Parcours Paniagua wheelset review

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The Parcours Paniagua is a competent all-round road bike wheelset.

Parcours offers a few optional upgrades (most of which are fitted here), which don’t turn a tasty trifle into a Michelin-starred dessert, but are nevertheless nice to have if you have your heart set on a personalised wheelset.

Under the skin beats the heart of a good-quality road bike wheelset, though, which will deliver notable performance gains over some of the best alloy wheelsets.

Priced at £759 / $999 / €989, it might not stand out from the carbon crowd in terms of performance, but equally, it’s a competitive crowd.

Parcours Paniagua details and specifications

The Parcours Paniagua features a 42.1mm-deep rim profile, which positions it at the slightly shallow end of the spectrum of all-round road wheelsets (if you consider that 40-55mm is the range most brands settle on).

In theory, compared to a 50mm-deep rim, the Paniagua wheels should prove more stable and easier to handle in crosswinds, although they might give up a little aero efficiency when it comes to calmer conditions.

As ever, a frank assessment of your needs will determine whether a shallower profile such as this is a better match for your riding than deeper options offered by the likes of Hunt, Giant and Velocite.

Parcours itself also offers a deeper wheelset, the Strade, although its more progressive rim profiles result in a higher price of £1,099 / $1,449 / €1,429.

Depth aside, the Paniagua’s rim design is up-to-date – a 21mm internal width is married to a 29mm external width. Parcours claims the hooked (as opposed to hookless) rims are optimised for 700x28-30c tyres.

The hubs accommodate straight-pull spokes and Parcours has specced Pillar 1423 bladed stainless steel units.

EZO steel bearings are specced as standard, although an upgrade to Parcours-branded ceramic bearings is available for a £220 premium, as found on this specific wheelset.

Those with designs on using a Classified Powershift drivetrain can also opt for a Powershift-ready rear hub, although it’s worth noting this doesn’t include the drivetrain’s hardware.

Inside the standard freehub, Parcours uses a six-pawl design, operating on a 32-tooth ratchet ring. This results in an 11.25-degree engagement angle.

Some may argue the inclusion of six pawls may help to spread pedalling forces and aid reliability, but this can be counterbalanced by the view that there are more moving parts to go wrong.

That said, Parcours describes the Paniaguas as “robust” and suitable for both “summer adventures and winter rides”.

The hub shells can also be customised with laser engraving (£50), a Cerakote ceramic coating offering a wide selection of colours (£100), or a custom package that combines engraving, colour coating and the aforementioned ceramic bearing upgrade (£350).

My test wheelset’s hubs feature a pink example of a Cerakote coating, as well as ceramic bearings, fetching a £1,079 total price.

That said, given the coating won’t affect performance (unless you opt for red, which Simon von Bromley assures me is the fastest colour), the figures to note are £979 / $999 / €989 with the ceramic bearing upgrade alone, or £759 / $999 / €989 for the base model with steel bearings.

Though the rims are tubeless-compatible, it’s also worth noting that a tubeless kit isn’t supplied as standard.

If you want to run a tubeless system, then, you’ll need to source tubeless rim tape, valves and sealant. Alternatively, Parcours sells a kit containing everything you need for £24.99 / $33.99 / €24.99.

Parcours says it doesn’t fit it at its factory, citing the risk of damage in transit, so you’ll need to factor in the labour cost of having a mechanic install it – or your time, if you’re prepared to do it yourself.

This is a slightly perplexing explanation, given shipping road wheelsets tubeless-ready is generally the industry standard in 2024. While it's fair to say factory-fitted tape standards are mixed, some are very good – such as that supplied with the Giant SLR 2 50 Disc wheelset.

If you opt for the base-model Paniagua wheelset, with no upgrades, the total price remains reasonably competitive, but the Velocite Hyperdrive Carbon 50mm costs £699 / $935 / €819, while the Giant SLR 2 50 Disc also costs £719.98 / €1,038.

Hunt and Parcours are often considered in the same breath as one another – the Hunt 50 Carbon Disc is a touch more expensive at £799 / $999 / €999.

The 1,606g weight (as specced) is only 6g more than claimed.

The Parcours Paniagua is covered by the brand’s crash-replacement scheme, which offers a discounted rate on a replacement rim and wholesale prices on any other replacement parts.

Parcours Paniagua performance

On the road, the Parcours Paniagua wheelset turns in a commendable account of itself.

As you might expect, the mid-section rim is a good foil for flat terrain and it doesn’t feel sluggish on climbs.

The 1,606g weight is low enough to help the wheels feel lively, and the freehub picks up quickly enough. While 11.25 degrees is on the slightly longer side of average for a high-performance road wheelset, in reality a degree or two isn’t particularly noticeable.

Interestingly, at the beginning of my comparative test, I’d forgotten the wheels had the ceramic bearing upgrade fitted. At the very least, it wasn’t front-of-mind.

In this slightly ignorant state, I was left with the impression that they felt efficient, but, in reality, no more so than their immediate competitors, which have steel bearings.

Any gains are likely to be very small, then, at most. That’s not something limited to Parcours, though – the performance benefits of ceramic bearings of all stripes are generally hard to notice in my experience.

That doesn’t mean they aren’t there, of course, but given this (and bearing in mind my experience testing dozens of other wheelsets – a few with ceramic bearings, most without), it’s not a transformative upgrade.

The fundamentals of the wheelset are sound, though.

Alongside the good performance on the flat and when climbing, the rims feel easy to handle in crosswinds and give off a solid feeling when traversing pimply tarmac, yet the wheelset doesn’t feel overly rigid.

My 28c test mule tyres (a set of Continental GP5000 S TRs) measured out to 29.5mm when inflated to 80psi / 5.5 BAR, with the squatter, wider profile likely paying some benefit to how the Paniaguas deal with road buzz.

Parcours Paniagua bottom line

The Parcours Paniagua is a good wheelset without ever standing out from the crowd.

That is, of course, if you discount the optional custom-coloured hubs, which may well appeal if you’re after a little extra colour coordination.

The lack of a tubeless kit supplied as standard is a small annoyance when other brands deliver one.

I’ve enjoyed using the wheels, but there’s little here to make the Paniaguas an automatic first choice when asked to part with cold hard cash.

The saving grace, though, is that much the same can be said for many other wheelsets.

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