in Zwift
• Zwift Speed Tests: Wheel Ranking Charts
• Zwift Shopping Guide: What To Buy from the Drop Shop at Each Level (added)
• Zwift Speed Tests Public Data (Google Sheet) (added)

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