Zipp adds Ultra Premium NSW line out of their Nest R&D lab and new 808 NSW wheels

QLD ones are better.

Meh. More open mold Chinese junk. I can build lighter, more aero wheels in my basement for $3. [ sarcasm ]

If the Firestrike/Showstopper brake track is really all that, I’d like to see it show up on their non-tri rims, like the 202.

Would much rather have a set of Enve 6.7 with DT240 hubs for a couple hundred less…

Pit: http://www.tour-magazin.de/technik/test_center/raeder/rennraeder/test-aero-rennraeder-2015-speed-contest-im-windkanal/a34659/fotostrecke/2590057/2089827.html
HEDs beating Zipps quite handedly. I hope someone does another category comparison with all of the new wheel designs, but that’s one of the more recent tests I’ve seen on-bike and with a (half) mannequin.

I think it’s entirely fair to criticize Zipp’s hubs, which simply do not have a great reputation. Along with the recall and past problems, they’ve made a series of questionable design decisions which have been remedied in later versions, which has resulted in 3? 4? new hub designs since they moved to 11 speed in late 2012. That doesn’t exactly inspire confidence that they’re not just throwing stuff at the wall and seeing what sticks. You telling people to only consider wheels 2 years or newer doesn’t speak well to the longevity of their designs considering the company has been around for 27 years.

All that being said, there are obviously a lot of Zipps out there, and the hubs are generally fine, if not a bit finicky. I never experienced issues, flexing or otherwise, and thought the bearing pre-load was easy enough to manage, but there are a lot of other hubs out there that seem to have gotten it right without having to muck around with the design every year or so.

I also have some criticisms of my HED Jets, and most other wheels I’ve had, it doesn’t mean they suck, it just means that there can and should be improvements made, you know, progress!

I do wonder where their claimed savings comes from. They downgraded the specs on the 808 Firecrest

CX-Rays: 2.0 – (0.9×2.2) – 2.0 mm
CX-Sprints: 2.0 – (1.25×2.25) – 2.0 mm

Josh (former Zipp engineer, now Silca owner) mentioned an 8W penalty when using round vs CX-Rays on 404s, the sprints aren’t as bad as round spokes, but also aren’t as narrow as CX-Rays (and slightly shorter in length due to the 808 depth), so how much of this gain, if any, is from them comparing their now downgraded wheels to this new wheel?

Are these using their ceramic bearings? If so, how much of the savings come from that? If not, why not, considering they’ve claimed 1.5-9W of savings depending on the condition of your current bearings.

Anyways, can’t wait for some of this stuff to eventually trickle down!

@MaraudingWalrus & @PsiSquared: This is my funny story about ENVE. Prior to a race that I was doing a few weeks ago, a rider that was currently on ENVE’s went storming to the Zipp tent trying to get some wheels for the race. Turns out his beautiful carbon brake track de-laminated while braking through a descent on the course he was about to race the next day. Good thing Zipp was there to help out. It was actually pretty entertaining watching this. So you keep trusting your ENVE’s, I’ll stick with my Zipps.

@Brad: It’s hard to draw any conclusions about the Hed Jet 6 compared to the Zipp 404 other than it came out ahead on one bike.

@Ale: yeah that one observation you made is obviously evidence of……….only what happened on one occasion. You’re going to need to go back to school if you think an N=1 observation is proof of anything. Kernel Flickitov has it right: any CF wheel will fail under the right conditions. You have no idea what abuse that Enve wheel had seen before that failure, just as you likely don’t know what abuse any given CF wheel has seen before failure, except in the case of your own wheels.