What are your goals?
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Materials and rim profiles differ so check to see what is most suitable for your intended use (Pic Media24)
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Make sure you know what you want to achieve before you buy new wheels, or you'll find you have the wrong tools for the job (Pic: Cannondale-Garmin)
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Shimano's Dura-Ace 9000 C24 wheelset offers excellent value for money if you're after some climbing wheels
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Mavic's Cosmic Carbone SLS wheels offer an aero advantage for a comparatively cheap price
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Rim type and choice are an important part of selecting which wheels you want to buy
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Better wheels have better hubs, and those hubs will have smarter bearings like Campagnolo's USB
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Tubeless systems have their advantages and disadvantages
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For most people, a wheel upgrade offers genuine bang for your buck
What are your goals?
Slightly existential as it may seem, the road to a new wheelset starts with you. And, specifically, what you want to achieve on the bike.
If you want to break a 10-mile time trial pb, getting a shallow, light set of climbing wheels is counter-intuitive and, similarly, if you want to head uphill quickly, grabbing a set of deep section wheels adds a lot more weight into the rims that you’re going to move up a mountain.
With a budget of between £400 and £800, you’re almost certainly looking at a set of mid to high-end aluminium clinchers focused, depending on what your goals are, towards either lowering weight for climbing or adding some aero benefit.
To be honest, any carbon wheelsets you can find at this price point (barring anything in a sale, obviously) is likely to be very low end with more than a few concessions made in order to hit the price point. Carbon isn’t everything, and we’d definitely go for a set of highly developed alu wheels over a set of budget carbon rims every time.