How to choose MTB wheels: the complete mountain bike wheel guide

How to choose your mountain bike wheels? There are many questions to consider when looking for the best mountain wheels for you, going from the more straightforward, such as carbon or aluminium, to more complex ones, like hub design, rim shape, and spoke counts. What makes it all the more complicated is that there is no single right answer. It will all depend on what type of rider you are, where you ride and your budget. This short guide will walk you through some of the key things to think about to help find a great set of mountain bike wheels for you. 

Mountain bike wheels are made of a circular hoop called the rim, attached by spokes to a central body, called the hub. There are countless different combinations of rim, hubs and spokes to consider, which is why mountain bike wheels can be so difficult to understand. When looking for a new wheel, you need to consider the qualities of the rim, spokes and hub to find the best wheel for you.

Good wheels are one of the most important components on any mountain bike. After the frame and the suspension, nothing makes a bigger difference to how your bike feels, making a new set of wheels a great upgrade to consider (If you’re still deciding on the right bike setup overall, check out our guides on choosing between carbon and aluminium MTB frames, as well as hardtail vs full-suspension mountain bikes). Get a good set, and you will be gliding up the climbs and hammering the descents. Get it wrong, and you can feel like you’re dragging a boat anchor up the climbs, grimacing as you corner or, worse, left standing by the side of the trail with a pile of spokes and rim that used to be a wheel. The trick is to find a set that matches where and how you ride.

29-inch wheels can trace their history right back to the invention of the modern mountain bike. There is an argument that they would have been the original wheelsize for mountain bikes if the tyres had been available. As it went, 26-inch tyres were available, and for the sport’s formative years, all mountain bikes ran on 26-inch wheels. That has changed over the past 15 years or so as riders and bike manufacturers have embraced the many benefits of larger wheels. From being able to maintain speed better, roll over larger obstacles and offer more grip, the benefits have become undeniable.

For the most part, modern mountain bikes use the larger 29-inch size, but there are some exceptions. For smaller riders, who may struggle with the sheer size of a 29-inch wheel, a 27.5-inch wheel can make the bike easier to manage out on the trail. For riders who love their descents, having a smaller 27.5-inch wheel on the rear can help them go faster and ride harder on gnarly trails - this is called a mullet setup. If you would like to know more about wheel size, why it is so important and what might suit you best, we have written a guide on 29 vs. 27-inch wheels. We also took a deep dive into mullet setups.

When people talk about carbon vs aluminium wheels, they are talking about the construction of the rim. There are two main materials that mountain bike rims are made from: carbon and aluminium. Some people may tell you that the choice is simply one of budget, because carbon rims are more expensive, but there is a reason why our no-holds-barred World Cup race bike, the Sender, is equipped with aluminium wheels. After extensive testing, it was the material they found best suited to high-level competition.  

As a rule, carbon wheels are lighter and stiffer than aluminium wheels, but they also don’t take being hit hard quite as well. This tends to suit riders who want to climb fast and cover distance. Aluminium rims usually have more give in them, which helps mute more of the trail feedback than most carbon rims. They tend to be heavier, but alloy can take big hits better than carbon. This is why most gravity-focused riders, like our factory DH team, choose aluminium rims. 

For riders looking for lightweight efficiency and modern XC performance, the Canyon XC 30 CF Wheelset is Canyon’s first in-house engineered carbon MTB wheelset. Designed for the Lux and Exceed platforms, it combines lightweight carbon rims with a tuned lay-up that balances stiffness, compliance, and impact resistance for fast acceleration, precise handling, and demanding cross-country trails. 

These days, there is surprisingly little debate about mountain bike rim width, with riders ranging from World Cup cross-country racing to Red Bull Rampage-bound freeriders choosing 30mm wide rims. You may find some manufacturers going a few millimeters either side, but it is pretty widely accepted to be the ideal rim size for modern mountain bikes, no matter your riding style.

Tyre size has also stabilised, with most modern mountain bike tyres falling within the 2.25 - 2.5-inch range. Generally, cross-country racers tend to go on the narrower end of that spectrum, but even there, some riders run tyres as wide as 2.4 inches. From trail riding and up, 2.4 inches is the default, with only downhill and other hard-hitting riders venturing wider. You may still find some wider trail riding tyres, up to 2.6 or 2.8 inches, but the problem is that they add a disproportionate amount of weight, with the main benefit being comfort rather than performance.

Looking beyond the rim, there are some other key features to consider when looking for your next set of mountain bike wheels.

The advent of tubeless tyres has been one of the biggest developments for modern mountain bikes. They allow riders to run lower pressures, which are more comfortable, while avoiding punctures better than a tyre with an inner tube inside. We would always recommend getting tubeless compatible wheels, and all the mountain bikes we sell already come with them.  

Built into the rear hub is a device called the freehub body that allows the bike to roll along without the pedals turning, but connects again when you start pedaling to put the power down. This uses either a ratchet or a series of pawls to do this. To make a hub engage faster, manufacturers add more teeth to the ratchet or increase the number of pawls. This creates a trade-off, because to fit more teeth or pawls inside the hub, they need to make them smaller, which makes them less durable. This is why rider looking for performance may choose higher engagement hubs, while those focused on durability will take a lower engagement hub to last longer. 

How many spokes you have in your wheel makes a difference to how the wheel feels. A lower spoke count will make the wheel less rigid and more compliant, while a higher spoke count will make the wheel stronger and stiffer. In light of this, it may seem counterintuitive that cross-country riders use lower spoke counts, but they make up for this by running stiffer rims, because each spoke adds weight, so they use as few as possible, going down to 24 spokes. For downhill riders, the number is usually between 32 and 36 spokes per wheel as their wheels go through a lot greater forces in the corners, jumps and drops. 

Finding the best mountain bike wheels for you depends on thinking about the riding scenarios that matter most to you. There are four main areas to think about in mountain bike wheel performance: 

If climbing and acceleration are important to you, you need light wheels with fast-engaging hubs. This is where carbon fibre has the edge over aluminium, and why you find World Cup cross-country racers all riding on carbon fibre wheels. Quite simply, less weight is easier to get moving and climb with. By choosing:

The downside to a lightweight wheel is that it will be less durable. While many modern mountain bike wheels offer a fantastic strength-to-weight ratio, it is still true that the less material you have in your wheel, the less strength it can offer. This is why, for gravity-focused riders, weight is not one of their top priorities.  

Handling and control are one side of the stiffness equation for mountain bike wheels. When you come into a corner or technical section, you need a wheel that feels solid and predictable. If the wheel gives too much, you will find the bike starting to feel vague and, in the worst cases, squirming about underneath you, which can be quite unsettling. This means you need a wheel that is stiff enough to give you precise handling out on the trail. 

We talk about stiffness as an equation, because while having wheels that are very stiff and precise sounds like a good thing, there comes a point where too much stiffness has a downside. Wheels that are too stiff will feel very harsh and transmit a lot of vibration as you ride. Having a less rigid wheel helps reduce this trail feedback and will actually help you find traction. This quality is called compliance, and the trick is to find the balance between compliance and stiffness that suits your riding.

Thinking about your riding style and its particular demands is a great way to figure out what kind of wheels would work for you.  

In any kind of riding where you are pedalling against the clock and have significant climbing to tackle, keeping the weight down is a big priority. Having wheels that are also stiff, making them quick to respond when you put the power down, can be the difference between victory and defeat. For this you would want a light rim, a fast-engaging hub and a low spoke count. If your budget will stretch to it, we think a set of light carbon wheels would be ideal for this kind of riding, although there are also some great aluminium options that are more affordable, but a little heavier. This is why many bikes in our Lux cross-country range, except the budget-conscious entry-level models, comes specced with carbon wheels.  

For this kind of riding, and bikes like the Lux Trail or Neuron, we think weight is still a key factor, as climbing is such a big part of the riding experience. That said, durability is a bigger factor than in cross-country riding, as away from the race course, you might be taking some bigger hits. This balance is exactly why carbon wheels have become increasingly popular for modern downcountry MTB setups, where riders want a lightweight, responsive ride that still feels capable on rougher trails. We think a moderately light rim, carbon if you have the budget, with maybe 28 spokes, would be the ticket. Whether you opt for a fast-engaging hub would be a personal call, as quick acceleration is not as critical.  

Thinking about more gravity-fed parts of mountain biking, the focus shifts away from weight and quick acceleration to feel and durability. This is where aluminium wheels really shine - in fact, we specced our whole range of Spectral all-mountain and trail MTB bikes with aluminium wheels. For this kind of riding, they are stronger, offer great feel out on the trail and are more affordable. You want to look for a robust rim with a higher spoke count, between 28 and 32 spokes, and we’d recommend a lower engagement hub so you can spend more time riding and less time worrying about maintenance. 

Modern mountain bike wheels don’t need a lot of attention to keep rolling, especially if you pick the right pair for your style of riding. Before each ride, you should check your wheels for any obvious signs of damage, like impacts to the rim or broken spokes. Every six months, you should check the spoke tension. Once a year, you should check the hub to see if the bearings or freehub are showing signs of wear and replace if needed, although heavy users should do this every three months.  

Getting the right wheels for your bike can make a huge difference to your ride, and they can be one of the best upgrades for any mountain bike. Finding the right combination of hubs, spokes and rims for you and your riding can help make every ride more enjoyable. We hope this guide has helped you think through who you are as a rider and what kind of features you would need for the riding you do.  

If you are not sure what kind of rider you are and what sort of bike would suit you, we have a whole range of mountain bike buying guides for everyone, from beginners to aspiring downhill legends, to help you dive deeper into the sport. If you are not sure what sort of bike would suit you, our bike finder tool will take you through some easy questions about you and your riding to help you find the type of bike that is right for you. And we have our model comparison tool, if you’re finding it hard to choose between one model and the next.  

We hope this guide has helped get you rolling. See you out on the trails!