I can't find it right now, but thought saw somewhere before that watts saved for going from a full round bar setup with lots of handlebar tape and no hidden cables to a "good" aerobar and stem combo with tape ending just after the hoods "bare tops" was almost on par with a savings of an aero wheelset.

Maybe I'm wrong, but thought I had heard that.

Wow, that's an impressive savings!

Also, that's pretty economic considering the cost of wheels v cost of handlebars!

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If you wear gloves when you ride this is a pretty aero choice:

https://bikerumor.com/...ngs-tapeless-design/

I have the Easton EC70s aero handlebar and am very happy with it. Not sure what the difference between that and the 90 is other than it's a touch heavier.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/324294663881

I heard the same thing from an interview with the Specialized guy who does the “Win Tunnel” videos.

Like the OP, I’ve mainly been riding my road bike since COVID, most recently with a Bianchi Infinito CV that I bought a few weeks ago. Stunning bike, very comfortable, and a great complement to my Cervelo S Series aero road bike, which has a much more aggressive fit.

+1 on the knockoffs. I've bought 2 from Aliexpress of this exact design. The exact model I bought is no longer available (changed to this model), but I wouldn't hesitate to go the same route again. Got some 400mm for Summer's roadie and 420mm for my own. They're sturdy and look great.

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I have been eyeing RXL bars - https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07TXF3DR9/
Anyone used them? They look real good and have a ton of good reviews on Amazon.....

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Next races on the schedule: none at the moment

Nothing to add about the bars, but the wheels look great on the bike. Were they worth it? I'm seriously debating getting some

Anyone with experience around bontrager integrated vs their aero xxx + xxx stem?

Going to order an Emonda soon and trying to decide between the two.

The one piece comes stock with SLR but I’m going SL Pro and upgrading a couple things.

I have these, not installed yet (currently have the S-works Aerofly II)

The Sacra can be installed with bar tape and comes with bar plugs. They are very stiff and very light. I got the widest option and they are just 209g. FYI, the company closed, but if you message them on Facebook they will still sell you one since they have stock.

Note, they have a 100mm drop, which is likely less than any other bar you'll find.

OP, the EC90 is really nice and there are always bonus points for matching. I would recommend the EC90, Sacra, or S-Works for non-integrated. If you are considering integrated, then Vision is a nice option. Farsport F1 may be the best bang for the buck, for integrated. Lighter than Vision, Black Inc, and others, while also being cheaper.

If someone recommends Chinese knockoffs, what I hear is "I dont wear a seat belt and I haven't died yet." For such a critical critical component I'd prefer to be 99.99% sure I won't break my teeth instead of 95% sure.

I'm a little confused. Isn't the EC90 a Chinese knockoff?

I have used a few different aero bars over the past five years and I have been very impressed with Enve aero bars. I used them with Di2 and they worked great for routing. Highly recommend.

I'm pretty sure he's referring to the real, expensive ones.

EC90 is also a Chinese brand of bicycle components.

Anyone knows how I could source one of these handlebars? Looks to be an one-off, but if it's available, I'd like one in 38 or 40 cm width

I was referring to the actual Easton ones. Not the Chinese knock offs :-)
Sorry for the confusion.

Also, lots of great advice here to work my way though. Thanks everyone!

And for someone who asked about the wheels -I’m a believer. They’re definitely faster. No regrets buying them so far. (Though they are tubular so I’ve got to figure out how to deal with that before I NEED to deal with that!)

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Carry a razor blade to cut the tire off when you get a flat.

I did mention "matching" in response to OP having Easton wheels. Also, if I was referring to the knockoff then the last part of my comment wouldn't make sense either.

I got the 90s, LOVE them.

70 is the same shape, just a different print and slightly heavier.

I covered up my top with the super thin silca nastro aero bar tape to give good forearm grip while riding with invisible tt bars since you obviously don't wrap the aero tubing ;)

Love it.

From an aesthetic standpoint I am all for aero carbon bars. That said they are no where near the upgrade of moving to carbon wheels and its a big cost for limited benefit. The differences in weight, stiffness and comfort between high end alloy bars and/or or stems and carbon versions is negligible and really comes down to a personal preference about shapes. For example I would honestly be shocked if you would notice the difference between the Zipp SL-70, SL-70 Aero and Course SL-70 in a blind test. For me any advantages of going carbon are outweighed by the practical benefits of alloy bars. I don't have to be as concerned about torque or banging the bars around a bit during transit. I try an take care of my equipment but sometimes a bike gets knocked over and I damaged a set of carbon bars on my TT bike under these circumstances. Alloy is just a bit more robust in surviving knocks and bumps.

I too would rather stick with alloy bars. However, your post makes no mention of aerodynamics; just appearance, weight, comfort, stiffness, and cost. While light and attractive are preferable, I really care about 4 things in this order: safety, comfort, drag & cost. The safety aspect is probably debatable, but I think I'd rather alloy bars in that respect. I think they're less likely to sustain significant damage or have manufacturing defects without you noticing. Comfort will be very user specific so no point getting into any details here. There is a lot of potential for drag reduction over conventional round bars, and while hydroformed alloy tubes are being shaped far more extensively now than in the past, carbon still offers more opportunity to optimise shape. I would expect you could reasonably easily use an aerodynamic handlebar to outperform deep section wheels when calculating performance gain versus cost.

The marketing data on the aero savings of aero handlebars makes them seem worth it.

Before I've only ever had round topped aluminum bars on my bikes. The couple of carbon bars that I have tried (a lightweight, round topped, and an aero flat topped) were much flexier. It's nice when you are cruising in the drops as it acts like suspension, but you definitely have to get used to it for sprinting!

Yeah, pretty much this.

Savings of going from a round top section to an aero top section is about the same as going from something like a front wheel going from Flo30/Zipp 101 to a Flo60/ Zipp 404/ Jet 6.

So not quite there wrt watts saved by an entire wheelset, but that cost/saving ratio really is a lot better than what wheels provide.

A decent round handlebar is $75; a decent aero road bar is $300; watt saving is ~5. $225 for 5 watts

A decent 30 mm wheelset is ~$550; a decent 60 mm all-carbon wheelset is ~$1300 (I'm thinking Flo here). $750 for 8 watts. Gets a lot more expensive if one were buying other brands.

Agreed - the aero gains from an aero handlebar are real, which get even better if you don't put bar wrap on the tops and hide all the cables. Whether it's worth the cost is up to the individual. I wouldn't buy a carbon bar for weight savings though.

I installed RXL carbon aero road bike bars on my road bike 2 years ago. Yes, I'm aware of the risks and total lack of customer service when you buy something like this - it's literally hope for the best, but get ready to lose all your money if something goes wrong.

That said, my carbon bar has had zero problems. Still looks new and really sharp, structurally intact, and subjectively slightly more comfortable. I actually wasn't as worried about the watt savings since I've got all the cables still running all over, but I do use the internal cable routing of the bars.

Not sure what pricing is now, but back when I got the bar, the next cheapest carbon bar was north of $250, and I think I paid around $40 for the RXL.

I ended up putting RXL XL base+aerobars on my TT bike as well, which have also worked totally fine, although it's not as position-adjustable as the top-end ones, and I had to make my own aerobar pad replacements since RXL didn't sell replacements.

I just built a Allez Sprint road bike and chose Profile Design's DRV/Aeroa aluminum bars in 36cm/105 drop. They retail for about $85.

To me, the oval cross-section and the narrowness were key factors for comfort and aero, with the shallow drop being a slight bonus.

I don't particularly buy that narrow makes it harder to breathe or is any less comfortable, and I'm 6' tall. The shallow 105mm drop also works out well because I'm already running a pretty aggressive stack height.

I probably won't be benchmarking these in any rigorous way, but I think the narrowness and slight oval top, price, and aluminum make it punch way above its price point, since my next choice would have been an Enve SES Aero Road bars at $400. I think if your bars aren't narrow, you aren't even in the aero game...

I have 3T Aerotundo LTD's in 38cm on my Blue AC-1 and put bar tape only on the drops not on the top. They came in 203 grams. I have 3T Areonova LTD on my Litespeed T3 disc and they came in at 192 grams in 38cm. The feel faster but so do the 38mm carbon aero rims I ride on both bikes. While the Blue AC1 is a more aero frame and I usually ride faster on it, I just love the ride of my Litespeed T3 disc. I just ordered some 55mm are rims from Farsports to get the T3 closer to the AC1 in speed.

When companies quote ~5 watts for an aero bar vs a round bar they are talking about testing without the rider at 40-45 kph (https://www.bikeradar.com/...r-aero-road-bars-be/). I have never seen substantiated claims that the savings of the bar are anywhere near that once you put a rider on the bike. Conversely wind tunnel testing of deeper wheel underestimate their real-world saving because you can't account for the watts to spin equation in the tunnel.

Someone else more knowledgeable will have to chime in here, but I recall reading that the effects are additive, which means that the effect observed for component alone largely carries over to a system of component + bike frame and to component + bike frame + rider. Having said that, whether "component" is applicable to all components or whether drop-style handlebars is one of the exceptions, I'm not exactly sure, but it does seem that handlebar aero top shape is not one of the exceptions, and this at least appears to be confirmed by at least one other source.




Even for Trispoke wheels (e.g. HED 3+), the number I see quoted for watt-to-spin is ~2-3 W per wheel; I also recall reading that this effect is not as large for traditional spoke wheels. In fact, when comparing solely the windtunnel sweeps of a Trispoke vs something having similar depth, even the low-yaw CdA of the Trispoke will underperform by ~1 W relative to the traditional deep section, but the Trispoke edges the latter by ~1-2 W overall after having power to spin effects accounted. I could only infer from this that the power-to-spin for a traditional spoke deep section is nominal at best, as it takes only 2-3 W of additional savings from the Trispoke to make the Trispoke better overall (in the process overcoming 1 W deficit on pure CdA terms and then being sufficiently better to be another 1-2 W overall).

So unless if you can cite the difference in the respective watt-to-spin numbers for 30 mm deep sections and 60 mm deep sections, I'm going to assume that this difference is going to be no more than 2 W per wheel or 4 W per wheelset (and I think even that's way too generous).

So overall, we have $750 for 12 watts for the wheelset, vs $250 for 5 watts for the handlebar (assuming speed of 48 kph).

Which bars did you end up getting?

I currently have a 44cm S-Works bar installed and bought a 42cm Sacra Ace, which has a wider flare and thus has the same width at the drops.

Neither will fit in the Premier box with bars installed, so I'm now looking at getting a narrower bar. Probably something with minimal to no flare so that I don't need to get something very narrow at the hoods.

BigBoyND wrote:

If someone recommends Chinese knockoffs, what I hear is "I dont wear a seat belt and I haven't died yet." For such a critical critical component I'd prefer to be 99.99% sure I won't break my teeth instead of 95% sure.

To expand on this point I was sold a bill of goods on what I thought were proper 3T bars when in fact they weren't. My gut said the price was too good, but I bought anyways.







This happened during a road race on a gravel section where I chose poorly and rode behind someone that was hitting every pothole. I did my best to avoid them but riding that close it was tough. took two rough bits to lead to this. Not saying all knockoffs or openmold is crap, but these were. Luckily, I didn't go down, but my race was over on the first lap.

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Forget these... you need the new ones from that Dutch company. I've been doing Zipp aero for years, but might switch to these because riding off the front on the hoods is my only move.

E

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Mendeldave wrote:

And for someone who asked about the wheels -I’m a believer. They’re definitely faster. No regrets buying them so far. (Though they are tubular so I’ve got to figure out how to deal with that before I NEED to deal with that!)

I love these wheels. I feel like they're often overlooked and really shouldn't be. They're bombproof, fast, match up well with wider tires, and if you go TLR no rim strip needed as the nipples are like rivet nuts. I have the TLR deals on my Felt Aero Road and went with matching stem and bar. I like the combo.

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I would def bang my knees into these, unfortunately.

Also looks quite uncomfortable for Sphinx position. But if the do classic round bend for the drop shape, i may be interested.

ETA: anyone has a link to the company website? I may just commission them to do an one-off road bar.

I put some 3t ergo nova on my giant tcr and really like them. They are semi-aero (don't tape the tops), integrate cable routing, and also went narrower than the stock 44cm bars. Dropped 100g in the process as well. I like aero bars but think they also need to match the aesthetic of the bike as well... i.e. a huge profile aero bar on a more traditional shaped bike looks a little weird.

Yeah, I would be banging my knees too. Bike would be useless if I have to get out of the saddle for any reason. Also, I think those thing run 1500€

No website but an article covering them

https://www.cyclingnews.com/news/speeco-breaks-the-mould-with-crazy-handlebar-concept/

ETA: seems like Google works: https://www.speeco.tech/...eak-away-handlebars/

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echappist wrote:

ETA: anyone has a link to the company website? I may just commission them to do an one-off road bar.

https://www.speeco.tech/abb-aero-break-away-handlebars/

Thanks, @LAI & @RKW.

I just reached out. The inner retrogrouch in me really wants an aero road bar in a classic round drop and 38 cm width.

Nothing yet -- the Easton EC90 aero I was leaning toward seems to be out of stock everywhere, so I'm sort of in a holding pattern. :-(

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That's a sick build! I really like it :-)

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Thank you! It took me a bit to get it just right, but adding the Easton bits really completed the look.

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Something to consider long term safety wise for alloy bars is corrosion from sweat. If you don't routinely remove your bar tape and do a solid cleaning, I've heard of some bars failing from that.

I run a Selcof aero road drop bar with an aero stem that matches. Looks and feels great. Little bit of skateboard tape on top to rest the forearms on for a new position on long solo rides.

I've heard if you ride an aero road bike with round bars, you're losing more in those round bars than you gained from going with an aero road bike. It hits a lot of the cleanest up front air that matters a lot.

That there is a good reason to change your tape out at least yearly.

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