Zipp 353 NSW Tubeless Disc Brake Wheelset

The Zipp 353 NSW Tubeless Disc-brake wheelset is the lightest pair of tubeless disc brake wheels it has ever made, and it really is superlight. The fact that Zipp has managed to keep the weight low without losing stiffness is also impressive and means their performance is exceptional wherever you are riding. Hookless rims limit your tyre choices, though, and the price is huge.

The wheels certainly look distinctive with their Sawtooth profile, which uses a series of fin-shaped hyperfoil nodes alongside the new HexFin ABLC dimples to improve airflow and, according to Zipp, reduce aerodynamic drag at all yaw angles.

> Buy now: Zipp 353 NSW wheelset for £2,999 from Certini

Exactly how much difference all of this makes is difficult to measure outside of a wind tunnel, and in the real world the only data I can give you is the size of the wow (or should that be WOW!) that left my mouth every time I stamped on the pedals while using these wheels.

At just 1,340g including tubeless tape and valves, their response levels are phenomenal. From a standing start they just take off and you are at cruising speed pretty much instantly, or kick for a sprint and they take off like a cheetah with its tail on fire!

On the climbs it just feels like there is nothing there between your tyres and the frame. If you are coming from a set of wheels weighing 1,500-1,600g then the difference just feels massive.

Now, any brand can make a light wheel. The tough bit is keeping high enough levels of strength and stiffness, something that Zipp has achieved. The 353 NSWs don't suffer from lateral flex at all – well, nothing that could be picked up by my body anyway.

The rear wheel is really tight when riding hard out of the saddle, and it's the same at the front as I rocked the bike from side to side. Heavy braking and steering didn't cause any problems either.

On the flat the rim profile comes into play, and I must say the 353 NSWs feel quicker than their 45mm depth would have you expect. Above 20mph they feel as quick as wheels around 58-65mm deep, cutting through the air smoothly and making it easy to maintain your speed even as you hit small climbs or false flats.

They don't come with the trade-offs of some deep-section wheels either, in terms of the handling in blustery conditions. Ride past a gateway on a windy day and even with a full-on side wind I never found the Zipps to be battered around.

On windy days you can feel some pressure on the rims as the breeze pushes against them, but overall I found the 353s to be generally unflustered and hard to be pushed off their line.

It's the same with cornering. Sometimes deep-section wheels can feel like they 'stall' when changing direction at slower speeds, like on a tight roundabout, giving the front end of the bike an almost cumbersome feel. The Zipps never feel like that. They seem to maintain their agility regardless of weather or road conditions at any speed.

This makes them a quality set of all-rounders for your road bike: aerodynamics and speed on tap, but without any of the drawbacks of running deep sections all of the time.

For this kind of money you'll be wanting a top-level build quality, and that appears to be the case here: I found this set of 353s behaved very well, true straight out of the box and remaining so throughout testing.

Tubeless only

Like many new road wheel designs, the 353's rim is wide at 25mm internally and 30mm externally, making them compatible with wider tyres. I ran them with both 28mm and 30mm tyres, both of which created an ideal shape that saw a seamless transition between tyre and rim.

The tyres you run will have to be tubeless, though, as the 353s use hookless rims where you don't get the lip running around the edge of the rim for the bead of the tyre to hook under. It can sound a bit daunting just relying on the pressure of the tyre to secure the bead against the rim, but in reality it works fine.

More and more of the gravel wheels that are coming in for testing are using tubeless technology and I've had no issues with low-pressure tyres coming away from the rims.

Most manufacturers give a top pressure for tubeless tyre/hookless rim combinations of 75psi which is probably quite low for some roadies. Zipp has a table of tyres from various brands that are compatible with the 353's 25mm-wide rim and basically you won't be running anything narrower than 28mm. That's a bit of a drawback for those who, like me, like to run 25mm race tyres (at higher pressures).

> 9 things they don’t tell you about tubeless tyres

Both sets of tyres I tried fitted quickly and easily, although I did need to resort to using an Airshot to get a blast of air to push the bead of the tyre against the rim as quickly as possible.

The rims are made from uni-directional carbon fibre and are laced to Zipp's Cognition 2 hubs by 24 aero spokes front and rear. That's quite a high spoke count for a wheel of this weight and style, but it adds to the long-term strength and durability, and obviously hasn't affected the weight.

Zipp has gone for external nipples, which is good to see as it makes maintenance easier, and should you ding a rim while out riding at least you can get them as close to true as possible at the side of the road.

The Cognition V2 hubs are Zipp's lightest and it claims they roll efficiently because of their Axial Clutch V2 mechanism, which has 54 points of engagement. This means that pick-up is instantaneous and you can certainly feel that when trackstanding at the lights and then giving a quick push on the pedals to move off quickly.

The bearings spin and spin with barely any resistance at all, and though freewheeling brings with it a slight 'buzz', they are nowhere near as loud as some wheels.

Freehub options are SRAM/Shimano or XRD.

Value

A brand new set of these 353s will set you back £3,376, which is a huge lump of cash, though not far off the similar looking Princeton CarbonWorks Wake 6560 wheels that I tested back in 2021, which are now £3,399.99. The Wakes are deeper than the Zipps, and about 200g heavier.

Campagnolo's Bora Ultra WTO 45 Disc Brake Wheels are also impressively light at 1,420g and Liam was very impressed. They are cheaper than the Zipps, too, at £2,813.99.

> Buyer’s Guide: 10 of the best road bike and gravel bike wheels

If you want wide and deep and don't have the kind of disposable income that these three wheelsets require, you'd be silly not to take a look at Scribe's Elan range.

I recently tested the Wide+ 42-D wheels which have a 42mm-deep rim and a 30mm external width. Internally they are 21mm, which means you can use them with 25mm tyres, and the hooked rim will accept standard clinchers too. The weight is 1,400g including tape, and the price just £1,190.

They aren't quite as quick as the Zipps, but if you can cope with that you'll have around two grand left in your pocket.

Conclusion

Being so stiff with such a low weight, the 353 NSWs offer a very impressive performance. It's a hard price to justify, though, particularly as you're also limited to tubeless tyres only (and 75psi) and a minimum width of 28mm; there are still some of us who would like to pair a superlight road wheelset with 25mm race tyres run at higher pressures.

Verdict

Impressive performance but rather overshadowed by the price and limitations