Shimano WH-6800 Ultegra wheels

Shimano's Ultegra-level WH-6800s are good all-round wheels for training and racing. They're strong, and tubeless-ready.

Given the jump to 11-speed for Ultegra, and the associated change in freehub design, Shimano had to produce a new pair of Ultegra-level wheels and the WH-6800s are the result. They have an all-alloy construction with 16 bladed spokes at the front and 20 at the back; they're radially laced on the front wheel and straight pull with a two-cross pattern to the rear.

The hubs feature Shimano's angular contact bearings, labyrinth seals and tool-free bearing adjustment, and they have a wide-flange design to improve stiffness. As susual, Shimano use a steel freehub body for durability rather than saving weight with an alloy one. The rims are tubeless-ready (you get valves with the wheels), with no drilling for the spokes in the rim bed, and the rear rim is asymmetric to even out the spoke forces a bit. The braking surfaces are machined for more progressive stopping. The WH-6800s arrived true, and stayed that way throughout testing.

Before you get them on the bike, the first thing that you notice is the lack of spoke holes in the rim bed, which should make sealing a tubeless tyre a whole lot easier – as there's no faffing about with rim tape – and replacing a spoke a good deal harder. The second thing you notice is that the well of the rim is quite narrow compared to a standard rim design. Most of the time that's not a problem but I found fitting a tight tyre – where you have to push the bead down into the well of the rim to get the tyre on – was more difficult than normal because of the lack of space.

Once tyres were fitted and the wheels fitted to the bike, the WH-6800s were very well behaved. I've found other wheelsets with a non-drilled rim bed to be laterally stiff, and these Shimano wheels are certainly that. There's very little deflection at the brake blocks when you lean the bike into a corner or put some watts through the pedals; it was very rare that I managed to eke any brake rub out of them. When you do want the brakes to make contact, slowing yourself down is a predictable business in all conditions.

The freehub is a fairly standard Shimano unit. That means it's steel, so there's no danger of your cassette cutting into it. It's fairly quiet, too, and the rotation to engagement is a bit more than you find with some other wheel brands. It might be a minor disadvantage in a race, but other than that it's unlikely to make any difference.

I didn't have any issues with the wheels going out of true, in spite of the fact that I lent them to Liam Glen to crash in the mountains. That episode did manage to put a bit of play into the front bearings, though. If you loosen off the axle with a 5mm allen key in each end, you can tweak the cone position by hand which is a simple enough job.

Overall the WH-6800s put in a good performance. They're not the lightest you can buy for the money but they're well built and stiff, and good for anything up to a race. At the recommended retail price of £329 they'd be a very decent upgrade to the stock wheels on a mid-level road bike. If you shop around you can get them for a fair bit less than that though, which makes them a good buy.

Verdict

Stiff and reliable tubeless-ready training and racing wheels. Not flash, but perform very well.