Easton ARC 30 27.5″ Rims

Performance

The Easton ARC 30 rims are impressive. They’re pretty darn light, they have excellent lateral stiffness, and they’re just compliant enough that they’re forgiving in rough terrain.

I tested these rims with a wide range of tire types: a WTB Trail Boss 2.4 with TCS Light casing for long XC-style rides; the Onza Ibex 2.4 with FRC casing for everyday trail riding; and a Maxxis Minion DHF 2.5 and DHR II 2.4 combo with wire-bead DH casing for Enduro racing and bike park laps. The only time I burped a tire on the ARC 30 rims was with the Onza Ibex tire, and this was when I was still playing with tire pressure — I guess 18 psi up front is a bit low for smashing berms on a flow trail.

On the subject of tubeless tires, the ARC rims took well to both Stan’s tape and Gorilla tape to seal the rim surface, but the Gorilla tape seemed to stick much better and was less of a fight to adhere to the rim. When re-taping the rim, it took lots of meticulous cleaning of the rim surface to get Stan’s tape to stick. So I recommend piercing the tape with your tubeless valve and installing the valve in the rim to hold the tape in place as you apply it.

After riding a slightly heavier wheelset, it’s amazing what a few grams saved at the rim can do. The idea with wheel weight is that it’s best to try to save weight closer to the rim rather than closer to the hub because of a wheel’s rotational weight. The heavier the rim or tire is, the more difficult it is to accelerate and toss the bike around because of all that weight spinning around, especially as speeds increase. When you’re at the point that you can feel a difference in ease of acceleration based on whether you’re using Stan’s tape or Gorilla tape to seal your rims, it’s really nice having a light rim to help you along.

The first thing I noticed about the ARC 30 was its stiffness. For an aluminum rim (and heck, even compared to some cheap carbon options out there), it’s remarkably composed when pulling G’s in hard corners and berms. My riding terrain varies from winding singletrack to hard laps in the bike park, and I’ve never had any problems with the rim deflecting and losing its shape during hard cornering. Ask my chainstays – they don’t have a single mark of tire rub in there!

The refined aspects of this rim really shined in rough terrain. While lateral stiffness abounded and was welcome in hard corners, I was impressed with the vertical compliance that allowed for the rim to deflect on hard impacts and make landing more comfortable. This aspect of the rim’s ride quality felt remarkably similar to some carbon models out there.

Aside from the weight and stiffness of the ARC 30, my absolute favorite trait of the rim is its width, and I personally think that a 30 mm internal width is the best choice for the current selection of tires on the market. Yes, you can use wider rims like the Ibis 741 or the WTB Asym, but these designs seem to push most tires to their dimensional limit.

I took the time to experiment with tire profile comparisons on a few rims. I used the same tires (Maxxis Minion DHR 2.4, and Onza Ibex 2.4) and measured the tread width and casing width with digital calipers. I also did a visual test of the “roundness” of the tire profile … and then I went out and rode!

My findings were that, when compared to 30 mm rims, 35 mm rims seemed to bulge out a tire’s sidewalls more than any other change. Additionally, the 35 mm rims tended to make the tire profile a little more square, which felt great when accelerating and braking because of the increased contact patch, but felt a bit unpredictable when working my way through corners.

In sum, until tires catch up to the trend of increasing rim width, I think that 30 mm internal width hits the nail on the head for tires in the 2.3” – 2.5” range. (For more on how and why tire profile and performance are affected by rim dimensions, check out Noah Bodman’s rim width overview).

Durability

As the saying goes, price, weight, durability – pick two. The only area where I’ve had minor problems with the ARC 30 rim is durability.

The ARC 30 rims hold up remarkably well in most terrain, even when getting bounced around on rocky, rooty trails and big drops. I can’t even count how many times I took 15-foot-plus drops and the ARC 30 didn’t flinch.

However, the one area where these rims have lacked is in dealing with hard impacts from roots and rocks. I had two distinct incidents. The first was during a night ride in Fruita, CO, when I saw a field mouse running down the trail in front of me. My maternal instincts kicked in harder than my survival instincts, and I swerved into the tall grass to avoid it, I hit a big, square rock, and it dented the rim so badly that I’m still impressed it didn’t taco.

The second incident involved hitting a hidden stump under some moon dust at Big Sky Resort, after which I noticed that several of my spokes were de-tensioned due to a significant flat spot in the rim.

Now, you need to take this with a grain of salt, not only because I wasn’t fully prepared for an impact in either of these incidents, but because I’d be surprised if any rim made it through these encounters without some sign of damage. The upside is that I never had to walk myself out – both times, the rim was still completely rideable and I was able to ride home, albeit carefully. I was also impressed to see that, although I had damaged the contour of the rim, none of the spoke holes exhibited any signs of stress, which gave me more faith in Easton’s non-eyeleted design.

I have found the ARC 30 to be a rim that possesses more than enough durability for Trail and Enduro riding, and even the occasional hard-hitting lap at your local bike park. Unless you’re a rider pushing your trail bike beyond its intended limits, these rims are a solid choice given the excellent ride quality.

For comparison, the Spank Spike Race 33 is a slightly heavier and narrower rim that seems to have slightly more hard-hitting strength, while the Stan’s Flow MK3 is the most similar in weight, strength, and ride quality to the ARC 30.

Bottom Line

If you’re looking to upgrade your wheelset of yore to improve your bike’s performance, but you also want to be kind to your wallet, the Easton ARC 30 is an excellent piece of equipment. The ride quality of the ARC 30 is great, and aside from some carbon rims out there, I’ve never been happier with the balance of stiffness, width, weight and affordability.