I’ve been using Parcours wheels for a couple of years now and really rate them. I’m on my 2nd pair as i migrated to Disc wheels recently. At approx £850 per pair they are way more attractive than Zipps for sure.
I would like to share my own experience, seeing this from an industry perspective:
First of all, my summary might be a bit “yes/no, white/black” but I work in a similar market like carbon for almost 20 years with 10+ years experience in Asia.
We work with fiber glass which is, to a certain extend, the “longer arm of the industry” e.g. the mass market. Carbon is more high-tech and expensive. But everywhere where you find large amounts of Carbon production usually is a 10-100 times bigger GRP production nearby.
We are Germans buying raw materials from around the world. We are a smaller market then wind but bigger than bicycles. We started our journey to the internationalization approx. 15 years ago. Meanwhile lots of things have changed.
China: China still has the mass market. There is not much intelligence, mostly you find cheap products. Although products for the western world are better quality, there is lack of R&D, lack of design and engineering. Ive seen very very often products simply just copied, even in expensive industrial nice markets. Scary, and even scarier - no improvement of the last decade! There is and there will be always a market for cheap. Given the high tolerances that products of high reputation have the copy usually is good enough for 99percent of the users. With other words, market leaders, especially in the central European or Californian market, define the 200+% industry benchmark. Even the chinese copy with short cuts is not necessarily breaking down immediately.
Taiwan: I call this best of both worlds. Western companies choose Taiwan decades ago and put there companies out there. All aluminium CNC cutting, welding, Carbon and any other “higher” tech raw material is present on this little island. Compared with the bigger brother all seems smarter, more efficient and more high-tech. Also Japan is using Taiwan a lot as cheap next door labor. At the end of the day, Taiwan (and to a certain extend Korea) have it all. Western R&D, asian labor.
USA: Generally best access to the market. Marketing and R&D are close to the costumer. US companies know their costumers and forecast like no other. No1 reason, no one else is doing it worldwide No2, big enough country to justify local marketing, advertising and promotions. Downside is the labor. Labor (with my european eyes) is a disaster nowadays.
Again, this is us in our niche market but Im in good contact with others and their productions, comes down to the same at the end:
China has to step up and get R&D and engineering (lot of it has also to do with the communistic background. No managers!! No decisions! Everyone expects to receive a command and a target and things will be fine)
US should invest in work force. College degrees like mechatronics are a good way, we need much more than that.
coming back to wheels:
I don’t really trust chinese wheels. Even worser, I don’t really trust US wheels. I would prefer taiwanese wheels/bikes/parts. Thanks good this is where 99percent of the market is anyway. 
After reading good reviews on ICAN wheels, I bought the 38 mm wheelset for 500 Euros including shipping to France and I am very happy about them.
Packaging was bomb proof and they looks nice, are quite light (i believe 1400 grams for wheelset) and so far ride nicely.
I did Ironman Hamburg with them and probably 2000km training.
Pp
Bought a pair of Gigantex wheels several years ago second hand. I replaced the bearings, just because, and have ridden them several thousand miles on some not so great roads here in the northeast with no trouble. I don’t ride the brakes going downhill, just to be safe. I don’t notice a huge braking difference between my aluminum Mavics, but I’m a little more careful now as I get older and don’t feel the need to go 50 downhill on a training ride, racing is different. What I’m saying is, nothing has blown up, delaminated, or gone out of round in thousands of miles.
good luck with your decision
Thanks to everybody for their advice. I ended up getting a set of HED Clincher wheels (55", alloy braking surface). These are just as heavy as my current training tires but they should give me a bit of an aerodynamic benefit and they look very nice. I paid $590 on eBay (included shipping) for them. I have not taken them out on the road yet but I am very excited to try them out and see how they ride. From your comments I think Chinese would have probably been OK but for less than $600 bucks I think the HED wheels give me a good peace of mind. I’ll post an update here once I have had a chance to ride them…
I bought a cheap set of ICAN wheels off of ebay. $330 cdn shipped to me. 50mm carbon clincher. came with the usual, rim tape, brake pads, spare spokes, crappy skewers. threw away the skewers and put a decent set in instead, and I was honestly amazed. I used to run zipp 404 tubulars and had very low expectations. Of course I’ve only had them for a couple months, but they’re a solid wheel with a decent weight and a killer price. I paid almost as much for the wheels as I did for the tires and tubes from my LBS.
Wayne
55 inches?
You should have purchased the tires and tubes from an online bike store in the UK.
99% of the performance at 25% of the cost.
In my experience, this is woefully incorrect.
But I’m also resigned that there is absolutely, positively no way those that purchase Chinese knockoffs will ever be convinced otherwise.
Hey,
Any evidence other than experience? its easy to say Zipps look better. Dont get me wrong just trying to hear from a guy that handles bikes on a daily basis
(I have Zipps Mavics, chinese wheels and a rear wheel that i built using vision hub and 80mm rim. Im actually waiting for a 80mm clincher pair)
99% of the performance at 25% of the cost.
In my experience, this is woefully incorrect.
But I’m also resigned that there is absolutely, positively no way those that purchase Chinese knockoffs will ever be convinced otherwise.
You would think if this were true (that the Chinese wheels are so bad) there would be tons of horror stories on the net-I cant find any??
I actually feel it’s more like 50% of the performance, at least for the ones that I have. Mine are 50mm Deep V which is a pretty old technology but when you are riding 650’s you can’t be too choosy.
On item #1 of your list of Cons. I have been researching and I haven’t really seen 1st-hand accounts of this happening. Is this still the case or is this remaining folklore from when Chinese wheels first started coming into the market years ago. I have seen one video of a wheel exploding on a dude. The video is at least 5 years old. All the other comments I have seen are “some dude posted…” this and that. Does anyone have any recent experiences or know of someone who has had a safety incident caused by poor quality Chinese wheels?
Not a Chinese wheel… used to ride a set of Farsports on my road bike… replaced with a set of HED Jet 6+. Great set of wheels that I didn’t spend much money on. In terms of the Farsports… they are 50mm/23mm wheel with Novatec hubs. They are light and stiff, stopped as good as any other carbon wheel I’ve ridden. No idea how they stack up aero wise and as pretty much anything Chinese… unsure about QC and customer service IF I needed it is going to be difficult.
The issue I had with them was trueness… not awful but I had them trued a few times as my road bike doesn’t have much clearance and brakes scrubbing irritate me. I still have them for spares but came upon a great deal for a set of HEDs.
I digress a little… I was in a pretty serious accident with a wheel failure… it was a Zipp wheel. Stuff happens… nothing is 100% but I ride Flo’s on my TT bike now. Nonetheless serious accident, back fractures, concussion, cuts, etc. with various medical expenses with a $$$ wheel failure.
You would think if this were true (that the Chinese wheels are so bad) there would be tons of horror stories on the net-I cant find any??
I’ve been riding a generic set this year with upgraded DT Swiss hubs and CX Ray spokes and they have been fine. I have a Zipp 404 hanging in my garage that came apart under normal use. I’m going to need some evidence to believe that Zipps are 4-5 times better.
I’ve been riding a generic set this year with upgraded DT Swiss hubs and CX Ray spokes and they have been fine. I have a Zipp 404 hanging in my garage that came apart under normal use. I’m going to need some evidence to believe that Zipps are 4-5 times better.
Same… except my moment of normal use was at almost 40mph. Honestly I think we both have our evidence.
55 inches?
Nope. Typo. They are 50 inches deep.
I have been looking at some myself. Last race I was at - I would say half of the deep carbon wheels were chinese no branded wheels.
My take on it:
You can buy the half million dollar Ferrari with exceptional customer service and quality control and be that awesome guy at the race and everyone will be impressed you can afford it and you know it is reliable
OR
You can buy the 1990’s Toyota Tacoma single cab that was made overseas with the dropped in Chevy 350 crate engine with 3 on the floor from a 90’s firebird and has some frankenstein axles and rear diffs - everyone will think you are a joke - the truck MIGHT blow up on the quarter mile track but it also might make the Ferrari look like a play toy.
Me? I like a little excitement in my life. I am going with the truck. It is worth it to rub it in the face of the Ferrari once I win. “Cute car, too bad I beat you”. It is also a laughable story if “Oh man, I am glad I had health insurance because I almost lost my leg when my truck blew up haha”
55 inches?
Nope. Typo. They are 50 inches deep.
… Errr… Nuther typo? 50 millimeters?
Nope. Typo. They are 50 inches deep.
… Errr… Nuther typo? 50 millimeters?
You haven’t seen a penny-farthing disc wheel yet?
You would think if this were true (that the Chinese wheels are so bad) there would be tons of horror stories on the net-I cant find any??Your post is a perfect example of what I’m talking about. Every time Chinese knockoffs are brought up, inevitably those for (and against) them create a false choice - normal function or complete failure. That’s a pretty low bar for success if one deems Chinese wheels sufficient simply because “I have been riding them for years and they haven’t failed”.
The fact is, most riders aren’t putting very much stress on their wheels. They don’t ride fast enough, brake enough, descend enough, or stress the wheel enough to approach conditions where wheels might fail. And as others have posted on the thread, buying Zipp (or whoever else) doesn’t make you immune to wheel failure.
But the statement I objected to was about performance, not safety. And in my limited experience, we tested a Chinese Zipp knockoff (40 to 50-ish mm depth) in the wind tunnel and found it performed worse than even stock options such as the Mavic Aksium. Undoubtedly, considering there are hundreds of knockoff options, it’s likely at least a few test welll. And it’s possible we just happened to test the one wheel that sucked.
But to believe that knockoffs provide 99% of the performance is to believe that the entire wheel manufacturing business, a business that employs very smart engineers who work very hard to improve performance, reliability, and aerodynamics, is a scam. I believe that is simply not the case.