This is going to sound obvious, but wheels are the most important part of a bicycle, after all it wouldn’t be a bi-cycle if it didn’t have a minimum of two wheels right? However the humble wheelset is often over looked when buying a bike. The shiny flamboyant (or drab, your choice obvs) paint job is the first thing you see right before you check out the gears and brake groupset that is on your potential purchase. Well, here’s the thing, bike manufacturers know this and so a fancy paint scheme and a chi-chi rear derailleur are added to turn the buyers head. The reality is the hidden bits, the bottom bracket, the finishing kit (handlebars, stem, seatpost etc) are never going to be more then functional unless you are spending a LOT of money. This is fine, all these parts are easily replaceable or upgradable in the future lifetime of bike ownership, they get the job done to start you off.

Unfortunately this lower standard of component also extends to those very important hoops that are your interface with the terrain you are riding on (apart from tyres, again, easily upgradeable when they wear out) and this is a shame as a good set of wheels can really improve the ride of a bicycle. Most original equipment wheels will come with basic bearings, heavy hubs and rims and may or may not be tubeless compatible should you choose to run without inner tubes.

So one of the first things I’d suggest you upgrade on a bike is the wheelset but this is going to be more expensive than swapping out a saddle or handlebars, not everyone is made of money so what you need to look for is affordability, build qualilty, ease of maintenance and ride characteristics.

Most of those wheels that come on a new bike will have been put together on a wheel building machine, these are wonderous things that literally take minutes to go from a set of hubs, spokes and rims to a fully built wheel and there maybe a cursory quality control check at the end of that production line but they will have been built to a price and will be nowhere near the quality or have the attention to detail afforded to them that a set of hand built wheels do. But hand built wheels cost mega bucks…dont they?

CES sport came to my attention when they followed me on instagram, I’ll admit it was the first I’d heard of the company and I did a bit of internet searching and read their bio and saw that after supplying wheels to the triathlon community they had branched out into gravel with their “Graean” wheelset. Unusual name you think to yourself, well not if you hail from Wales, which is where CES Sport is based “Graean” is the Welsh word for Gravel! I messaged Joe, the founder of the company and asked if he was willing to send a pair of wheels for review, with the usual caveat that It would be a honest review and that given the state of my local trails the wheels were not going to get an easy life. Joe was fully confident in the wheels and sent a pair out to me.

I asked that the only thing they should come with was tubeless valves as I intended to mount my own tyres. this is because I have a working knowledge of how those tyres behave so as not to muddy the water of the wheel review by getting used to a new tyre’s handling characteristics. I added tubeless tape, sealant and a pair of WTB Resolutes and then swapped rotors and cassette from my usual wheels, but before this I weighed both wheels (with valves) and they came out at 1670g. exactly the weight claimed on the CES Sport website, this was a first for a review!

There’s a choice when you buy the wheels of having Bitex hubs or DT Swiss 350 hubs, I let Joe choose these and they came with the DT Swiss. These hubs ran smoothly throughout the test period although they did freak me out a little as I’m used to the loud buzz of Hope hubs and the DT Swiss were near silent. Talking of which, these deep section 35mm rims were also silent. A lot of deep section carbon road rims emit a frankly horrific rumble on tarmac that you can hear from miles away. (how you can ride with that noise I do not know) maybe it’s the higher volume tyres on a gravel bike that quiet them down but either way I was relieved at this characteristic.

The rims are 25mm across internally and 32mm across externally. My 42mm tyres seated first time with a track pump and sat with a pleasing round profile. The rims are not hookless so you are not confined to a few compatible tyres. They are built with Sapin j-bend spokes and brass nipples….yes! This may not mean anything to you but it ensures the wheels are easy to maintain, spokes are easy to source if you break one and the nipples are external. Too many wheelsets have fancy, hard to find proprietory bladed spokes. They have aluminium nipples that can corrode (react with the steel spoke) and break and the nipples are sometimes hidden in the rim meaning its a tyre off scenario just to true a wheel. This approach by CES is to be applauded, it may add a few grams but I’d rather have ease of maintenance any day.

So on paper they sound good but how did they ride? Well I did not give them an easy life at all. My local trails are already hub deep in mud in places, soft ground and bridleways heavily used by our horsey friends see to this so they’ve had a baptism of fire mud. Mix this with a liberal scattering of leaves and a close fitting front mudguard and this saw the rim walls scaped with all sorts of trail detritus. I’m writing this in the garden now looking at the wheels drying in the pathetic bit of sun we have today after being washed and they look absolutely unscathed…..apart from a slight peel on a sticker, I’m told though that this is the demo wheelset and the stickers will be different on production rims.

The wheels are noticably stiffer than my usual aluminium rimmed wheels, out of the saddle flinging the bike from side to side to try and flex them there was no tyre rub on that close fitting mudguard, something that is very noticable on my normal wheels. It gives you the feeling that all the effort you put on the pedals is being transfered into forward motion. I did drop the pressures of the tyres by a couple of psi as at 32-35 on really rocky ground it did become bumpy but that seemed to do the trick and they became as comfortable as my usual wheels but without any squirmy feeling.

When you ride a wheelset for the first time after its been built the spokes tend to ping and bang a bit as they seat and you should check for trueness, these wheels through did not do that. This I put down to attention to detail from the builders. This is the difference between those bog standard wheels that come on your new bike and a set of hand built wheels, someone has taken the time to check their work and taken pride in doing so. Yes, the components are off the shelf, the rims are almost certainly built to spec in China (the DT Swiss hubs almost certainly are) but here they are chosen for a job rather than the price point being the be and end all, the fact that this set of wheels come in at an affordable, compared to other carbon wheels, price of less than £1200 (less than £950 for the other hubs) makes them stand out of the crowd.

The CES Sport Graean Carbon wheelset rides and works well, They are easy to maintain, are comfortable but still stiff and with the build quality and ease of tubeless set up I can’t think of a downside……oh no wait, If they had a stealthier sticker they’d be spot on, I guess thats the triathlon influence!

you can find more details on the CES Sport website here (not an affiliate link)

Checkout the video review of the wheels below, If you like or dislike this video please take the time to subscribe to my YouTube channel. It costs nothing but makes a huge difference to me