Cadex Max 40 wheelset review: among the best road wheels you can buy – but you'll need deep pockets

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The new Cadex Max 40 is a road-specific wheelset that combines Cadex’s featherweight carbon-flanged hubset with filament-wound aerodynamically shaped spokes and a 40mm-deep aero rim.

Originally designed in conjunction with the 10th-generation TCR, the wheels are aimed at road use only and optimised around 28mm tyres.

The new Max 40 is a step up from the original Cadex wheels, although it shares the same road-optimised rim-bed width. An evolution of the construction and a new hub design have reduced the weight.

The original Cadex 36 weighed 1,322g in ready-to-roll trim (valves, lockrings and tape fitted). The Max 40 has a deeper rim (40mm compared to 36mm) and yet weighs in at 1,310g a pair.

On the bike, I found the new Cadex 40 to be a highly capable, super-light wheelset that excels at climbing, and is stiff and stable for descending.

The conservative rim profile, however, shows the Max 40 is a wheelset purely for the road, so all-roaders and gravel riders need not apply.

The Cadex Max 40 is priced at £3,500 / $4,500 / €3,600.

Cadex Max 40 wheelset details and specifications

The Max 40 wheelset features 40mm-deep, 28mm-wide, hookless carbon rims with a 22.4mm internal width.

One of the first brands to go all-in on hookless rims for road bikes, Cadex (and its parent company, Giant) maintains a list of tubeless road bike tyres that have passed or failed its internal testing protocol.

While its stance on this issue has relaxed in recent years, it’s worth checking Cadex’s compatibility charts before fitting tyres to these rims.

Both Giant and Cadex now say you can use tyres they haven't tested, providing they’re designated as hookless-compatible and stipulate a maximum tyre pressure of less than 72.5psi / 5 BAR, for example.

However, Pirelli’s P Zero Race TLR (among a few other tyres from mainstream brands) failed Cadex’s test protocol and therefore should not be used on these wheels.

Tyres aside, the rims are combined with carbon-bladed spokes – 16 front and 24 rear – and a new hub design with thin, aerodynamic flanges front and rear.

The hubs spin on ceramic bearings and use a new freehub with what Cadex calls a ‘wave-spring’ 48-tooth ratchet driver.

Cadex claims the ‘wave-spring’ design ensures a more even response to pedalling input forces, ensuring the outer and inner ratchet rings engage consistently with even force.

This leads to a smoother action on pick-up when pedalling and release when freewheeling – all with a more efficient power transfer according to Cadex’s claims.

The Max wheels aren’t built like a traditional spoked wheel, instead using a combination of lightweight carbon hubs with thin carbon flanges, into which the carbon spokes are sandwiched, secured in the mould and cooked in place.

At the rim end of the directional aerodynamically shaped bladed carbon spokes, an alloy insert with a male thread is combined with the carbon filament spokes when the carbon is cured. This means they’re effectively ‘baked’ in place.

The spokes are then threaded and tensioned into female threads embedded in the rim.

Cadex claims the directional aerodynamic profile of the carbon spokes is worth a 2-watt saving over a wheel built with round spokes, fitted to a Giant TCR (with two bottles) at 40kph / 24mph, over a sweep of yaw angles from -20 to +20 degrees.

At this price, you’d typically expect bladed spokes (carbon or otherwise) on a performance-oriented road wheelset, so this is perhaps not the fairest comparison.

Cadex claims the unique construction of the carbon spokes here with the 3x string construction of 64 individual filaments creates spokes that have high-tensile strength and dissipate vibrations better than metal or standard carbon spokes.

It seems aero isn’t everything when it comes to the Max 40’s engineering.

This all adds up to a claimed weight of 1,249g (with a Shimano HG freehub), designed to compete with other super-light carbon road wheelsets such as the Partington R-Series MKII R39/44 (1,218g), ENVE’s SES range and Zipp’s NSWs.

My test pair tipped the scales at 580g for the front and 730g for the rear (with a SRAM XDR freehub), for a total of 1,310g with valves and tubeless tape. Cadex’s claimed weight of 1,249g therefore rings true once you subtract those essentials.

Cadex also claims the Max 40 front wheel is 28.4 per cent laterally stiffer than Lightweight’s Obermayer EVO, and 10.3 per cent to the good compared to the Syncros Capital SL. For the rear wheel, it’s even greater at 44.9 per cent and 20.8 per cent respectively.

Whether this can make you any faster is debatable – and Cadex doesn’t offer any claimed performance improvements resulting from this stiffness – but it has a significant effect on the ride quality.

For the premium price of £3,500 / $4,500, the package includes rotor lockrings, spacers (for SRAM disc rotors), tubeless tape, tubeless valves and two padded wheel bags.

The wheels come with a lifetime warranty for registered owners and a five-year ‘Incident replacement’ policy, which covers any accident damage for the first five years of ownership. If the product gets damaged, you can return it and purchase a replacement at a 50 per cent discount.

The Cadex wheels are 6g heavier and £300 more expensive than Zipp’s 353 NSW. They're 80g lighter and £150 more expensive than ENVE’s SES 3.4 and 92g heavier but £2,000 cheaper than Partington’s R-Series MKII R39/44 wheelset.

It’s worth noting both the Zipp and ENVE wheelsets have significantly wider rims, though – both internally and externally – which makes them a better match for the wider tyres many roadies are now opting for.

They are available with SRAM XDR, Shimano and Campagnolo N3W freehubs.

Cadex Max 40 wheelset performance

The Max 40’s all-around ride is hugely impressive, with the minimal weight giving a welcome boost on climbs. This is especially apparent when the low mass is combined with impressive stiffness and a willing freehub, with a fast 7.5-degree engagement angle.

As good as the Max 40 wheels are going uphill, they’re even more impressive going down. The taut feeling of the wheels and sheer lack of lateral flex offers a tangible benefit heading into corners at speed with plenty of lean.

There’s no shimmy, dip or even a hint of flex that you can sometimes experience with ultra-light wheelsets, especially if you’re a taller/larger rider like me.

On a related note, it’s good to see Cadex has levied the Max 40s with a generous 129kg maximum weight limit.

On exiting a corner, the Max wheels feel as if they want to return to an upright position and keep accelerating. It’s this get-up-and-go feeling that so impressed me when I first tried them on the new Giant TCR Advanced SL in Taiwan, earlier this year.

I’m more than happy to report I got the same impression on home soil with the wheels fitted to my Specialized S-Works Tarmac SL6.

On typically rolling terrain, the rapid pick-up keeps you grinning and they offer a notable feeling of efficiency when cruising at higher speeds.

While they feel incredibly stiff under power, the Max 40s do an excellent job of keeping down road buzz and knocking the edge off jarring hits on bumps and potholes. The overall impression is one of smoothness combined with speed.

They’re impressive in crosswinds too, although 40mm-deep rims aren’t going to be hugely disadvantaged by blustery conditions.

In any case, the Max 40s aren’t unduly influenced, and remain controlled and stable in the high winds of British autumn and winter.

The 22.4mm internal width is slightly conservative, in a world where rim designs are increasingly influenced by the demands of all-road and gravel bikes.

For example, both Zipp’s 353 NSW and ENVE’s SES 3.4 wheels have 25mm-wide internal rim widths, although Partington’s R-Series MKIIs are narrower at 21mm wide, internally.

The Max 40s are pure road wheels, though, and they shape up the 28mm tyres fitted true to size at 28.05mm.

Cadex says the rims are designed to work optimally with tyres between 25 and 32mm, and as such, the external widths are relatively narrow (by modern standards) at 28mm.

There’s nothing physically stopping you from running wider tyres, but it’s fair to say you’ll be giving up aerodynamic performance by doing so, and wider tyres will take on more of a lightbulb shape, which can impact handling.

Cadex Max 40 wheelset bottom line

The Cadex Max 40s are impressive pure road wheels. They're put together beautifully and a great package including all the essentials.

The wonderfully measured performance, that combines stiffness, speed and comfort to brilliant effect, puts the Max 40s up there with the very best road wheelsets around – provided you don’t mind sticking to narrower tyres.

The low weight could raise some red flags about their durability, but that’s countered by both a generous weight limit and an impressive warranty.

Whether that’s enough to justify the £3,500 / $4,500 depends on your budget. I’d love to continue to enjoy wheels of this calibre but that would rely on a substantial windfall. I certainly wouldn’t begrudge anyone who had the budget to enjoy their charms.

I’d be interested in trying Cadex parent company Giant’s new SLR 40 wheelset, which follows a very similar rim profile and dimensions, but with an alloy hub in place of the lightweight carbon.

The SLR 40 also uses bladed carbon spokes and comes with a claimed weight of 1,339g for £1,699.98 a pair. Those look as though they may offer very similar high performance at a much lower price.

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