Carbon vs Aluminum Wheels | Worth the price?

Everyone wants the highest quality components on their bikes, and oftentimes quality is conflated with price. Hopefully everyone has learned at one point or another that while they are related, they aren’t directly linked. Spending twice as much on your mountain bike doesn’t make it twice as fun, fast, light, or whatever metric you prefer, but there are definitely gains to be made. Today we’re talking about a component with an incredibly wide swing in price, but a narrower swing in performance. Wheels come in two flavors, carbon and aluminum, and both offer fantastic performance at very different price points.

Just about every mountain biker starts their bike riding journey with aluminum wheels, with dreams of getting a set carbon hoops one day. I went through that phase, hyping up carbon wheels in my head as some kind of cheat code that would completely transform how a bike rides. That they would somehow instantly change my big enduro bike into a featherweight that destroys climbs and turns on dimes. Carbon wheels are undeniably lighter than aluminum, and do offer a different ride quality, but I’m arguing that they’re more of a lateral move from aluminum rather than an upgrade.

Clad with Carbon Reserve HD|30 wheels, this Stumpjumper 15 means business.

Let’s look at some cold hard facts. Price, weight, and warranty don’t tell the whole story, but they’re about the only objective metrics we have in this conversation. Reserve makes their 30|HD in both carbon and aluminum, built with the same intentions and nearly identical looks. A carbon 29” Reserve 30|HD rim weighs 516 grams and costs $649, while an aluminum 29” Reserve 30|HD rim weighs 580 grams and costs $149. By my calculations, that makes the carbon rim over four times the price and just 15% lighter than the aluminum rim. Both offer an identical lifetime warranty and are eMTB approved.

Armed with just the objective differences between them, any informed buyer should look no further than the aluminum rims. There’s more to the story though, and I’ve been riding the Reserve 30|HD Carbon rims for the last few months after spending 99% of my life riding aluminum wheels. Let’s explore what I’ve learned about carbon hoops as a life long aluminum wheel rider, and help you figure out what’s best for you.

This article would be far easier to write if there was a huge performance difference between aluminum and carbon wheels, but there just isn’t. I would argue that the majority of riders wouldn’t be able to notice the difference between them in back to back testing, as there aren’t many differences that jump out right away. Both aluminum and carbon wheels have their own strengths that the other tries to copy with each iteration, which unsurprisingly leads to quite similar ride characteristics. Aluminum wheels have gotten stiffer and lighter while carbon wheels have gotten more compliant and heavier. Wrap both of them in rubber to introduce some vagueness to the equation, and they really are hard to tell apart! But not impossible.

Their most pronounced difference is when exiting corners. Carbon wheels will give you more energy back when loading the bike and springing out of a corner compared to aluminum wheels. Aluminum wheels are no slouch, but carbon wheels have a stiffness to them that feels like it holds and releases more energy as you pump into them. It’s a similar feeling when pumping to generate speed through any section of trail, and the carbon wheels give you more energy with every rider input. Like with many comparisons in mountain biking, we’re splitting hairs here, and the aluminum wheels give 95% of the performance of the carbon wheels. I’ve pumped a lot of aluminum wheels through corners and rollers without issue, but carbon wheels are undeniably snappy.

Mike gives the aluminum Spank wheels a big thumbs up!

Tires are a natural buffer between impacts on the trail and your wheels, saving your hoops from an irreversible geometric alteration. They take the edge off the majority of impacts, but they aren’t perfect, and we all smack rim from time to time. Even though the lifetime warranty has your back, hitting your expensive carbon wheel against a rock feels so wrong, and feels way more harsh than hitting an aluminum wheel. Bottoming out an aluminum wheel is softer, and less likely to knock you off line, probably because the rim will actually deform and disperse the load.

Some carbon wheels have gained a reputation of being louder, and that’s certainly the case with some. It’s hard to explain, but the Race Face Era wheels make a pinging sound when going through rough terrain, something the Reserve HD|30 wheels haven’t done in my experience. There was no failure with those rims or other carbon rims that do the same, and it’s just the acoustics of the carbon fiber making themselves known.

After putting the Reserve HD|30 carbon wheels through their paces for the last few months, I can safely say that they are way less maintenance than an aluminum wheel. Typically, I’ll throw my rear wheel in the stand every couple weeks for a tune up, and there will be several loose spokes to attend to. I’ve had my wheels built by wheel builders with decades of experience, so that’s not the issue; I just find a way to beat up any wheels I own. But that’s not the case with the Reserve HD|30 wheelset, and they’ve remained true and tensioned for as long as I’ve had them. I’ve treated them no differently than the aluminum wheels I ride on other bikes, but they just seem completely unbothered by what I throw at them.

Another benefit of carbon wheels is that they never dent or flat spot. I’m sure we’ve all tried to seat a tire on an aluminum wheel that looks more like a 20 sided dice than a perfect circle with less than ideal results. As long as a carbon wheel isn’t completely broken, seating a tire is a breeze. A floor pump is all you need when it comes time to install some new rubber, and that gives me peace of mind when changing tires the night before a ride.

Aluminum Stumpjumper with aluminum wheels vs carbon Stumpjumper with carbon wheels

Neither carbon nor aluminum rims are invincible, and will reach their breaking point eventually. There are different levels of failures, and not everything is an explosion followed by a walk home. Dents and dings from smaller impacts are commonplace on aluminum wheels, while carbon wheels shrug off small hits until a catastrophic failure occurs. When a carbon wheel breaks, it is usually completely unrideable. Sometimes you can limp it down the trail if your tire still has air, but typically a broken carbon wheel is no longer circular. Aluminum is far more likely to bend and conform in those scenarios, and can usually get you down the hill even without a tire on it. You can find videos of downhill racers finishing their run after a tire has blown off the rim, but in every one of those videos, they’re on an aluminum rim.

There are great aluminum and carbon wheel options out there, and all kinds of riders can have tons of fun riding their bike with either option. Price is a huge deal breaker for tons of us, and is the main reason I’ve run aluminum wheels for so many years, and will continue to do so on most of my bikes. But for that extra cash, carbon wheels are more reliable, require less maintenance, ride better, and are slightly lighter. If you do choose to buy an aluminum wheelset, I highly recommend getting one with a lifetime warranty like the aluminum Reserve HD|30.

If you want wheels to fade into the background, and forget about maintenance for the most part, then you just can't beat a good set of carbon wheels. Our favorites are the Reserve HD|30 and any rim from the We Are One lineup is very hard to beat. Both options offer a lifetime warranty, snappy cornering, and a lighter weight than aluminum hoops.

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