Burly alloy wheelset targeted at the EWS

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Halo’s Vortex MTC Enduro wheels are a burly option, with a high overall weight, but matched with properly wide rims front and rear.

Halo also makes slightly lighter, yet still enduro-rated, wheels.

The MTCs are hand-built and have a fast pickup hub at the back, which helps with snappiness. They also have the option to add coloured decals.

The alloy rim has a true 33mm internal width, making these the widest pair of wheels I had on test. This should mean plenty of volume for your wide enduro-focused tyres, adding grip, stability and puncture protection front and rear.

Halo says they’re good for up to 2.8in rubber.

The internal architecture of the rim bed differs from all the other wheels in my test. Instead of a central well, roughly 10 to 12mm wide, and broad rim shoulders, the central well is squared off and spreads across nearly the full breadth of the rim.

Though the outer diameter of the wheels is one of the shallowest, so is this central well, and as such I did find it tricky to fit tighter tyres, especially without tyre levers. Fortunately, the shallow rim wall makes getting levers over the wall easy.

The rim comes with tape installed and it was airtight from the off.

Valves are included, but you’ll be poking them through the rim tape yourself – they’re nicely made anodised items that look good, if that matters to you.

Each wheel has 32 double-butted spokes and the spoke nipples are mounted asymmetrically in the rim, to help get the spoke angles as equal as possible around the hub. They’re laced up in a two-cross pattern at the front and a slightly stiffer three-cross at the rear.

The hubs have a good wide diameter flange that’s milled to save a bit of weight.

My wheels came with Center Lock hubs, though I also had a pair of neat Halo six-bolt adaptors, which worked well with the wheels.

The freehub has 120 points of engagement, giving a small 3-degree engagement angle. Getting to the rear bearings requires cone spanners, and I wasn’t able to easily pop the front axle caps off with just a simple tug.

Though you may well have a couple of kilos of tyre hanging off your rim, the added weight of these hoops over the lightest on test is subtly noticeable when you’re really wanting to get the power down and speed up.

However, outside of back-to-back testing, it’s the speed at which the rear hub engages that’ll actually influence how the wheels feel when turning the pedals. And, with that short 3-degree engagement angle, it’s a very positive feel.

The buzz is fairly loud, if that’s your thing, so you won’t be stealthily approaching people if you like to ride incognito.

What was noticeable in testing was that the Halos have one of the firmest rides in the test. Harsh would be an unfair description, but if you want a soft, subtle feel as you rally over rocks and roots, you’ll want to look elsewhere.

They don’t crash over obstacles, as such, but they do have a very direct, stiff character. This feels good when pushing hard through corners, because there’s little flex, but they won’t mask a fork that’s in need of a service, nor be all that forgiving on a hardtail.

Hard-chargers and heavier riders may well appreciate their stout nature because they feel far less likely to bend and buckle under higher loads, giving plenty of confidence when pummelling through rocks. I’d also wager that they’d feel good on an ebike too.

The Vortex MTC Enduro wheels are burly and brash, with a quality build and a ride feel that’ll give you acres of confidence when it comes to giving them a thrashing.

Their broad rims give good volume and support to tyres, but this all comes at the cost of a few grams.

Wheels are a pretty pricey upgrade, so we put 12 trail/enduro sets to the test to find out if there’s an inherent benefit to pricey carbon fibre hoops or is alloy better for hard-hitting rims?

The wheelsets were taken on back-to-back runs down selected tracks in the Welsh woods and at BikePark Wales. They were pummelled over and into rocks and drops, turns and berms, and off-camber roots.

To keep things fair, all our testing was done on the same bikes, both hardtail and full-sus, with the same tyres (thanks Specialized!) at the same pressures.

We tested 29in wheels, but most are offered in 650b versions too. While we predominantly ran 2.6in rubber, we also slung some 2.3in tyres on, and we varied the pressures between test sessions to see what difference we could feel.

Bikes shouldn’t be a pain to live with, so we took into account the ease with which tyres could be fitted and inflated. Likewise, we considered how easy it was to access bearings and swap freehubs, too.

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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