A well-priced wheelset for cross-country racers and lightweight trail riders

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Roval’s Control 29 Carbon wheels combine the brand’s carbon fibre Control SL rims with pocket-friendly DT Swiss 350 hubs to create a competitively priced and weighted set of mountain bike wheels aimed at privateer cross-country racers and riders looking for some fast, fancy hoops for their downcountry builds.

Our test set came in at 1,480g (690g front, 790g rear), which is more than acceptable for a wheelset costing just over £1,000. On the trail, the Controls feel great.

Roval is Specialized’s in-house wheel brand, and offers a range of wheels from road, gravel and triathlon through to cross-country, downcountry and trail.

At the centre of the wheels are DT Swiss‘ 350 hubs. These feature 28 straight-pull spokes, front and rear.

DT Swiss hubs are reliable operators. The ease with which freehub bodies can be switched is great – they simply pull off and push on, while access to bearings is also good.

The 350 hub uses the Ratchet freehub system, which does away with pawls, and instead uses two ratchets that key in to each other. This gives a 10-degree engagement angle. It’s not upgradeable to the higher-spec Ratchet EXP system, though.

These wheels come with both normal end caps and RockShox-specific torque caps for the front hub. Rotors attach via a six-bolt fitment.

The DT Swiss Competition Race spokes are heavily butted to save weight – around 70g per wheel, according to DT Swiss.

At the outside is the carbon Control 29 rim. This has an asymmetric profile, whereby the spoke holes are offset. It allows for better triangulation of the spokes over the hub, giving a stiffer build for the weight, and minimising spoke-tension differences on each side of the wheel.

Furthermore, by doing this, Roval uses the same spoke lengths throughout the wheel build, making maintenance that little bit easier.

The rim has a 29mm internal width, designed to work with the current crop of wider XC tyres. The rim wall has a width of 4mm, which is fairly wide. The idea behind this is to offer additional strength, resisting damage when hit with a sharp edge. It also helps dissipate forces during an impact, which, in theory, lowers the chance of pinch puncturing the tyre.

The rim comes with tubeless tape already installed, and a tubeless valve in place. A lifetime warranty is also offered.

On the trail, I found the Roval Control 29 Carbon wheels performed well, in both an XC and a lighter-weight trail context.

Installation and inflation proved easy. With push-on/pull-off axle end caps and freehub, getting the right setup for your bike is easy. There’s a bit of wobble in the end caps, which can be frustrating when trying to get the wheel in your fork quickly and is most noticeable with the torque caps in place.

Mounting tyres is a simple job. The central rim well is wide and deep enough to easily fit tyre beads, giving plenty of slack, while the rim itself is shallow, aiding the use of tyre levers if needed.

The wheels come pre-taped, and it’s a tidy job too. This helped with inflation, with no frustrating slow leaks. All the tyres I tried inflated with just a track pump and minimal exertion.

The rims are well shaped and, with an internal width of 29mm, they give plenty of volume to 2.3-2.5in rubber. This aids both grip and ride comfort, because lower pressures are possible, with a lower risk of puncturing. Thanks to this, and the broad rim wall, I’m yet to suffer any punctures while riding with these wheels.

This is handy, because Roval says these wheels aren’t compatible with rim inserts, which are designed to aid tyre stability and help further reduce punctures.

It’s worth noting that they have a system weight limit (rider, kit and bike combined) of 125kg. With a light build and 28 spokes, harder-charging or heavier riders might detect a little bit of twang, but keep them within their intended design confines of XC and fast trail riding, and I suspect the vast majority of riders will have no issue with their construction – I certainly didn’t.

The 10-degree engagement angle is good, if not the snappiest out there. Some riders prefer engagement angles down towards the 3-degree mark, because it gives quicker reactions to pedal inputs. On full-suspension bikes, there’s a trade-off that quicker engagements can exacerbate the feel of pedal kickback on hits, though. On a hardtail, I feel a faster engagement would be preferable.

Given their sub-1,500g weight, I feel the Rovals represent good value for money for carbon wheels.

A slightly posher, perhaps faster-engaging, rear hub wouldn’t go amiss, certainly if your bike isn’t prone to pedal kickback, but it’s hard to find fault with these wheels for the money.

Their construction is good, tyres blow up broad, offering excellent ride feel, and DT Swiss’ hub reliability is well known. As such, I’d recommend these wheels for XC and downcountry applications, assuming they fit your budget.

Tom Marvin is a technical editor at BikeRadar.com and MBUK magazine. He has a particular focus on mountain bikes, but spends plenty of time on gravel bikes, too. Tom has written for BikeRadar, MBUK and Cycling Plus, and was previously technical editor of What Mountain Bike magazine. He is also a regular presenter on BikeRadar’s YouTube channel and the BikeRadar podcast. With more than twenty years of mountain biking experience, and nearly a decade of testing mountain and gravel bikes, Tom has ridden and tested thousands of bikes and products, from super-light XC race bikes through to the most powerful brakes on the market. Outside of testing bikes, Tom competes in a wide range of mountain bike races, from multi-day enduros through to 24-hour races in the depths of the Scottish winter – pushing bikes, components and his legs to their limits. He’s also worked out that shaving your legs saves 8 watts, while testing aerodynamics in a wind tunnel. When not riding he can be found at the climbing wall, in his garden or cooking up culinary delights.

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